This article is part of the “One Man Metal Band” series
Now that we have our drum beat exported to .wav file (See Part 1) it’s time to get it into Cubase. First we’re going to setup Cubase with the inputs and tracks we need for everything. When it comes to inputs this will be a little different for everyone based on what you are using. As I mentioned in Part 1 I’m using a Tascam US-800 which has 6 XLR -1/4″ combo inputs and phantom power.
Now, there are tons of choices when it comes to guitar acquisition. Many traditionalists prefer to mic up their amps and will tell you there’s no substitute for tube amps and a $2000 mic. They might be right, but I’m going to assume that most of you don’t have $2000 burning a hole in your pocket. A completely acceptable modern way to acquire your guitar signal is through direct recording. This means we are going to record the actual dry signal from the guitar so that we can modify the sound as much as we like afterwards. You will need at a minimum a guitar interface with at least one 1/4″ input. I highly recommend an interface with one 1/4″ and one XLR input with phantom power so that you can use higher quality mics. Here’s a few choice models:
- Tascam US-800 • $200ish • I own one of these and this is what we’re using for this series
- Line 6 POD Studio KB37 • $300ish • I own one of these also, but chose not to use it for this tutorial because the Tascam was more generic. This is a great device and has piano keys as well as all the inputs you need for a one man setup
- Line 6 Pod Studio UX2 • $200ish • Great high quality interface with everything you need plus nice analog meters.
- Line 6 Pod Studio UX1 • $100ish • Something like this would be the bare minimum
For this example we’ll stick to free stuff again. Pod Farm from Line 6 has a free version that will be what we’re going to use for this series. If you have something like a Line 6 Pod Studio UX2 or similar then you might already own a license to the full version of Pod Farm. There are also tons of alternatives out there free and paid, so look around and try out as much “virtual gear” as you can until you find a setup that works for your project.
- Setup Cubase with the tracks and inputs that we’ll need
- Get our drum .wav file into Cubase
- Setup Pod Farm as a VST plugin and apply to the dry guitar signal
- Hail Zeus (or the flying spaghetti monster of your choosing)
From this point I think we hit all the links that need to be here. In this next video we will pick right up where we left off in Part 1. Enjoy!
Alright that wraps that up. Next we’ll get down to some recording. Files from the video are listed below in the “Related Files” section. Dig!
• RJB
Related Files: OneManBand-Part2
