Recording at home is great fun and can be really useful. Whether it is to monitor your practise, create your own backing tracks or compose tracks for yourself or band. However there is a few bits of equipment you need if you want to record at home!
Disclaimer, I am not endorsing or not making any money from this blog or saying any of this gear is the best. I'm just simply listing some products that will be useful. Nor is this an ideal/complete setup (I will talk more about individual bits of recording gear and maybe a cheap complete setup at some other point).
To get started you’ll need four key things, an audio interface (also known as a sound card), a DAW, some headphones and your guitar (or microphone).
The most important thing is your interface, this is what you’ll plug your guitar and/or microphone into as well as your headphones. For most home setups one or two inputs are enough, unless you want to record drums or a whole band, but that’s a more complicated setup. Your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) is your software that you use to record your audio and your Headphones are obviously what you’ll listen to your audio back on.
My favourite bit of recording software is Presonus Studio One. Presonus makes a pack for around £180 that comes with everything you need, including a light (but very functional) version of their DAW. They also make a version that is around £250 that comes with some speakers below. Studio One comes with some amp simulators as well as well as some drums loops for recording too. If you’re looking to upgrade the sound card, Focusrite has a series called ‘Scarlett’ which are excellent for the money, but do not come with the bundled software and I do not think the audio quality is that big of improvement to justify the extra cost.