Guitar + vocal recording at the same time?

[livegirl]

Hey all,

I'm trying to record my friend, who will be singing and playing guitar at the same time. The guitar is actually a weird home-made instrument, and has a pretty bad pick-up.

My questions are:
Is there a way to record both the vocal and the guitar at the same time? Do I need more than one mic? Or should I absolutely record them separately? What are optimal settings in Ableton to record vocals? (I know that might be a really unreasonable question, but perhaps there are some BASICS I should look out for?)

My setup is:
Live 8. Apogee Duet. Rhode NT55 Mic.

I know, bit of a bare-bones setup. My better mic died, unfortunately... still trying to get it fixed somewhere.

Hope someone out there can help! Thanks!

Floor

[djsandman]

Is the guitar an acoustic? If so, you'll want a mic for the vocal and a mic for the guitar. You'll also need a recording interface that can capture 2 inputs at once, like a PreSonus Firebox. Then you just create two audio tracks in Live, arm them both, and record.

Or you could save some money and record the guitar by itself and then create a new track and record the vocal.

[The Landwhale]

Nothing wrong with your setup there. The Duet is a great interface, and should be able to do what you need.
You said the homemade instrument has a pickup, so I assume it has a 1/4" input jack?
If so, try plugging a 1/4" guitar cable into Input 1 on the Duet, use the maestro software to change the input to guitar.

Then, plug your microphone into Input 2, and make sure it's set to Mic in the Maestro software.

That will allow you to record the guitar and voice simultaneously, but on separate tracks so you have more options for mixing.