Recording
How to Connect Guitar to a Computer
How do I connect the electric guitar to the computer? Let’s examine all the details together.
Connecting a guitar to a computer can be more complicated or easy than it looks. Connecting your guitar to a PC or laptop can be the best way to start playing and recording guitar. Try out amp simulators, effects, plug-ins, and more so you can both enjoy and map your way forward. can enable.
You only need simple basic equipment to connect an electric or acoustic guitar to a PC or laptop.
Some of the topics we will cover in this article are as follows;
How to Connect Electric Guitar to Computer?
To connect the electric guitar to the computer, you will first need a built-in or usb sound card. To connect your electric guitar to a computer, you need to use a sound card to convert your guitar’s signal into a signal that your computer can use. Electric guitars cannot be connected directly to the computer.
If you try to plug your guitar directly into your computer’s microphone input or input jacks using a jack converter, you risk damaging your guitar or computer. Audio input jacks will not work as they are not designed to handle the signal from your guitar.
There are several different options for connecting an electric guitar to a computer.
Connecting Guitar to Computer with Sound Card
The most popular way to connect an electric guitar to a computer is to use a sound card. A sound card is a simple box that lets you plug in your guitar (if external USB) and converts the signal to a digital signal to send via USB to your computer.
There are USB sound cards with different features in the market. I personally recommend Focusrite models for a mid-range USB sound card.
In the image above, there are outputs such as phantom microphone output and headphone output, while there are input jack points for guitar or different instruments. It has all the features required for the home user.
Connecting the Guitar to the Phone
Connecting the guitar to the phone may seem impossible to some of you. As many of us know, you can connect the guitar to the phone with a tiny little tool called “iRig”, a product of IK Multimedia, the developer of the Amplitube guitar program.
Connecting the guitar to the phone with iRig is a very easy process. We plug the jack into the jack of your phone, which we call the headphone jack. We connect our guitar through the nail jack input on the iRig and that’s it.
After that, all you have to do is buy the Amplitube program and connect your headphones or bigger amplifiers to just play wherever you want. You can read our How to Use AmpliTube | Review & Tutorials here.
Consider the following questions when deciding which audio interface to buy:
When you answer these questions, depending on the result, you can either buy an iRig and play the guitar on your phone, or you can buy a USB or internal sound card and connect the guitar to the computer.
Apart from connecting the guitar to the computer and phone with a sound card and Irig hd2, there are also options that we can call a little more professional.
Playing the Guitar with Multi-Effects Pedal / Processor
While the most popular option for connecting an electric guitar to a computer is to have a good sound card, many modern multi-effects pedals (processors) on the market can do this easily.
Today, almost all multi-effects pedals have a USB port that allows you to connect your pedal to your computer and use it as a sound card. In other words, the processor both acts as a sound card and allows you to produce different sounds with many effects in itself without the need for any other software.
The biggest advantage of using a multi-effect pedal to connect the guitar to the computer is that you can continue playing the guitar while listening to the recording you made on your computer.
This can be really cool if you want to record certain tones and do a backing track and solo on top of it.
Connecting the Guitar Amp to the Computer
For those who do not have a guitar amp, the options we have shown so far are attractive. But if you have a guitar amp, can we connect it to the computer? You can immediately check the guitar amp in your home and see if it has a USB port on it.
Many modern guitar amps have USB ports on them for connecting to a computer. These amps are called digital amps.
For detailed information about digital amps, you can read the articles below.
