I know, million ways to skin that cat, and many books can and have been writen on it
But how do you do it, in general?
Some people might find this thread usefull (myself included!). I'll kick off:
I have two basic ways that I use very different processes for: modellers and properly, with amps.
When recording with a modeller, I monitor everything through my monitors. I dont bother with headphones. I line its analogue outs into a souncard, whatever one I happen to be using, and program up a few drums and set them to loop. Then I set the modeller to deliver as tight a sound as I can find that gain wise is the hot side of crunchy. I tweak it while listening to me playing two stereo panned signals of the same guitar over looping drums and tweak it till I like it, or rather till I hate it as little as possible. I then 4-track, minimum, everything, two of all passages panned hard.
Advantages:
You can record well into the night and not bug anyone. Doubly so if you do it with headphones
Its easier to find a sound that you dont utterly hate quite quickly.
Its much simpler to set up.
Its more consistent; there are fewer things to go wrong with time, you just store your settings and its the same every time.
Disadvantages:
Try as I might I cant get the things to sound really good. Passable is about the best available. Maybe 3/4 of the way *there* but that last 1/4 is so extremely important.
Because of the shorcomings in the sound; the general trends of lack of depth, thin staticy top end, I generally feel forced to 4-track every rhythm part and harmony, 2 either side. This is not easy, and I dont terribly like the sound of 4 tracking in general anyway; I find it sacrifices tightness and liveliness for thickness.
And with amp/s, speakers and mics. I happen to be doing this right now, and just taking a break, hence the thread.
This is probably gonna read like a lecture/turorial, and there arent any rules to this, this is just what I've found/researched and what I subsequently do - preface everything in you head as you read it with plenty of "imo"s and "you could try"s and "what works for me is"'s!
Its probably easier to start with the biggest problem here. Its a much more sonically complex process (to get decent sounding metal guitars at least, which you all probably realise by know is what I generally do with gutiars :lol:)
The problem, in my case and probably in most peoples cases is the room. Youre using mics and speakers, and mics WILL 'hear' the room with any mortal mics level of off axis rejection (you could try recording with shotgun mics I suppose), even close miced on a loud amp (the reflections are proportionately louder and the sound right at the face of the speaker is still affected by them equally). This is all exacerbated heavily by a small room, doubly so a symmetrical one. The reason for that is the rooms walls are close so the reflections interfere more strongly with the sound from the mic/s and the rooms resonant modes are higher so they are actually (possibly/probably) in the range of a guitar tone. These problems get bigger the lower you tune (I'm down in drop A sharp so it aint easy :lol:). I happen to know, from testing with frequency sweeps, that the strongest resonant mode of my room is round 130hz, so I know that I need to control this region very carefully, and it helps tremendously to know that and be able to identify it in the sound.
You also have to place at least one mic (two is a nightmare, trust me; you cant just throw them up there!).
First, the location of the cab in the room is very important. It should be at or as close as you can get it to the place in the room where the low end swells the most. This is an antinodal point in the rooms resonance and placing the cab there will give you the most even and clean low end response available from the room (add acoustic treatment to that as well). Put it on an isolation pad of some sort as well.
Then theres the reflections. I set up a little bunch of barriers/reflection attenuators at significant points round the cab to cut down what gets back to the mics. I use whatever I have available for this. Currently it consists of two rectangular guitar cases, some acoustic foam, a couple of planks with more foam glued to them, a duvet and some dining chairs! Dont forget the z axis! You hav a ceiling as well, and refelctions need to be controlled from that. I also have the cab fire down an archway that joins two rooms. Its about 12 or 13m long and has a load of junk at the end of it that break up reflections. It also happens to be (luck does work for you sometimes) that this point is the best available to me in the room for the low end. The long fire I think allows the sound to 'breathe', which means (to me at least) that you arent getting any/as much boxy midrange and second set of weird reflections and dulled sound that you can get from actually fully encasing the cab. If a long and relatively non-reflective line of fire isnt available then completely encasing the cab and speakers is something I find preferable to the sound of a small rooms reflections. You can generally control the mid and low mid hump you get (which is an overly resonant and unpleasing one) with EQ, or control it to some degree at least. There is no equivelent control for the reflections of the room, or none that I'm aware of.
