Hey guys, in this video we’re going to be recording an acoustic guitar in the home studio.
We’ll start off by recording with a direct input, and then work with a few mixing tools
in our digital audio workstation to make the direct signal sound a little better. Before
we start though, this will be a multipart series on recording acoustic guitars, so subscribe
to the channel to see when those new videos are released.
The first step in getting a great acoustic guitar recording is making sure the guitar
sounds at its best. To do this, we’ll make sure we have a fresh set of strings on the
guitar, otherwise the sound is pretty lifeless, and there’s not much that mixing will do
to fix that. After that, make sure your guitar is in tune, cause that’s another thing we
can’t fix later. For our equipment, we’ll need an acoustic
electric guitar, which basically means it has a pickup and preamp installed in it, a
new set of strings, a ¼” instrument cable, and an audio interface connected to our computer.
I’m using a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 for my audio interface, but use whatever you have
access to, and it doesn’t need to be a big one like this.
Now plug the cable into the guitar and the audio interface.
On the audio interface, we need to set it to instrument mode. This basically turns our
first input into a direct box to handle this instrument signal properly, otherwise it won’t
sound right. On my interface, I do this by pressing a button on the front, but some are
controlled through software on the computer. Then I slightly increase the level on the
preamp to where it’s a strong signal but not clipping when I play the guitar loudly.
Let’s switch over to our software for a moment to get that all configured. I’m starting
with a blank project in Cakewalk by BandLab, which is a free digital audio workstation.
I’ll right click on this blank track area to create a new track, set the input to the
one my guitar is connected to, arm it for recording, and rename it. Then I can press
record and stop when I’m finished. On the guitar side, we have EQ controls for
treble and bass to adjust the balance of them. Let’s listen to each of them isolated, starting
with the treble. Now here’s the bass.
I usually like to set this with the treble a little lower than the bass. I find the guitar
a little bright otherwise, and it prevents a little bit of the high-pitched hiss that
this guitar can have. Let’s listen to that now.
Let’s talk about some of the advantages of recording a direct acoustic guitar.
First, recording this way is the easiest way to record an acoustic guitar. All you have
to do is plug it in and set the level. It’s also easier to combine multiple takes and
come back at a different time to record a new take. If you tried that with a microphone,
small changes in the placement between takes might be noticeable. This setup also doesn’t
require a microphone, making it a really cheap way to record this guitar. It also captures
less noise if you’re in a noisy environment, and you won’t get sound bleeding into the
microphone. This can be a problem since microphones for acoustic guitars are very sensitive, and
sometimes you might even pick up the sound from the headphones, like a click track if
you’re using one. You also won’t get any phase issues with a direct signal, and it
responds fairly well to equalization. Some disadvantages are that you will be left
with a mono signal, there won’t be any room sound so the guitar sounds very dry, and you
need to have an acoustic electric guitar, instead of just a regular acoustic guitar.
If you have a beginner guitar though that you’re not concerned with modifying, you
can install your own pickup and preamp fairly easily. We’ve done a video on this process
on the channel so check it out. These preamps have a built-in tuner and also an EQ to adjust
the sound. Check them out in the video description if you’re interested in buying one for your
guitar. Let’s go back to our software now. For mixing
with these direct guitar signals, I start with a little bit of EQ. I’ll roll off a
little of the high end, since it’s too bright, remove the lowest frequencies that we don’t
really need, and add a little bit of low mids. I won’t be adding compression to this acoustic
track since I want it to be fairly dynamic, and we’ll see that it will balance out a
little in a minute when we add our reverb. For the reverb, I added a small amount of
reverb on a send. This basically gives it a bit more depth and space, since a direct
acoustic is very dry. Reverb can be added on a track, but I like to keep it on a send
as a habit, that way I can combine multiple tracks with my reverb when working on a bigger
project, and it’s a little easier to adjust the bus level in Cakewalk. All these plugins
I’ve used are the included plugins from Cakewalk, so they’re available to you to
use as well. Thanks for checking out this video on direct
acoustic guitar recording. If this video helped you out, don’t forget to give it a like,
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