I am in the process of getting my home studio set up so that I can easily record from Rocksmith, the equipment will be usable for recording bands as well.
Most of the kit I will be using was obtained for an earlier project that has had to be put on hold (mainly due to lack of time - so you might be wondering why I'm adding another very time consuming project).
If it proves to be reasonably successful, I may get dedicated equipment just for this, in order to avoid having to tear down and rebuild the set up when I use
Project Outline
I will be splitting the feed to the Playstation (or PC) with a Direct Inject box, this gives a loss-less feed into the console and a balanced XLR feed to go into the audio interface. A second instrument (guitar or bass) can also be connected the same way.
The feed from the console will go into another input of the audio interface, and I can hook up microphones too.
I have successfully trialled this with my mixing desk, although the desk only allows me to record a stereo feed.
What I haven't quite worked out is how to add the effects to the raw guitar feed, I suspect that I will be needed to get deep into the daw software to achieve this.
As most songs have drums or keyboards on, I will also have to learn how to program a virtual drum kit and midi.
At the end of the process, I should be able to record a song with guitar, bass, and vocals.
More Detail
What I intend to try doing is recording each part, lead, bass, and rhythm and attempt vocals on top. As I have a (lot) more audio inputs than necessary, I will put each of the guitar parts onto a different channel, and for songs that have additional or bonus arrangements they will all have their own audio channel.
As the Rocksmith audio will be recorded as well, I should be able to use this to get the tracks correctly lined up, and listen to how I really sounded compared to the "proper" recording.
One I have proven to myself that I can be successful, I hope to persuade some others to help with this, as driving the recording system at the same time as playing and singing is a challenge that I am nowhere near mastering. I struggle enough playing and singing more or less in time as it is! (Being even more accurate: I struggle playing OR singing in tune)
Available Equipment
The DI box I use is a Behringer Ultra-DI Pro DI800, although it is a little over-specified for this usage. A pair of single channel DI boxes can be used just as easily.
My audio interface is more than a little overkill, as it provides 16 XLR audio inputs via a Focusrite 18i20 and Focusrite Octopre MkII dynamic. I have these for recording bands, the combination is more than a little overkill for recording from Rocksmith.
I have a number of dynamic and condenser microphones available, together with several stands and a box full of cables.
What I don't have is time and space enough to get a couple of guitarists and singers together with a sound technician.
This is one of the catch 22 situations, where I need to work to afford to live, but don't have time to become proficient at all of the tasks I have set myself.
These tasks include:
- Playing Guitar and Bass
- Singing
- Managing the recording process
- Managing the post-production audio editing
- Programming a drum machine
- Playing or using a virtual keyboard
- Creating the final product
- Creating videos
Some of these will come in useful for recording bands to allow them to share their music via sites such as Twitch, YouTube. and Soundcloud, as well as producing promotional cd's and thumb drives. Not to forget the photography side of my life (such as it is)
