The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
  1. #1

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    My intent is to record my electric guitar and that's the only sound I want to hear in the recording. I tried to use the amps on the Garage Band to record my electric guitar and the following things would happen:

    * If I try to record while playing along with the drum loops, the sound of the drum loops would also get recorded with the guitar and there is like a hissing background noise that goes along with it.

    * If I try to record with a metronome click. The sound of the metronome click would also get recorded along with the guitar, and there is a hissing background noise too.

    * If I try to record just solo instrument. There is still a hissing background noise and my rhythm is out of sync if I add the drum loops later.

    However, I was able to successfully get a decent recording by tinkering around with the noisegate, compression, gain, treble, bass, mixer, and other EQ stuff. I also added bass and synth pads which sort of drowned the hissing noise, but not completely. Overall I was not happy with what I produced.

    Any help eliminating the issues mentioned on the bullet points would be greatly appreciated.

    Additional Information: I use a Steinberg UR22 as my interface.

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  3. #2

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    It’s a while since I used GarageBand on my iPad, but what I used to do was record a backing track on it first, then overdub the guitar in a separate track. I then exported the guitar part only to my desktop computer so I could do a final mix and edit in Audacity. The way I did this was to mute all the tracks except the guitar, then export the ‘song’. When the song file was transferred to the desktop, it only contained the guitar audio.

    I used a Line 6 sonic port to record the guitar to the ipad (with a blackface amp sim in the line 6 app), it did not have any hiss problems. I think I tried some of the GarageBand amp models but didn’t like them much, I don’t recall any hiss issues though.

    I managed to reduce latency on the iPad somehow, it was a buffer setting somewhere, maybe in the line 6 app? can’t remember now.

  4. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    It’s a while since I used GarageBand on my iPad, but what I used to do was record a backing track on it first, then overdub the guitar in a separate track. I then exported the guitar part only to my desktop computer so I could do a final mix and edit in Audacity. The way I did this was to mute all the tracks except the guitar, then export the ‘song’. When the song file was transferred to the desktop, it only contained the guitar audio.

    I used a Line 6 sonic port to record the guitar to the ipad (with a blackface amp sim in the line 6 app), it did not have any hiss problems. I think I tried some of the GarageBand amp models but didn’t like them much, I don’t recall any hiss issues though.

    I managed to reduce latency on the iPad somehow, it was a buffer setting somewhere, maybe in the line 6 app? can’t remember now.
    I think audacity will work. But I use a PC not a Mac and my Garage Band is on the Ipad. However, I checked at the apple store an app called WavePad that does the same function as audacity. I'll try to install it and see what happens...

  5. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jason Sioco
    I think audacity will work. But I use a PC not a Mac and my Garage Band is on the Ipad. However, I checked at the apple store an app called WavePad that does the same function as audacity. I'll try to install it and see what happens...
    I tried to use WavePad, but it would not allow me to open a Garageband file.

  6. #5

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    I watched a Youtube video about this topic. What wrong with my interface is that the headphone jack seems to be not working. That's why I'm hearing the drum loops and metronome clicks on my guitar recording. Any additional help for the headphone jack is greatly appreciated.

  7. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jason Sioco
    I think audacity will work. But I use a PC not a Mac and my Garage Band is on the Ipad. However, I checked at the apple store an app called WavePad that does the same function as audacity. I'll try to install it and see what happens...
    Your setup is like mine, i.e. record on iPad with GarageBand. Then I exported the recording to my PC (not a Mac). I only use Audacity at the final stage, because I am used to it and I can mix and edit the recording more fully using it on the PC. I don’t record with Audacity because it has way too much latency on my rather old PC.

  8. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jason Sioco
    I watched a Youtube video about this topic. What wrong with my interface is that the headphone jack seems to be not working. That's why I'm hearing the drum loops and metronome clicks on my guitar recording. Any additional help for the headphone jack is greatly appreciated.
    sorry, I don’t really understand this!

