We've talked about using a microphone to capture the sound in the air and bring in

into our DAW interface and into our DAW. Another thing you're likely to record is

going to be an electric guitar or electric bass, and a microphone was an

input transducer that was converting the sound pressure variations into voltage

variations. The pickup on an electric guitar or bass

is also an input transducer. But it's functioning in a different way.

And because of that, the levels are different.

And the type of signal is slightly different.

And it poses some, some issues when trying to get the signal from the guitar

bass into the DAW. So I'd like to show you a couple of

options on how to actually connect and record an electric guitar or electric

bass. Now, the output cable from an electric

guitar or electric bass, is the quarter inch TS cable that we're used to.

But the signal coming out of an electric guitar or bass is not the same as a

typical line level. So the tendency would be to plug this

right into a line in, but that's not going to really work.

You're going to need an input designed specifically for a guitar or bass, it

might be called an instrument input, a direct input or a Hi-Z high impedance

input. Now luckily my audio interface here has

these interesting connectors that we look to our XLR before, but they also have

kind of the ability to plug a quarter inch cable in the middle, and we see

right next to this, it says. Instrument underneath this.

So this is an input design specifically for an instrument, and can be used to

plug in a guitar or bass with a pick up. So if you have an input like that you can

connect your guitar or bass, and set your levels similarly to how we did with the

the microphone. Now phantom power will not be necessary.

You don't have to, you don't have to power these via phantom power.

So you won't have that kind of on off switch that we had with the, with the

condensor microphone. So connecting a guitar base would be the

same as before in that we take our input trim and turn that all the way down.

I would also suggest turning down your speakers in your, in your room to provide

you know prevent any clicks, and pops through your system.

We connect our guitar bass to our device. And again just make sure that the device

is designed for an instrument. And then we play and set levels just like

we did before. So it's the same exact procedure.

Now this is fine. And you can record this way.

But there are a couple issues involved in it.

The first one is there will always be some delay.

What we call latency, and we'll get into this in more depth next week, but right

now it's good to know that the computer can really only do one thing at a time,

and any time you play through it. It's going to be a little bit of a delay

before it comes out of the speakers. Now when recording a vocal or an acoustic

guitar, it's not really a big deal because we hear ourselves in the air.

If I'm singing, I hear my own voice. If I'm playing an acoustic guitar, I

really hear the acoustic guitar in the air, and it's not really a problem if

there's that slight delay. When recording an electric bass or an

electric guitar though, that, that signal coming, that signal coming out of the

speakers is the only thing we're really hearing.

And because it's delayed, it can really hurt the performance and that there's

that kind of lag and you can never really groove when there's that bit of delay.

What we call latency. We'll talk next week on how to reduce

that, some of that, that latency within the computer.

But it'll never go away entirely. So what this brings up is the need to

monitor your signal outside of the computer.

And monitor is a word we'll use numerous times in the class, but it means to

listen, or listen to playback. In fact, the speakers you have in a

studio are called your studio monitors. And the speakers on the stage facing you

as you play are your stage monitors. So monitor is to listen.

So when recording electric guitar bass while you can directly into a computer,

it's best to be able to monitor outside of the computer.

And that's where an amplifier can really come in handy.

So instead of plugging directly into the interface, we can use an amplifier so we

can hear the sound. in the room, and then go from that into

our interface. Now there is a couple ways we can

accomplish this. And I want to go through a variety of

ways. The first way would be to plug the bass

or guitar into your amplifier and put a microphone in front of the amplifier, and

record that into your interface. And that's a very common way to record,

and it really is a great option. the benefits of that is you'll get the

sound of the amp. And really, the amp makes up an integral

part of the sound of any electric or electric guitar bass performance.

You never really hear the sound of the bass without the amp, you know?

It's just part of the sound. So recording with a microphone makes a

lot of sense. The down side of that is that you'll get

the sound of your room in there. Remember every time you're recording with

the microphone you're recording the signal.

But also recording the room it's in. So if you're not in a acoustically

perfect room, then you might not want to put a mic in front of your amplifier.

Also, having a mic in a room does . .

