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I’ve noticed that if you play tapping as you can live (through a speaker or while playing with backing track) my tapping seems to sound fine. But when I record I get a lot of detach noise. By detach noises I mean lifting my fingers away from fretboard and pull-off noises, however position shift noises also count. So you gotta do million takes before it’ll sound more or less clean. I’m fine with that but even then you can hear some.

As I can understand — you can’t remove those completely, because hand and finger shifts will make noises anyway. So my question will be: how do I suppress them? Worth to mention that I can’t really do it with EQ because if I do it will kill a sweet spot of frequency range.

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    What's your signal chain when you lay down tracks to record? e.g. are you micing up an amp, or going direct? Are you using any speaker sim? Jul 27, 2019 at 13:53
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    It could be that you’re merely not practicing slowly enough to make your technique clean enough for recording. Jul 27, 2019 at 13:56
  • @topomorto DI. I use an amp simulator.
    – Eugen Eray
    Jul 27, 2019 at 14:54
  • @ToddWilcox Probably, but I'm using a hollowbody guitar, so it has much less noise suppression than a solid body guitar because notes ring out more (open strings I mean). Also the neck is scalloped.
    – Eugen Eray
    Jul 27, 2019 at 14:58
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    Sounds it could be any or all of those things. Amp simulators still aren’t exactly like amps, and I hear strange noises from them constantly. A hollow body isn’t the typical type of guitar used for tapping. I wonder if you were able to rent or borrow a guitar and go to a practice space with a real amp if you would hear a big difference or not. Jul 27, 2019 at 15:20

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It could be that you're used to hearing your guitar played through a 'guitar amp' with a 'warm' sound. Heard through the clinical accuracy of recording monitors, the artifacts are more apparent. And that's why guitarists often mic their cabinets, or run the signal through an 'amp simulator'.

Or it may be that you're listening to the recorded track by itself. Mix in the backing track and the artifacts may be a lot less audible.

Sure, refine your technique. But I don't think that's likely to be the problem, if you like the sound when you play 'live'. The sound you hear then can be recorded. Work out how!

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  • Thanks for the answer.The solution here would be to record 2 same guitar parts (panning hard left and hard right), so the artifacts and noises (in left channel recording in my case) will get lost in the width of stereo base.
    – Eugen Eray
    Jul 27, 2019 at 15:48
  • Why would the artifacts only appear in one channel?
    – Laurence
    Jul 27, 2019 at 15:53
  • Because I only recorded that channel for now (for this part). I tested it on other lick and it worked.
    – Eugen Eray
    Jul 27, 2019 at 15:54

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