Audio Recording

This is a quick tutorial on how to record and mix classical guitar. Finally you can produce classical guitar recordings at your home. In this tutorial, it will be using the following gears and software:

a.) Focusrite Saffire Pro40 audio interface (although you can use any audio interface provided it has at least two microphone preamp inputs)

b.) Rode NT1A Condenser microphone
c.) Reaper Digital Audio Workstation
d.) Reaper plug-ins (free along with Reaper)
e.) Focusrite bundle plug-ins – this comes free if you buy Focusrite audio interface.

This tutorial assumes your classical guitar includes an active pickup for additional DI recording and that you have a fully working DAW (digital home recording studio).

Step1.) Position the Microphone in the Quite Live Sounding Environment

It is important to put the microphone somewhere in the center of your room(away from walls or corners). It would be much better if you have a fairly large size room so that the microphones can naturally capture the reverberations.

In this tutorial, a sample classical guitar piece will be recorded in a 10ft x 15ft room with tiles but this is also a usual bedroom with furniture. If you want to know if the classical guitar would sound nice during recording; try to play it live in your room without microphones and check the ambiance and feel. If it sounds good, it would also sounds great during recording.

The Rode NT1A condenser microphone is position at this level:
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I would like to share how I record using Reaper digital audio workstation. This would let beginners know how to approach recording in their daily projects. I would not go into details about settings, etc. used but you can look for the details in this blog. Use the website search function to look for more detailed information.

Preparing for the recording session a day before

The most important thing is that you are prepared with the recording session. Supposing you have a friend that would like to record in your own studio; you have to check the following a day before the actual recording:

a.) Are the number of microphone and guitar cables sufficient for the recording session?

b.) Have you double check the computer for some software related issues? Of course, if you will not do this. The worst thing that could happen is that your computer might go down on the actual day of the recording.

c.) Are all recording gears ready, installed and working? For example audio interface, microphones, mixers, tuning of the drums, etc.

This preparation may sound like a hassle but I do this all the time, to make sure that the recording session would be as smooth as possible.

Minutes before the Actual Recording Session

On the day the artists/producers would arrive, I do not immediately proceed to recording but I would rather talk about the expectation of the project. For example, how many songs are to be finalized and recorded? Also I would like to ensure that the artist and producers are in their good mood as possible.

So it’s not bad to give them a cup of coffee, tea, snacks, etc to refresh them. Also I would encourage the producer to rehearse MANY times before doing the actual recording.

One issue I observed is particularly with the singers not being ready for the session. They need some time to rehearse their vocals before the actual recording. Professional singers do some vocalization, review of the lyrics, tonal/pitch review, style review, etc. All of this work will be done by the artist/singers with the advice and instructions from the producer.
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This is a beginner tutorial on how to create an acoustic guitar and vocal demo in your home. Basically it will comprise of only two tracks: vocals and acoustic guitar.

This blog receives a lot of inquiry from interested readers on how they can create a short demo that can sound as good as possible. Although it varies a lot in recording equipments or gears, the techniques and processes stays the same. This will be illustrated in this tutorial.

What Gears do you need?

1 External Audio Interface (USB or Firewire) = with at least two pre-amp inputs. This audio interface should be capable to perform multi-channel recording and will be using ASIO drivers (most audio interface drivers used in home recording are now using ASIO).

1 Professional Vocal Condenser microphone = you will be using this to record your vocals. You can find a lot of lower cost microphones with superb capturing quality.

1 Acoustic guitar with pickup = make sure the pickup is of high quality and does not introduce noise. You can check the guitar sound thoroughly with the pickup before buying one in the music store.

1 quality guitar cable = any brand will do, a shielded cable is better for lower noise.

1 DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) = there are lot of cheap solutions out there that can bring outstanding results at less than $100 licensing fee. Do not use free solutions such as Audacity.

1 working PC configured as recording studio = if you do not have a recording studio in your home, read this tutorial on how to easily convert your pc into a recording studio.

Case Example/Illustration

In this tutorial, a sample short 15 second acoustic guitar demo of the song “Forever and for Always” (written by Shania Twain and Mutt Lange) will be created. The following are the gears used:

Audio interface: Focusrite Saffire Pro 40
Vocal microphone: Rode NT1A
Acoustic guitar: Custom nylon guitar with pickup
Digital audio workstation: Reaper
Operating system: Windows XP 32-bit

Step1.) Connect the vocal condenser microphone to your audio interface input 1. Use the manufacturer supplied microphone cables which should be XLR from end to end.

Step2.) Connect a standard guitar cable to the acoustic guitar and connect one end to the audio interface preamp input 2.
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