How to Record Guitar Music on a Computer

Recording guitar music on your computer can be a complicated process. After you've figured out how to use your home recording software, you need to decide how you want to input the music to record. Using USB interfaces to record electric guitar music on your computer is a great way to get the sound you're looking for, as is using multiple microphones to input acoustic sounds.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Home computer
• Electric/acoustic guitar
• USB interface
• Home recording software
• Microphones

Record Electric Guitar Music

1. Attach your guitar to your soundcard, using a specialized computer guitar cable. Connect the standard jack to your guitar and the mini-jack to your sound card. Alternatively, you can try plugging your guitar directly into the mic socket on your audio card, but this may limit the quality of the sound, because the impedance of an audio card's mic is lower than that of a guitar input.
2. Invest in a USB guitar, a USB guitar cable or a USB interface to connect your instrument directly to your computer. USB guitars are very expensive, but allow you to record digital sound directly from the guitar. The same effect can be accomplished by attaching the 1/4-inch jack of the USB cable into your guitar or the USB interface device.
3. Ensure, after you've connected your guitar to your computer, that the ASIO monitoring in your sequencer is on and that there's an audio channel ready for recording.
4. Check the levels of your guitar, the recording levels of the computer and the volume on your amplifier. Play around with the EQ and record some test sounds until you find the sound you like. Make sure the sound is not distorted or hissing.
5. Start your software and begin laying down tracks.

Record Acoustic Guitar Music

6. Purchase a good microphone, preferably a condenser mic, in order to capture the entire range of your acoustic guitar.
7. Reduce background noise by soundproofing your recording space to the best of your ability.
8. Plug your microphone into the sound card or USB interface device.
9. Position your microphone(s) carefully, approximately 2 feet from the neck of your guitar. If you will be recording in stereo, make sure to keep the heads of the microphones close to each other and in the XY position.

Tips & Warnings

• Keep in mind that the mixing capabilities of the software make it easy to use loops in your music. This means that if you repeat a measure numerous times in your song, you merely need to record it once and repeat it using the software mixer.
• Some sound interfaces have 1/4-inch jacks and don't require a special guitar cable.
• When using condenser microphones, make sure your audio interface has the required 48 volts of phantom power.

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