We were tracking electric guitar this week. Our track “Beat It” is guitar heavy so we had a lot to record. First we recorded the basic rhythm part which we double tracked (recorded twice) for a heavier sound. For this we used two Shure SM57’s at the same distance from the amplifier. To get both a bright and dark recording we pointed one of the microphones in the middle of the amp (for treble) and the other to the side of the speaker (for bass). When we tested the sound there was too much low end so on the desk we cut the frequencies below 50Hz using EQ this gave us a less bass like sound (we also panned these to hard left and right). We played the guitar through a Vox modelling amp so we were able to dial our desired tone in. We avoided adding affects like reverb as these can be added easily during mixing. I was playing the guitar this week so I made sure that the tone fitted the song. We set the amp to “High Gain” and turned the gain nob all the way up for a heavy metal tone.
Before recording we made sure that the mix has alright in my headphones. While recording the rhythm part I missed a note at the end which we remedied in Pro Tools by copying the note from the same part that I had played earlier and pasting it were the note should be.
We also recorded the lead guitar part which is more aggressive. We put less distortion and gain on the amplifier for this part as it was too overpowering. We also added a room microphone to get the more reverberant room tone that suited the lead part. For this we placed an sE 2200 on the other side of the live room from where I was playing and set the polar pattern to Omni-directional in order pick up all of the reflections of the room.