Guitar Gear Forum

I seen this article the other day about tracking guitars dry, then adding your software to it after the fact to find your sound for the particular song your doing. You have to understand first, that I'm old, and old school. I have never had any luck with software and getting a decent tone out of any of it, probably because I am old, and computer illiterate compared to people my son's age (24). So anyway, I'm thinking this guys is nuts, trying to play a tune at 164 bpm, with a dry signal. How in the world could you find the groove hearing a dry, toneless signal. I gave it a shot, turns out, this guy is onto something. Their are spots in the song that I had obviously overlooked as far as picking attack, technique, and tightness. I kept at it, and tracked two guitar parts, drums were done by the way, I always have a kit on standby saved, and yes, another steep learning curve for grandpa. Anyway, I started editing my sound with TH2 Producer, I imported some impulse cabs like the Ubercab, and the Engl, and voilà!! This stuff actually sounds halfway decent. The other step he said he takes is recording through a real rig for any kind of feedback, or other things he wants that a dry signal cannot provide. I can see my transients a lot better now, but I still don't know what to do with them..LOL But hey, they look a lot cleaner and precise. Plus I'm thinking it will improve my play and I'm always up for that. I'm going to leave a link to the article for whoever would like to read it. I never thought in a million years that I would actually play anything heavy, dry. To weird.

http://blog.cakewalk.com/an-unorthodox- ... murder-fm/

Rock on \m/ > < \m/

You don't have to track while monitoring just the dry DI signal. The great thing about recording DIs is that you can still load the software as an insert, so you're monitoring a "real" tone while you're tracking. And if you don't like that tone in the mix, you can still tweak it all you want after you've recorded the performance.

+1 to what markdude said


I've tracked quite a bit using just a dry DI signal from my amps fx sends with good results

Devin wrote:+1 to what markdude said


I've tracked quite a bit using just a dry DI signal from my amps fx sends with good results

I do that a lot too, but I think what's being talked about is a 100% dry signal (guitar straight into interface).

Yea, that's what the article was talking about. Just straight in dry. Every time I have tried using the software with all the bells and whistles while I'm playing, I get really bad latency, and keep in mind, I seriously don't know that much about it. I'm still learning when it comes down to all of this stuff. What really gets me is I will see a video on youtube, and the guy will be getting this killer sound, and he lists his equipment, and I'm baffled. I know everyone uses layers, 3 or 4 tracks, but I mean this stuff is brutal, and tight. I'm seriously just thinking Axe-fx II and be done with it. If I don't like it, I will have no issues trying to sell it.

When you say tracking dry from your amps fx send, you mean I can run the send on my loop to my interface???

Well I made a break through today, I actually took the time to read several different opinions on how to record direct from my Mesa. Turns out, the ISOcab I was going to sell is now needed for load, the Mesa head I was going to sell is now needed because it sounds killer with the UberKab IR's, and all I had to do was read..LOL I get a bit impatient reading forums because people get so nasty on them, so as soon as I see someone berating someone else because of their lack of know how, I look else where, and therefore I never get to the meat and potatoes someone may have laid out on the table for the guy asking the question. Turns out, as long as I run to my isocab, I can run Slave out direct into my OctaCapture, tweak here, tweak there and your recording. Only thing now is getting my G Major to come through, or will it? Am I bypassing the FX loop by running slave out DI? Possibly the only FX I will hear is in the isocab itself? Not sure, but that sounds like it may be correct. Wow, I feel like my dad trying to use a cassette in the early 80s..it was like I had to show him...LOL Well at least I figured it out before I sold it all. I would still love to take the AXE-FX II for a spin one day.

I use to record on an Otari MX5050BII Analog 8 Track from 1984 until when I finally sold all my gear in 1998.
Now that I have Pro Tools 10, I'm in the same boat as you - learning how to tweak out guitar sounds in cyber space.

When I had a tough guitar part to record, I use to slow the basic tracks down from 15 inches per sec (ips) to 7.5 ips.
I would run the guitar through a pitch shifter and lower the signal by one octave.
This allowed me to play my guitar at half speed and, when switched back to 15 ips, I wound up with a guitar recording that was tighter than a gnat's bum!
Fast leads were dead nuts on and sounded almost too good.

Although, I haven't tried it with Pro Tools yet, I read that it is capable of doing this.
I'm not familiar with your software, but if you're playing dry and if you have tough parts to play, you may want to look into this technique.

Hope this helps!!!

Oh wow, that is slick!! We always used studio's back in the day, shelled out our hard earned money for a poorly done demo because we never had the money to buy more time to finish it. But that is a neat idea, I'm not sure about Cakewalk's software being able to do that. I'm wishing I would have started this whole thing with ProTools instead, but I am where I am and I must live with it for now. That is neat, drop the speed, drop an octave, then go back to full speed and yes, those tough parts would be tight, no doubt. I'm going to look into that, thanks for the tip.

Glad to be of assistance!

Ooof! I know what it's like to be cash strapped. Back in 1982, it took me two years, working seven days a week, to save up for my bare bones analog studio! I called it Meat Market Melodies because, it was in the basement of a butcher shop.
I was really lucky to sell it in 1996 while there were still analog fans around.
18 years later, the recording bug hit me again. I bought Pro Tools 10 last March and I'm discovering that Digital recording is insanely versatile compared to analog 8 track.

One of my favorite studio tweaks was to tape a piece cardboard to the snare's SM57 - the cardboard acts as a baffle, blocking high hat leakage.
It always makes me smile when ever I hear the hi hat booming over the snare, on a pro recording!