Audio Recording

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Update: November 28, 2011, you can read the new tutorial on bass guitar recording techniques. This now uses a bass guitar amplifier, microphones and illustrating DI method in detail.
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Bass guitar is one of the most important pieces of instrument to establish some “heaviness” in rock, punk and alternative music. Without a bass, music can hardly be considered as “heavy rock”.

This short guide is for beginners looking for ways to record their bass guitar in their personal home studio consisting of the following gears/equipments:

a.) Personal Computer with Sound card
b.) DAW (Cakewalk, Audition, Sonar, etc)
c.) Audio Mixing hardware or Pre-amps
d.) Passive or Active Bass guitar
e.) Audio Cables
f.) Bass guitar amplifiers
g.) Microphones

There are basically two ways to record bass guitar:

a.) Using a direct line method

In this method, you will not be using a bass guitar amplifier in the process but you will connect your bass guitar according to the following signal chain:

Bass guitar ===> Bass guitar pedal (optional) ==> Pre-amplifier or Mixer ===> Sound card line input ====> Personal Computer DAW to monitor recording

Discussion:

You need to connect your bass guitar first to your pedal but this is optional, if you need a clean bass guitar recording you need to plug it directly to a pre-amplifier or a mixer. The purpose is to boost the very weak bass guitar signals especially if you are using a passive bass guitar.

Then connect the main output of the mixer/pre-amplifier to the sound card line in input. Using your DAW, you will need to monitor the level of the bass guitar recording.

If the received signal is too weak; try adjusting the volume of your bass guitar, if this is still not enough, turn on the volume knob of your pre-amplifier or mixer. Sometimes turning the volume is not necessary because most mixers have gain control. So in this case, just use the gain control (also known as TRIM). Adjust it carefully, as increasing the gain also increases the overall noise.

Do these tweaks until you have a strong recorded, minimal noise and quality bass recorded as monitored by your DAW. You can then start recording at this stage by hitting the record button.

b.) Using bass guitar amplifier

If you have a quality bass amplifier, you can use it for recording bass using the signal chain below:

Bass guitar ==> Bass guitar amplifier ====> Microphones ====> Mixer/Pre-amp ===> Sound card line input

Feel free to experiment which sounds best between these two types. Personally I use the direct line method because I have limited room space. But if you have a well designed acoustics and to take advantage of the room ambience, you can use amplifier to capture this benefits in your recording.

As a result, you do not need to apply any effects after recording, since the recorded bass already includes some space/reverberation in it.