Back to the beginning - help please

[Dan18]

Only been playing a year and have (among others) an epi 1960s tribute and Katana 50. I want to record me playing along with the music on my Mac or iPad (for starters) and send the recording file out. After much reading ( and simple needs), my head is around a Scarlett 2i2 connected to the Katana and my mac. But ... many questions.
1) is the actual digital recording on the 2i2 or my mac after Recording?
2) I use std 1/4 inch jack into the 2i2 input (in the middle of what looks like a mic connection?
3) for DAW, I already have GarageBand and will get Ableton Lite with the 2i2. What to use for a DAW that’s not complex? I found the setup of both to be non intuitive but realize I have new audio terminology to learn
4) since today I play music library files on the Mac and that is output to my amp along with my les Paul, the amp outputs both. So when I connect the amp output ro the audio interface it will have the recorded song and my guitar input. How does that affect the effects added via the daw? Are the signals from the guitar and the music library coming out of the amp now separated?

Thanks for helping 101.

 

[therealfrogman]

Everything passes thru the scarlet to the computer, I am not a mac guy but you can plug the Katana direct and not need the scarlett. I use Mixcraft because it is very easy to understand, pretty sure they support mac. The katana does support playback but I use monitor speakers straight out of the pc, never considered playing it back thru the amp. I do not understand the #4 question but the way I do it is just play with whatever audio track I want and record the guitar to its own track on daw.

I have garage band on my ipad and it is pretty impressive, I don't know Ableton but I think Traktion is free or at least a couple years ago it was. Mixcraft is under $100 I think and is very simple to use and it is pretty full of everything. Again, I would plug the Katana direct in to any usb port and see how you like it, you can use the effects on the Katana straight in but I have learned that recording them as clean as possible and then adding effects works best. I have never been able to get my Scarlett Solo to work without latency issue, I think it is just over head.

 

[Dan18]

Thx for the replay. I did plug the Katana directly into the Mac and it recorded but when I played it back it sounded terrible (tinny). So maybe I’ll try what you did and play back through headphones out of the Mac or external speakers. I assumed it sounded bad bc of no audio device in between.

As for my #4, I’ll take another try at explaining. If I just play guitar and record it via connection from the amp to the Mac, I understand I can apply effects via the daw. But since what I’m outputting from the amp is both the song from the Mac and guitar from the amp, not sure I can use effects unless it separates those two. Sounds like I need to not push the song I’m playing with through the amp.

 

[therealfrogman]

I have to suspect the playback through the Katana is the tinniness issue. Using the mac for playback makes that issue of separation moot. I cannot use my Ditto looper in front of the amp for that reason, If I record a loop clean it plays clean until I add an effect on the amp, it adds the effect to the playback. You can get allot out of even a smaller set of speakers on the mac but getting powered monitors is heaven.

 

[Dan18]

OK now I'm really lost. Let's assume I want to monitor and play back recording using headphones plugged into my mac. I have a usb from the Katana to my mac. So I can get music on my mac and it plays through the headphones. But my guitar/amp output is through the amp speaker, not computer.

My objective is to play a recording from my music library, play guitar along with it, record both together and play it back on my mac with sound only coming to my headphones.

I had that when I plugged the headphones onto the amp and output the sund via usb on my mac but it sounded bad. So I thought maybe getting the output from the mac headphone jack vs Katana's would work. I want to monitor via headphones and not get sound from amp speaker.

 

[therealfrogman]

Sent you a PM.