The Most Important Skill To Practice For Recording Guitar On An Album

The most important skill you need to practice for recording guitar is rhythm guitar playing. Many guitar players neglect this skill and end up wasting valuable recording time in the studio (costing them

tons of money in the process). Improving rhythm guitar playing saves you time in the studio and makes your recordings sound pro.

To record rhythm guitar perfectly and make your recordings sound great, you must master several key skills. Here is a list of some of the skills you must train:

Making The Notes Of All Chords Be Perfectly Stable

Improving this skill requires training yourself to consistently pick every note of a chord with the same amount of force. This is especially important while recording double or quad tracked rhythm parts. Practice this by recording yourself playing a chord 10-15 times. Then look at the visual representation of the chord (waveform) in your recording software. This helps you see any inconsistencies in your picking attack. Try to play ten chords in a row that are perfectly identical.

Palm Muting To Eliminate All Excess String Noise

When your recordings are full of unwanted string noise it sounds sloppy and totally unprofessional. Getting rid of all string noise requires palm muting with the picking hand and using the index finger of the fretting hand.

Palm Muting Consistently On All Tracks

Palm muting consistently means muting at the same location (on the strings) and using the same amount of pressure while pressing down with your picking hand. Many guitar players palm mute inconsistently either because they don't practice muting consistently or aren't aware that this skill exists to be practiced.

Playing The Same Rhythm Guitar Part Perfectly More Than Once

A lot of guitar players do not have good overall consistency in their playing. They do not practice recording and are unable to play something perfectly several times in a row. You WILL have to do this to create multiple tracks for a single part in the studio. This makes this skill critical for saving time, money and frustration.

Playing In Perfect Time

To make any rhythm guitar part sound professional, you must be able to play in perfect time with the drums and bass. This means locking in with the beat so that the part you're playing seems to disappear. Perfecting this requires practicing recording yourself to make sure you are neither ahead of or behind the beat.