Get Good Electric Guitar Sound on Your Computer

I bought an electric guitar a couple of years ago, but unfortunately spent all of my savings on it. So I had a guitar, a cable, a couple of picks, and nothing more. How was I supposed to play the blues? Fortunately, after a short while, my PC jumped to mind. And after of months of software searching and tweaking, I was quite satisfied with the sound possibilities. Let's jump right on the wagon:

GETTING THE SOFTWARE
Download and install Reaper from www.reaper.fm. Reaper is a free digital audio workstation (DAW), much like Steinberg's Cubase, or Logic, or Reason. The good thing about it is that it's FREE, and yet, it's extremely powerful and intuitive. Definitely a best buy :). It's great for recording, mastering, composition, etc. You can do almost anything with it, with enough effort.

SETTING UP THE SOUND
Now we have to set up the sound. If you plan on recording your guitar live, you're gonna need some low latency sound drivers. Latency is the time it takes for the sound to get from your guitar after you pick or strum, to your speakers when you can hear it. We usually aim for something under 15ms. If you already have an ASIO sound card you probably don't have to worry about anything. If you have a plain card (even integrated), you will have to download and install Asio4All drivers from www.asio4all.com. After you've installed them, fire up Reaper.

Go to Options, Preferences, then Device under Audio. Pick ASIO for audio system. Don't close the Preferences windows yet: under Plugins, VST, set your VST plugins directory. It's usually C:\Program Files\VST. You will mostly be using VST plugins, because there is a bunch of them, and they're usually low latency. Close the preferences windows and Reaper.

PLAYING AND RECORDING
Go to the Track menu, and click on 'Insert new track'. Now you realize that tracks are listed on the left hand side. Plug your guitar into Line-in or Mic, depending what you have set in Windows. On the track you will see a red button with 'ar' text on it. Click it. Now the track is armed for recording. Below and right is a little speaker icon. Click it once to turn Record Monitoring on, if you want to hear yourself play. In that case, I suggest you use a headset, to avoid nasty feedback effects. Now click the Record button in the middle left part of Reaper, where the rest of the playback controls are, and be creative! When your done click Stop.

GETTING RID OF LATENCY
If you heard a delay in the sound (coming out of the speakers later than you play it), you must tweak ASIO, which is currently in your System Tray as a green icon with a triangle. Open it and make the ASIO buffer size smaller. This will give you lower latency. But if it is too low, you will get a crackling sound, which is also unacceptable. You will have to find the lowest possible value without crackling. You can always see what the latency is in the upper right corner of Reaper.

SPICING UP THE SOUND WITH EFFECTS
Now, on the Track 1 controls, click the little 'fx' button. The FX (stands for effects) window for track 1 will pop up, and also the FX browser. In the browser, choose VST, and first find the Boss-SD. It's an overdrive pedal, and drag&drop it into the FX window for track 1. Do the same for JCM900. It's an amplifier (simulation of a Marshall). On the left side of the track FX windows is the list of effects, also called the effect chain, and on the right are the controls for each individual effect. Try to play with the gain and tone settings on the SD-1 pedal, and with drive and reverb on the amp. Observe the differences in sound, and be creative.

Now you know the basics of connecting a guitar on your computer, amplifying it, and adding effects.

GET ADDITIONAL EFFECTS
Now I will list what effects I mostly use:

1. Kjaerhus free effects suite (reverb, delay, chorus, compressor, parametric equalizer etc.). Download them from www.kjaerhusaudio.com

2. GVST free effects suite. www.gvst.co.uk/

2. Wave Arts Master Restoration Noise. It's a commercial plugin, but absolutely fantastic for noise reduction. And noise is a big problem on cheap sound cards, especially if you like high gain, distorted guitar. It's worth the money. wavearts.com/products/suites/master-restoration/

3. If you don't like SimulAnalog, IK Multimedia's Amplitube is a fantastic guitar amp and effect suite. But it costs some money. www.ikmultimedia.com/amplitube/features/

4. There is a bunch of good and free VST plugins on the internet, so you can use google, but one really useful site is www.kvraudio.com.

I hope this was helpful to someone. Bye, and be creative!