The today’s popular sequencer FL Studio (the former Fruity Loops program) has already ceased to be an ordinary beatmaker and is increasingly being used by professional computer musicians as a full-fledged virtual studio in which you can simply record a live instrument and recreate its sound with a number of additional plugins. One of the most common questions is how to record a guitar in FL Studio to get a high-quality track. Two main options can be proposed for this, which will be briefly discussed in the article.
How to record a guitar as a “live” instrument in FL Studio?
Suppose you have a live instrument (acoustic or electric guitar). In the first case, you will have to use a microphone recording, in the second - connect the guitar to the linear input of the soundcard either directly or through the “combo”. The recording methods for both cases can be applied differently. In the case of an electric guitar for such purposes, the application has a special built-in audio recording tool.
First you need to add an empty track or use one of the available ones, click the record button, and then activate the audio recording item in the playlist (Audio into the plyalist as an audio clip). After that, it remains to press the play button (or spacebar) to start the session. If necessary, you can set a preliminary countdown and turn on the metronome.
In the case of an acoustic guitar, after calling up the recording menu, the easiest way is to use the Edison plug-in item, which will record the part from the microphone.
If you have an external audio editor specified in the settings, editing is better with its help, although a simple set of tools of the studio itself will be enough for a novice user (cropping, cutting, pasting, aligning durations by tempo, size, etc.).
How to record a guitar in FL Studio 12 and above using plugins?
If you don’t have a real guitar at hand, you can recreate its sound in the sequencer using many additional VST plug-ins. Real Guitar is suitable for acoustics, and to create a part of an electric guitar, you can use plug-ins like Real LPC, Real Strat, Real Eight, etc.
According to the vast majority of computer musicians, the Prominy V-Metal package, which is loaded into the Kontakt VST sampler, has the most natural sound.
For handling heavy music, a Kontakt kit called SampleOddity Thrash is a good fit. The most powerful VST-tool in this respect today is considered to be the relatively new development of Wedge Force Earl Gray, which, however, is not cheap.
Additional effects
After recording a “live” instrument or creating a guitar part, of course, you will have to impose additional effects. Advising something specific is very difficult, since there are a lot of virtual guitar processors and “lotions” to date.
In order not to search for the best for a long time, we can recommend the popular Guitar Rig processor, in which there are a lot of effects for both a beginner guitarist and a professional.