By: Chris Miles
Recording electric guitar is easy when done right. No matter the circumstance, your final music product needs strong recording and with the right techniques, you’re half way there. I often get questions on this topic such as: Do I have to use a guitar amp? Is a virtual amp good enough? I’ll unpack the case for both below.
Using a virtual amp
Advantage: space efficient and economical.
For many home studio musicians, the lack of space and budget is a reality that makes recording through a guitar amplifier inconvenient. With the quality of virtual amps significantly improving in the past few years, it makes them a very good tool for any music recording. Recording through the sound card Hi-Z instrument input or using a good DI and a guitar amp emulator plugin like Guitar Rig, Amplitude 3 or Waves GTR3 has its advantages.
Of the least, it is cheaper for the possibility of crafting the guitar chain of your dreams. Most of the good DAWs include amp plugins as well (the one in Cubase Pro 8 sounds pretty good by the way). I have used virtual amps more than once, especially during the pre-production stage and found myself keeping many of these tracks because they sounded so good.
Advantage: space saver and quieter.
If you live in an apartment building, have a bedroom studio, or even in a hotel room when traveling, a virtual amp is a good option. You can record and listen to your guitar parts using a good pair of headphones without being that annoying musician next door. Imagine, your newborn is sleeping and you’re in the bedroom next door recording a new song…just saying!
Advantage: sound options. It’s almost endless.
You can craft any sound you want using any amp/speaker combination and even a microphone combination with these plugins. Don’t be afraid to take your time to get the right sound. A good way to start is loading presets that sound close to what you want. Then work on the virtual amp settings to craft the sound and make it more personal to fit your needs. Someone that is creative enough could come up with some crazy sounds. That could be handy especially if you’re a stock music musician recording different styles of music.
Using a guitar amplifier
[su_quote cite=”In my opinion, one of the best advantages of recording with a real amp is that you can easily reproduce your “live” sound using the same amp and pedal setup than in the studio. “][/su_quote]
Many people tend to prefer the sound of the ‘’real thing’’ over amp emulators. I would say if you have the space and the budget, it’s always a good option to play with a real amp. I will not lie – I love recording with them. There’s always something special when working on a real amp, like cabinet buzzes and resonances for example. In doing so, the most important thing is to get a good tone. Take the time to craft your sound and find the sweet spot when miking your amp. This will help you to get the perfect tone. If you have the chance of owning more than one amp and one guitar, take advantage of this and try different combinations. Look for the perfect tone.
Having more than one guitar and one amp or with the use of pedals, you have the possibility to work with different sounds for different guitar parts. This actually helps during the mixing stage, giving each guitar part its own sound. If you only have one amp and one guitar, just play with your guitar’s tone nob and pick-ups to get a different tone.
Use an overdrive pedal for one part and the amp’s overdrive for another part. Try different microphones or different microphone positions for example. Even with limitations, there’s always a way to be creative. (I will go deeper into this in my upcoming video tutorial on miking a guitar amp.)
In my opinion, one of the best advantages of recording with a real amp is that you can easily reproduce your “live” sound using the same amp and pedal setup than in the studio.
Work outside of the box: Use both
If you own one guitar and one guitar amp, why not mix the guitar amp with the virtual one? You’re probably scratching your head right now but that’s a technique I have used quite a few times.
Very simple: you actually record a clean sound from your guitar amp and then insert a virtual amp on your track to get the sound that you want. And there you go. That way, if you find your virtual guitar sound sounds a bit unnatural, this technique can help you out.
The final word
When we get into electric guitar recording, there’s plenty of options in the field – but in the end it isn’t which technique you choose as much as it is about the final sound. Don’t worry if the only option you have is a virtual amp. Like I always say, when it sounds good, that’s all that matters!