Build Your Own 2-Channel Guitar Recording Studio Without Expensive Studio Gears

I'm posting this to follow up on what I promised in my previous article Original Music Composition (Track Name: Perfect Jingle). Originally I thought of telling you guys how I connected my guitar using only my computer and recorded the demo sound I posted in my above post. But with the bit of research I've been able to come up with much useful setup that is equivalent to 2-Channel Audio Studio specialized to record guitar w/effect + vocals simultaneously each in 44.1 KHz frequency, which is equivalent to CD Quality (I haven't gotten a chance to check on other settings. Maybe you can try and tell us about your finding).

I used my P4 2.4GHz desktop for this project that is equipped with 3 sound cards (including 1 built-in SoundMAX sound card). Usually I'd only be using my PRIMARY sound card (Audigy SE) most of the time which I purchased especially to experience EAX sound effects. But this project utilizes all three cards to record sound from two different sources to 2 separate tracks simultaneously. The best part is even if you currently don't have 3 cards right now you can easily find them in the market without burning the holes in your pocket since they are pretty ordinary ones (I'd suggest you to get the ones supporting the latest version of ASIO low latency WDM driver. Hint - most of the non Creative counterparts will support those drivers, even the primitive ones like SoundMax).
One thing you'll have to do though is get your hands on decent multi-track audio editing software, and Guitar Effect Processing software. I currently use Cool Edit Pro 2.1 (which is now acquired by Adobe and is sold under the name Adobe Audition) and Amplitube 2. Both of them are great tools.

Here's the the chart which tells you exactly how my devices are all connected. The configuration should be pretty self explanatory with the presented description. Just click on the image to enlarge.



You can let me know how you felt about it by commenting or writing to me at udz.blogger AT gmail.com

Related Articles:

Original Music Composition (Track Name: Perfect Jingle)
Guns N Roses's Sweet Child O Mine Guitar Tracks

Guns N Roses's Sweet Child O Mine Guitar Tracks

Here's another guitar mix that I created. But this time its intro of G'n'R 's Sweet Child O' Mine . The program is still bugging me with latency problem when I try to record guitar sound with heavy effects. But with lite effects it tends to work fine.

Related Articles:

Original Music Composition (Track Name: Perfect Jingle)
Build Your Own 2-Channel Guitar Recording Studio Without Expensive Studio Gears

Original Music Composition (Track Name: Perfect Jingle)

I've just finished composing multi-channel guitar track using only computer and my Epiphone Les Paul Special II connected via line-in of one of the the sound cards. The purpose if this experiment is to show how you can hook up your guitar to your computer and be able to turn it into a music recording station. This is useful if you are a hobbyist who doesn't want to spend a lot buying expensive hardware that does the purpose - or if you simply want to play your guitar using your favorite guitar effects without needing costly gear. It is possible to eliminate the guitar amplifier if you have decent computer sound system or headphone. I am going to update this post and put more detail about this project later with all the information you might need to set up one of your own.

For now enjoy listening to these short tracks that I composed:
Perfect Jingle.mp3 : Created using RHCP Type clean guitar solo performed in blues scale (my best effort to sound good playing solo). Note that the delay was caused by about .15 - .30 ms latency due to the loopback guitar input through line-in (which is basically slow) and delay due to processing the effects by CPU (making it even more slower) which basically screwed up timing of the lead.
Perfect Jingle - (Without Solo).mp3 : You can add your own guitar or any other instrument solo to this file.

Distribution of theses files as well as modifying the content as long as original composition credit is unaltered is permitted.

The rhythm chords are Am, Dm, G, Cadd9 and (Cadd9/E7 each strummed once towards the end) played in order.

If you've created anything special by using above file(s) then you can upload the content to the web and can share its link with me and other readers of this site. I used http://www.hotlinkfiles.com, which of course lets you hot link the freely hosted multimedia contents (Nice!). If you want to use it just for one time and don't care if the contents will be made available to public, in that case you'll be better off using public uploading feature in the site that lets you skip the entire registration process.

You can contact me regarding any of the issues/suggestions in this or any other article.

Related Articles:

Guns N Roses's Sweet Child O Mine Guitar Tracks
Build Your Own 2-Channel Guitar Recording Studio Without Expensive Studio Gears