Topic: Recording Acoustic Unamplified Guitar and Vocals

[Gutbucket]

..Good closed 'phones are essential in setting up and positioning you and your gear when you are playing both engineer and talent, but if it hinders your performance, get it sounding right, then ditch the phones and nail one..

Only if you're not tracking guitar & vox separately of course, or only for the first instrumental pass if you don't need a scratch vox&guitar for reference of course.

[rowjimmy]

Chris is right.  I find it almost always produces better results to lay separate tracks or at the very least spot mic the guitar and use an LDC as a dedicated vocal mic, hard pan and mix, monitoring with headphones.

Plus, I'm pretty sure you will run into some weird phasey type stuff using a stereo mic for vocals at the same time you're using it on the guitar.  So I'd be inclined in your case to lay down a stereo guitar track and then a mono vocal track.  I have no experience with stereo mics, but if it's possible I would just not power one of the capsules and sing into the other one.

Of course, it's ideal to track them separately; if you are looking to produced a 'finished' clean cut. But he's just looking to rock a demo so he can keep a feel for a new song. A simple stereo recording, not much different from the way many folks on this site might record a solo performer from the edge of the stage in a small room, is a quick, easy way to do this.

It's not sonically perfect but, he did indicate that he's not inclined to get into more gear at this time.

[Church-Audio]

Chris is right.  I find it almost always produces better results to lay separate tracks or at the very least spot mic the guitar and use an LDC as a dedicated vocal mic, hard pan and mix, monitoring with headphones.

Plus, I'm pretty sure you will run into some weird phasey type stuff using a stereo mic for vocals at the same time you're using it on the guitar.  So I'd be inclined in your case to lay down a stereo guitar track and then a mono vocal track.  I have no experience with stereo mics, but if it's possible I would just not power one of the capsules and sing into the other one.

Of course, it's ideal to track them separately; if you are looking to produced a 'finished' clean cut. But he's just looking to rock a demo so he can keep a feel for a new song. A simple stereo recording, not much different from the way many folks on this site might record a solo performer from the edge of the stage in a small room, is a quick, easy way to do this.

It's not sonically perfect but, he did indicate that he's not inclined to get into more gear at this time.

That's true. But I find that in order to get really good sound with a single mic Any mic you need a really good room and a really good balance. One other solution would be to use the stereo mic for the guitar ( up close ) and seperate close mic for the vocal that will give you "some" separation and allow you to balance the tracks better then a single stereo mic. If I had a perfect sounding room you can pull it off with just one mic but the balance has to be perfect, and from what Sanjay is saying his guitar is very loud. As a guitar player if your song forces you to really hit the guitar hard laying back to get a better balance would be worse then doing multitrack IMO.

Chris Church

[Ryan Sims]

Thanks Chris.  That's what I was trying to get at too.  Since he just has the stereo mic with the loud guitar it's going to be somewhat tough to get a decent isolation of the voice just setting the mic up in front of him.

[Sanjay]

how hard would it be to mix vocals in post?   I have no real experience with sound editing programs other than to normalize track and split.  I have sound studio for mac and audacity.

[Ryan Sims]

It really isn't tough at all.  You just insert the vocal track into the multitrack recording.  From there you can adjust it's presence in the mix and add effects.  Then to get a final stereo file once you're happy with it, just let the software mix it down for you.  I have used Audacity in the past and I know that it isn't a tough thing to do, though I can't remember off hand the exact flow of it and can't look right now because I'm at work.  If no one beats me to it, I'll check it out when I get home. 

Play around though, you can kick it out pretty easily.  Good luck, +T.

[Church-Audio]

how hard would it be to mix vocals in post?   I have no real experience with sound editing programs other than to normalize track and split.  I have sound studio for mac and audacity.

Its very easy you simply open up multitrack view select the tracks you want to record and record the guitar first. Then unselect the guitar tracks and select a new track for vocals IMO, I would not record the vocal in stereo! I would record it in mono and process it in stereo with a nice reverb. Stereo vocals do not "sit" properly in a mix especially if you only have one vocal track. You want your vocal to hit you dead center so mono is your friend. Well not really you friend if you have it but you get what I am saying Stereo guitar is ok because it gives the guitar more space and allows you to get both the sound hole and the finger board. Get the mic in close but not too close to the sound hole because it gets boomy really quickly but again you have to experiment with that. Use your headphones. And remember when its all done reverb is your friend Find a nice plugin for reverb and use it.

I never really eq vocals I just put a high pass filter in around 60-100hz and call it a day. sometimes I will push 12k with a q of about .5 or so and give it about a 3-4 db boost but this depends on your mic. I also sometimes cut 400 to 800hz no more then about 3-4db and again this depends on the source.

For acoustic guitar I like to use a compressor but not when I track. I like to pull out around 100-150hz to get rid of the tubby sound and pull out anywhere from 400 to 1.5k and again do a nice boost up in the sibilance range of 12k or so but again this depends on your guitar. I don't like to record anything below 60hz on the acoustic guitar unless I have too. Then when that's all done I play around with compression on the guitar tracks. You will find you can even your guitar tone out with out even touching the eq with good compression it will help even the low end and high end out. But again too much and you will lose your top end, I use a ratio of around 1:2 to 1:10 depending on what sound I am going for and how it sits in the mix.

Its not a huge deal here because all you have is your vocal and the guitar. In this case I try to make everything as wide sounding as I can "fat" because you can over process always start with less processing and add or take away as you see fit. And remember just because there is an eq does not mean you have to use it. Less is always more. These tricks have served me well in the last 20 years or so. I am sure you can pull this off. I have a new toy you might want to check out to be honest its the best sounding little recorder I have ever used for the price. and it has a built in microphone that sounds unlike anything I have ever heard for a built in mic Its called the micro br and it can do some very cool shit. Check it out.

It has built in effects over 30 of them built in guitar input stereo line in or stereo mic in with plug in power. It has a built in drum machine, built in guitar tuner and it sounds great I will record some vocal tracks on it and let you have a listen to the built in mic! its pretty dam cool.

[Sanjay]

wow chris thanks for the instructions    big +T and to everyone else.

Now I don't have a USB interface so could I import it from my 671?  Or would it be easier to buy a cheap USB interface?  Also I have USB 1.1 is that a problem?   

I can't wait to do it, these songs have been waiting to be recorded for years!

[Ryan Sims]

Just use the 671.  That thing will sounds worlds better than almost all the USB interfaces out there.

[rowjimmy]

I don't have a 671 but, if it operates as any standard 2-channel recorder, it seems that it'd be tricky to record guitar & vox separately and get them synced after-the-fact. It doesn't have any features for monitoring/overdubbing, does it?  That's where an H-4 would actually come in handy...

I do a lot of home recording and I've been constantly hedging between my desire for field-ready gear and more powerful/feature-rich studio gear. I think I've finally decided which way to go (studio) but that leaves me a long long way from an OADE ACM HDP2.