Recording guitar techniques

I have several methods.

I find the tempo first. Then play to a click trk.

I sit with my guitar and listen through many midi beat files to see what comes close.

Both methods give me a good track to work with so i can flesh out the drums and bass. Then I record my guitar part.

For me I need a click track so that I can stay in time with Sonar and it makes it easier to edit things later.

Basically, I like to develop my drum and bass parts as the click track (using step sequencer for drums and writing a simple bass loop) and then play my guitar parts to that.  I will later on record an actual bass part (either midi or real DI'd) and play the drum parts on the keyboard.

I've been using a three piece band (well, two piece and a singer) and record them all at once - bass, guitar and scratch vocals.  That gets the best performance.  Sometimes we start w/ just the guitarist, tho, to lay down a scratch track if they are working up a song.  I guess this would be most analogous, but only you can work out the best method since you do all (most?) of the instrumentation yourself.  But I think doing a scratch guitar recording to work out the tempo and main structure, then go back and fill in the rhythm section and then lay in the guitar might be the most efficient way to do things.
 
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I pretty much follow Rimshot's method.  My innitial drum track is my metronome.  Next I track the main instrument, which is intended to be a scratch rhythm guitar track.  Then scratch vocal.  Go back, lock in close to final drums and finished bass.  Then go back and replay the rhythm guitar and finished vocal.  The last part is lead guitar parts or added instruments.
 
Incidentally, I try not to do much piecing together of guitar parts or vocals.  The song sounds so much more natural if you can play all the way through and just punch in a couple of mistakes.  I don't comp vocals much either.  I usually try to choose full verse segments or chorus segments if I need to.  Never individual words.  To me, it always sounds pieced in, if I do individual words.  Lead guitar parts, the same thing, full complete takes until I get it right.  Of course, this means you may have to practice them!

I will typically record a scratch guitar part that gives me the song's feel and structure. Then I start building the rhythm section. Then throw out the original scratch guitar and record another guitar scratch track in time with the rhythm section for the whole song. Then I start building up the song.
 
I think I do this because I typically will write the song on guitar so that is kind of the basis for everything that follows.
 
Regards,

It sounds like you're composing while recording those compositional ideas.  The tempo problems are going to be inherent with that method though. Learn to edit well. I've written and recorded a lot of songs with that method - and it works really well for catching fresh ideas and even better accidents. After going through all the pains of fleshing the song out and getting the rhythm sections tightened up, plan to go back and try a clean take on your guitar part. What you're doing is the best way for a one man band to write and record in my opinion.

Ive been working on a new track by myself so I've got all my rhythm guitar wrote that's recorded as my guide for the rest of the instruments I'm just building my own drum pattern up which is quite time consuming but its worth the hard work.
 
My next plan is to build all the drums up get the bass down and then re-record the guitars and then get my vocalist to get his bits done providing he's happy with my work.

I have a slam dunk approach I use on every song.
 
1. I play around on the guitar to get a feel for what I want to play organically and tempo wise.
 
2. I have a pre-built blank Sonar song that has my various tracks and busses set up the way I like.  The first couple of tracks are TTS-1 VST tracks using channel 10 (the drum channel).  TTS-1 has a very clean drum sound.  I created a basic drum beat for that track - 8 hihats on each of the 8th notes, and an alternating kick drum snare drum on the quarter notes.  I only actually have that pattern set on one measure (it's a Midi block of these notes).  Then I can either turn it into a loop and drag it out for 100 to 200 measures, or I can just copy it and paste special it, so that it does 100 repeats etc.  I actually have this file set up with 150 blocks/measures already in place.  I like the blocks method because I can then use Clip colors to color in sections later, like chorus is green, verse is yellow etc.  Handy for the eyes in addition to markers (even when these clips are later muted because I've moved on to real drums).
 
3. So restating 2 above, I have one track which has 2 measures of count in (which I can mute separately as I choose), and then the second track has the 150 or so blocks.  Since this is all MIDI and plays through TTS-1, I can set the tempo to whatever speed and I have a great basic drum track to play guitar against.  Much more natural than trying to play against a click track.
 
4. I record a scratch guitar take, or set of tracks that make up the scratch take, that allow you to figure out how you want the song to basically be structured.
 
5. Once I have the structure, I can now start the process of adding real tracks, whether that's a bass track, some real clean sections of guitar parts with their various styles/effects etc., keys, real drums, vocals, and so on.
 
6. Obviously after real stuff is in, I mute or even delete the scratch guitar take(s). And as mentioned, I mute the TTS-1 drum tracks but leave them in for the color coding which is a nice visual of how the song is structured.  (That works great for my drummer by the way - he can look at the colors as he's playing against the song and know what changes are coming up in advance so he can hit the accents).