Guide to recording your bass riffs (from amp. to computer)

[-blink-]

Hi, this is a guide for those want to know how to record your bass guitar sound straight from your bass amplifier to your friendly computer. (The easier and cheaper way) Without the need to buy an expensive D.I. (direct input) box.

(1) Things you need:
- bass guitar, bass amp. and computer (obviously)
- Audacity (stable version), free installation available here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/ (this software is for recording and editting your bass sounds)
- Adapter plug (instrument plug>headphone)
- Wire (3.5 Stereo Plug to Plug, for connecting to adapter and computer)

Pictures:
http://www.myalbum.com/Album=BSGGTXNZ
(pls tell me whether the link works or not)


(2) Placing everything together...
1. Plug in the adapter plug into your bass amplifier PHONES output hole.
(make sure your bass amp. is turned off)

2. Plug in one end of the plug-to-plug wire into the adapter plug, and the other end into the line-in plug of your computer.
(line-in plug can be found either at the back of your desktop or the front side of your laptop. Make sure that u plug into the line-in not the headphones hole, the line-in hole is usually marked with a small icon that looks like a microphone. For those visual people pls click the pictures link above)

3. Open up Audacity in your computer, plug in your bass guitar to the bass amp. and then turn on your amp. Set your amp. volume knob to about 9 o'clock/ 1 quarter of max vol. and set line-in vol. of your computer to about half of full meter.
(if u are using windows vista/xp: control panel>sound>change sound systems, click the line-in box and change vol. accordingly)

4. Start recording... Turn up the vol. knob on your bass guitar to whichever setting u want, then click the record button in Audacity and start playing your bass riffs! To save your recording, go to File > Export As WAV to whichever file u want.
(Before any recording, best to try a test recording to check the volume, u don't want the recording to be too loud or too soft. The volume settings stated in step 3 are just how i like to set them, best is when u see the track wave of your test recording with a mixture of light blue and dark blue in it)


Audacity - It's also very helpful for those who don't have bass effect pedals, as this software allows to the edit your recordings, for example effect: bass boost (which actually gives u a fuzz/ distortion sound) and also effect:delay. Not only can it add effects, it also allows u to change the speed, tempo and pitch of the recording! So this is good for those who don't have octave pedals. Although, the down-side is, u won't get to play your stuff and effects live...


Hope that u found this guide helpful, feel free to ask me any questions related to this guide.
Thanks~

 

[exin]

hey blink!

thanks for posting this up!

 

[-blink-]

hey blink!

thanks for posting this up!

your welcome! =)

 

[b33r]

i just thought i'd add on, hope you don't mind...

for those with Macs, Garageband has built-in effects for guitar, bass etc. you can even turn it on so you can hear it while you're recording live, unlike Audacity, where you have to do it by post-editing. the downside is, there is usually a slight lag between your playing and the sound that you hear.

also, if you don't have an amp, you can just go straight from bass > cable > adaptor > computer. works the same way, just that you won't have the eq of your amp. it'll probably sound crappy too, since it's using your computer's soundcard as an "amp" of sorts.

 

[-blink-]

hey thanks b33r! i really needed someone to tell us about recording using Mac (GarageBand), cause i don't have a Mac, this guide is mainly for windows users, but the adapter plug and wire are the important things to get...

The method of recording straight from your bass guitar can work too, but as u say it'll sound really bad, best to connect to an amp.

 

[Composer of Requiems]

also, if you don't have an amp, you can just go straight from bass > cable > adaptor > computer. works the same way, just that you won't have the eq of your amp. it'll probably sound crappy too, since it's using your computer's soundcard as an "amp" of sorts.

Have you tried guitar rig? Heard it can do amp modelling with a signal-level input through line-in... my friend had it on his laptop, but unfortunately his line-in jack was faulty so it had a massive amount of noise. As a result, I couldn't tell if the software's amping was contributing to the noise.