Recording Acoustic Guitar and Vocals

[jameseather]

hey im doing a portfolio soon and ive got a guy playing acoustic guitar and just singing. Any Tips? im thinking stereo mic ing the guitar and panning Hard left and right with vocals center. Im trying to get a different sound from the usual solo guitarist/vocalist. IM trying something new so yeah any tricks or different ideas. Even thinking about mono guitar and take two takes of vocal and pan hard left right etc..? plus what mics do you think will do the job. Im on the low -mid range price wise.

[brandondrury]

im doing a portfolio soon and ive got a guy playing acoustic guitar and just singing. Any Tips?

You could flee the country. That would solve the problem. ha ha

thinking stereo mic ing the guitar and panning Hard left and right with vocals center.

That's certainly one way to do it. If the song calls for it, go for it.

Even thinking about mono guitar and take two takes of vocal and pan hard left right etc..?

I would expect this to be effective on a low % of songs, but it's probably been done. When I double vocals I almost always pan them center. If I triple or vocals I may keep one center and the other 2 hard panned. Then again I may keep them all centered. It just depends on the song.

As for mics, you could really go with anything. I gravitate towards large diaphram condensors from time to time on acoustics, but small diaphram condensers work well also. Dynamics work well in a dense mix, but I don't care for them on acoustic guitars in a sparse arrangement.

What mics are you considering?

Brandon

[jameseather]

thanks for the tips
im considering proberly if large a NT1-A or a small a rode m3 (pair)

[ferguson66]

I just recorded a friend yesterday, acoustic guitar and vocals.

I recorded the rhythm guitar to a click track. I used a Shure KSM 32 right up next to the guitar body. Then we recorded a bass line. We then did a scratch vocal track with the KSM32. Then we recorded the solo/fill guitar and then did a final vocal.

It turned out pretty good. It was all just a scratch project so he could go away and work on his song some more. When we do the final song I will record the drums to a click (and the scratch tracks) and then feed that drum track to him to do the guitar bass and vocal tracks.

[StudioBellwood]

Originally Posted by jameseather

Even thinking about mono guitar and take two takes of vocal and pan hard left right etc..? .

What kind of effect/ sound would this give you copared to a regular stereo track??

[brandondrury]

It's hard to put into words. I would suggest trying it. A conventional acoustic guitar recorded in stereo sounds like one acoustic guitar that is fairly wide. The doubled thing sounds essentially like two very tight guitar players playing the same thing together. For electric guitars this is something I do practically every time. For acoustic guitars I don't do it nearly as much.

Brandon

[ferguson66]

Originally Posted by brandondrury

For electric guitars this is something I do practically every time. Brandon

You record electric guitar in stereo or you record in mono and duplicate the track and pan them, eq them etc. differently?

[brandondrury]

I record one track. I record a second track. Then I hard pan those. If I have to EQ guitars, I messed up during tracking.

Brandon

[ferguson66]

I have never tried to record the same guitar track twice and include them both. Does the fact that it never gets played exactly the same twice add something cool to the mix? I guess as long as they are both in time it would be cool.

[Charlie_M]

Originally Posted by ferguson66

I have never tried to record the same guitar track twice and include them both. Does the fact that it never gets played exactly the same twice add something cool to the mix? I guess as long as they are both in time it would be cool.

YES! Try it! It sounds bigger that way than I was ever able to get it by duplicating/delaying/panning the same exact track. Even bigger than with a chorus. For some real fun, try that technique and then apply a chorus to one of the takes (apply gently). Now you have this big sound, and it's also moving, as though it were alive!

You may or may not like the sound in any given song, but for a big guitar sound, recording different takes of the same thing is the key as far as I can tell. Learned that one here at good old recordingreview.com - probably the best tip I ever got for guitars.

I haven't recorded acoustic for some time, and last time I did I used 2 mics and was happy with that. Very happy in fact. I felt that the only way for me to make that track sound better would be to get a better guitar - no shit. I got onto my hard drive pretty much what I had in the room.

On the other hand I was recently talking to a guy ( I bought a used preamp from him) and he was telling me that he normally only uses one mic with acoustic. I'll try that one day but not any time soon. Really dig acoustic but don't have anything acoustic rolling around in my head at the moment.

Charlie