Question by Ken Venom: How do you get a professional, studio quality guitar tone with Ableton Live?
I’m trying to figure out how to achieve a heavy guitar tone similar to that of Devin Townsend of Strapping Young lad, if not specifically his tone, then just a proffesional quality metal tone, and a clear, professional quality clean tone.

The details are, that I’m using a Dean (Z Model) With Dimebucker, and a Jackson with EMG passive pickups. I’m running my guitar through my Roland Cube 30 which goes into my audio in on my mac, which is running Ableton live 5.

Please share your thoughts, advice and experiances with me please. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Best answer:

Answer by Franco
To start off, which program you are using to record (Live) is not too significant.

What is significant is what goes into it and how it gets there. To help you, I would need a few more details.

Are you happy with the tone you are getting from that guitar/amp combination? If so, is it losing something in the recording process?

How does the signal get into the audio input on your Mac? Are you connecting a line out from the amp or using a microphone?

A few thoughts come to mind:

1. The best guitar tones I have gotten in the studio have come from miking an amp. In order to do that, you would need an audio interface for the computer that has a good quality mic preamp. A decent dynamic mic, like an SM57 would be good to start with. Then you would basically crank up the amp, work on your tone ’til you’re happy, put the mic in front of the speaker and press record. Experiment with the distance between the amp and mic. It should be pretty close. Start around 1 foot away.

2. The built in audio input on the Mac is decent, but not really pro quality. It would also be very easy to overload. A separate USB or Firewire based interface, as mentioned above, would improve the sound and allow you the flexibility to adjust input levels.

3. At any heavy rock sessions I have been involved with, the guitarists used Marshall, Mesa, Fender or any number of pro level tube amps. While I’m sure a Cube-30 is a cool little amp, you’re going to have to work hard to get that type of sound from it.

I am not trying to discourage you or make you spend all your money on gear though. I encourage your efforts and suggest reading up on guitar amp miking and audio engineering in general. There is a lot of info out there.

Also, have a look at audio interfaces for your Mac. I like the Motu line. This one is compact, not too expensive and sounds great:

http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/ultralite/

It comes with recording software that is a bit easier to use for live recording than Ableton.

Best of luck to you.

peace

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