I tend to place mics near the dust cap but not on it and right up against the grill. They aim just a little out of the boudary between the cap and rest of the speaker, but theres no wong place to put a mic, it just happens to be that I tend to like the balance of low end and attack and top definition I get in that general area. YMMV. Actually YMWV. Which mic wise, I'm very fond of all mine stuck right infront of the cab: an SM57 (of course) an audix i5, an MD421 and an NT1A. In general, all things being equal, I'm more likely to go for the 421, then the i5 then the 57 and at least try (and usually fail to any satisfactory level) to use the NT1A as a second mic a bit further back. Sounds ok on its own, but not tight enough to be the only mic. Great for cleans, but I'm not talking about cleans here!
Then, I start with something I like in the room, right up near the speaker I'm going to record (oh, I picked my favourite speaker ages ago and you should too! Mines a V30, top row (in an ubercab with v30s and k100s in an X)) and make some pre-emptive adjustments to the sound, because I KNOW that the high gain (4 ish on channel 4 on a powerball) sound I like to play with wont record well. Or if it will, I have no idea how to do it. I drop the gain to about 1 to 2, and I drop the bass from about 4 to about 1 to 2 as well. These may or may not be final settings, it depends how I want this track to sound, but they're much better starting points. I like to max the preamp gain and keep the power low to maintain max tightness and attack. This is not generally better, as a rule, its just because I cant record at the best possible volume (utterly flame throwing to get speakers moving and the cab resonating) because I have neighbours. I dont find, with my particular amp, that dialing in a tonne of power distortion affects it much (in a positive way at least) until it starts to get REALLY loud, and the speakers are excursing, so its quite quiet for a 100W head through a 4x12 (about 95db at 1m direct at one speaker).
Then I totally forget that the sound in the room even exists. I no longer care about it in the least. Its dead to me. It can do whatever the $%&# it wants and will end up sounding however it ends up sounding. I do care, immensly, about the sound through the mic/s, and even more about that sound when doubled and mixed in particular with drums. The kick and toms are going to step on the low end and the cymbals and snare on the high end. From this point out, its ALL through headphones and in a rudmentary mix. Yes, I know the bass adds yet more complexity but I tend to do that last and force it to fit the gutiars :lol: (and a ;) to all the bassists out there). This may not be the best way, but thats how I've done it so far.
THEN I program some drums (like before), and through isolating headpones, I play along to it with the same stereo panning I had with the modellers, and I make iterative tweaks of settings, pedals, mic placement and sheilding till I think I'm getting somewhere. Then I start doing test tracks with real double tracks and make more tweaks. When I dont think its getting much better, I get on with tracking. Since theres a loud amp nearby I track through Senn HD25s, but lots of headphones can do the job so long as they attenuate a good 20db or so of ambient noise and you can actually listen to whats in the headphones.
Disadvantages:
The setup process is MUCH more involved and potentially expensive (topping out at buy a new house to get a better room :lol:).
The setup is less stable - bumb a mic and good luck getting the exact same sound back again (mark up your mic position on the cab! that helps at least, but there are still audiable errors in trying to put a mic back where it was).
Louder in the room, can bother neighbours.
Advantages:
The quality of sound that you *can* get exceeds that of a modeller considerably. More depth, more 3d, more natural, both in tone and the sense of space in the sound that you will still no doubt be left with after sheilding from reflections.
You only need double track. Its easier.
Oh, I also have a reamper (a radial x-amp) and cant recommend it highly enough. I have alas only used it far enough to get proof of concept on it, understand what I need to do with it, any additional effects it has on the sound and yada yada: I discovered when I passively split the signal when I first tried to use it during recording that passive signal splitting is a noisy $%&#er and I need a good DI&splitter as well: just relying on an instrument input on an interface isnt enough unfortunately. However, I've used it enough to recommend the shitee out of it. I cant wait to lay down the DIs for the song I'm doing now and use the reamper to let me wring the best tone I can find (for the track I'm recording now at least) out of my gear at a later date, without having to worry about take quality/tuning/string condition and so on and so forth.
Well, that was a HELL of a lot longer than I planned on it being. Oh well.