  9. #8

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    Update: I was able to get rid of the hissing noises and the drum loops by actually lowering the volume of the drum loops and I record. It's not the most ideal way, it's kinda crappy and stupid, but I was able to make it work for my recording.

  10. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jason Sioco
    My intent is to record my electric guitar and that's the only sound I want to hear in the recording. I tried to use the amps on the Garage Band to record my electric guitar and the following things would happen:

    * If I try to record while playing along with the drum loops, the sound of the drum loops would also get recorded with the guitar and there is like a hissing background noise that goes along with it.

    * If I try to record with a metronome click. The sound of the metronome click would also get recorded along with the guitar, and there is a hissing background noise too.

    * If I try to record just solo instrument. There is still a hissing background noise and my rhythm is out of sync if I add the drum loops later.

    However, I was able to successfully get a decent recording by tinkering around with the noisegate, compression, gain, treble, bass, mixer, and other EQ stuff. I also added bass and synth pads which sort of drowned the hissing noise, but not completely. Overall I was not happy with what I produced.

    Any help eliminating the issues mentioned on the bullet points would be greatly appreciated.

    Additional Information: I use a Steinberg UR22 as my interface.
    - Are you sure the drum track and metronome are actually recorded as audio? Do you see waveforms recorded their tracks after you record? If not, try turning off the monitoring of these tracks when you play back

    Assuming you are in fact recording the drums and metronome as audio:

    - If you're recording on a computer that has a built in microphone (most Mac's do), it could be that the mic is picking up the sound that's coming from your monitors (or headphones, if they're loud and leak audio) and recording that to a track. That would explain most of the symptoms you're describing. Check to make sure that the mic is not enabled as the recording source on any tracks, and that only the track that you actually want to record (I assume the guitar) is record enabled. That should take care of the problem of the rhythm track and metronome being recorded. If not, I'm stumped.

    - If you turn off the mic, and the drums recording problem is solved, but and you still have a hissing problem -- first -- single coil pickups or humbuckers? If single coil, the "hiss" you're describing might be buzzing from light dimmers or other sources of electrical noise that you're pickups are picking up. Try moving around -- if the loudness of buzzing changes, welcome to the joy that is single coil pickups. There are ways to deal with that. Ideally, moving around solves the problem, but noise gates or something like an Electro-Harmonix Hum Debugger might be needed if it's really bad.

    Assuming that's not the problem, the hiss could come from a few different places --

    1. Impedance mismatch between guitar and interface -- I don't know that Steinberg box, but most have a toggle switch that lets you set the input impedance to match a guitar rather than a mic or line level source. Look for a switch that does that and makes sure it's set to guitar (it might say "high impedance" or "high z."). This is not the most likely cause, but it's the simplest fix, so try this first.

    2. Your input gain on the interface is set too low -- turn off all amp models, effects, etc. Play as loud/hard as you're going to play on the track you're recording while turning the gain knob on the interface, until the "peak" indicator turns red. Turn down a hair from there so that you no longer get a red light. That's a good level to start with. Now do the same with the track fader -- get the level well into the green without going red.

    3. The effects you're using are amplifying noise in the signal chain due to some combination of the above -- start with no effects other than the amp model. A lot of the GB guitar presets have OD, compression, and EQ defaulted to "on" and these can contribute a lot of noise, so turn them off. Adjust the amp settings to get in the ballpark of the sound you're looking for. As part of this, play around with the the mic model settings and make sure that's not a noise source.

    4. Something funky going on with your overall gain-staging. Typically, you've got input gain on your interface, output levels on the interface, track faders and the master fader in GB, the amp sims, the computer's output volume (if you're using its built in output instead of the external interface's out put), and volume knobs on what you're monitoring through (e.g., powered speakers or stereo amp + speakers). It can take quite a bit of fiddling to get all of those set at a loudness that works for you without noise.

    Try all this, and if you still have issues, report back.

    John