... It makes it, recording a bit harder

because of the chance of feedback with your monitors.

There's the chance of just noise and moving around you hear.

So it's nice to be able to record direct. And by direct, I mean plugged directly

into your system your interface or to a DI box or right into your amplifier and

using a line-out. So you'll find many amplifiers allow you

to plug into the amplifier and on the back have a line-out.

And let's look at how that would work. Again, when you're disconnecting your

gear, you want to make sure that you turn the input gain all the way down.

And probably you'll want to turn off your speakers as well.

So I'll turn the input in down on my interface all the way and I'll disconnect

my bass. So, we can plug our bass guitar into our

amplifier and because it is an amp designed for bass guitar it's always

going to work with an instrument input, right.

It's not designed for a line input. This amplifier on the back, has a variety

of quarter inch connectors. And we want to make sure we use the right

one. there is one that says line out, and

that's the one you have to use. There are another two on the back of this

one that say speaker out. And it's essential that you never hook a

speaker output to any line in any of your gear.

The speaker out are very, very high levels.

They're designed to be hooked directly to a speaker and give you all that volume,

so you really don't want to connect those to a line input.

So I'm going to take the line out from my amplifier and plug it into my interface

and this is using a standard quarter inch instrument cable, a TS cable line out

from the amplifier into the interface. And like usual, we use the same exact

procedure. I'd already turned the input gain all the

way down and now I can increase that gain and set my levels as usual.

The benefit of this, is that when I play through my amplifier, I will hear it in

real-time, right out of the amplifier, without any latency.

And I'll get a nice solid signal going into the computer.

The other benefit of this is I'm using the pre-amp that's built in to the

amplifier here, and this pre-amp, in any amplifier.

Colors the signal a bit, so it might not sound exactly like an amplifier does,

when you hear it through the speaker amp, but it does get some of that character.

You get some of the distortion in a guitar amp and you get some of that nice

compression that you get using a base amp like this, so that's a really good option

if your amplifier does have a line out. Now, not all amplifiers have a line out.

And there's one more option that works really well and that's to utilize a

direct box. And let's see how we would do that.

The first thing I'll do now is just kind of disconnect what I have, I'll turn the

input gain on my interface all the way down and disconnect that.

[SOUND] And then I'm going to disconnect my, my guitar from my amplifier here, as

well. Again, just like we did with our

interface, I want to make sure the input gain on my amp is all the way down to

prevent clicks and pops from coming out of the amplifier.

You're getting the idea of this, right? Always turn the gain all the way down,

then disconnect and connect things, then turn the gain up.

kind of makes sense, right? Avoid those clicks and pops.

So, a direct box, like we saw before, provides us a way to go from quarter inch

to XLR. And another thing that it does that's

really important is it matches the impedance of a guitar or bass, and allows

it to be plugged into a line in. The level will still be very low, but it,

it gets that impedance correct. Which is that what they're really saying

with the instrument in or the direct in. If we look at a direct box we're going to

see that it has two quarter inch jacks and one XLR jack.

We'll take the output of the guitar directly into the direct box to one of

those quarter inch inputs. I can then take the XLR out and go to my

interface. Now, because this is coming from a bass,

the level will probably be quite low. And you'll have to use a little bit more

gain than maybe with a microphone on your interface.

But if you have a bass or guitar with active pick ups, it could be quite high.

The level setting procedure will be the same as with a microphone.

Now, we could just record like this. And the benefits of this also, if I'm not

even use the amp at all, is I can use a short quarter inch cable.

Say, very close to me. And if I have to go a long distance to

the studio. I can use the long XLR cable.

So we'll have that reduced noise, that I'm using a balanced cable for a long

run, which is excellent. So even just this has some benefits.

But since I do have that parallel output, that secondary quarter inch cable.

I can go from there into my amplifier. And then I can hear, out of the amp in

real-time, the direct box is being plugged into my interface.

I can set the gain as usual, and I'm ready to record my guitar or base.

This method really is preferred, you're going to get a very clean signal from

your guitar bass, and if you want to go the step further, many people would

actually put a microphone in front of this and get both signals and be able to

use both and choose between them later in their DAW.

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