Recording Singer w/Acoustic Guitar

[AudioJunky]

A lot of my friends have been interested in recording at my place lately. They have been doing the vocals while playing acoustic guitar thing. I have been using my great river for vocals, and a chandler germanium for the acoustic guitar. My mics are a AT 4033 (usually put on the vocals) and a AT 3035 on the guitar.

I need to know what the best mic placement for recording acoustic guitar would be. They are usually sitting down when they play. If you could also throw in a good mic recommendation for acoustic guitar.. that would be great too.

thanks

[Garthplinko]

I've been using a matched pair of Oktava MC-012 w/ cardiod capsules in stereo - I also tried a pair of the Naiant omni's w/ good results. Since you're tracking vocals at the same time, you might look into a sdc w/ a tighter pattern - oktavausa.com offers one for the MC-012 - haven't used it myself, so no recommendation. (My motto would be "bleed shmeed.")

I start by setting one about 6 inches from the bridge and the the other around the 12th fret while moving the mics to find the best placement. I've found this to be a much more "real" sounding representation of the guitar than my previous method which was a KSM-32 set about 4 inches above where the neck meets the body and aimed towards the sound hole.

I think you'll like the results - I was blown away.

[logancircle]

I'm not sure I totally agree with "bleed shmeed". Don't get me wrong, I like bleed in recordings, the bloodier the better, as long as it doesn't cause phase problems or smere the sounds too much. I think you're safest using either one appropriately-placed mic out in front of the performer or a stereo pair out in front. Or at least check for phase problems and adjust mics to eliminate that.

Daniel Lanois had an interesting technique for doing just this with one mic, I'll see if I can dig it up and post it.

[farview]

I've had good luck using a 421 on the vocals and an sdc on the guitar.

having the vocalist sing right into the 421 isolates the vocals well enough to allow you to do anything you need to to the vocal without screwing up the guitar. Vocal bleed in the guitar mic was never that big of a problem for me.


I've also heard of using two figure 8 patterned mics pretty close to the singer and guitar set up so that the null point of the vocal mic is pointed at the guitar and the null point of the guitar mic is pointed at the vocalist.

[JamesHE]

I haven't done this in a long time, but I would usually use some hypercardiod dynamic for vocals and acoustic and also use a pickup and / or piezo on the guitar. And then a "room" mic. This was back in my cassette 4 tracking days, so those choices were limited more by my minimal equipment more that anything else.

I used to have a rule that every song had to be a single take, no overdubs I'd just retrack it until I felt good about it. I've had this urge to work like that again, but a few things are keeping me away from that. Like I always track guitars sitting down, otherwise I move around too much. And I always sing standing. So I'd have to work on singing sitting down, or either work on not moving at all playing standing up.

If I did it today I'd probably try a figure 8 on the guitar, with the null pointing at my head. And my favorite little hyercardiod dynamic on my voice. (ATM41HE) I might just try that a see what happens.

[Garthplinko]

I'm not sure I totally agree with "bleed shmeed". Don't get me wrong, I like bleed in recordings, the bloodier the better, as long as it doesn't cause phase problems or smere the sounds too much.

I've not experienced phase problems using this method myself, but maybe I've had but I didn't notice them - what should I be listening for?

I also agree that one single mic could sound really neat if you had the right room. Maybe try physically finding a good balance by placement?

[audiogeek1]

I find that I mic the guitar the way I normally do. I usually position a mic around the 12th fret and the vox mic where I normall would. The biggest part of doing a singer/player at the same time is getting them to provide a good balance coming from them. If they sing quietly then they need to play quietly etc....

I find if I do a stereo mic technique on the guitar in these situations I get an unbalanced sound on one side or the other. Also if you position the capsules of the mics toward the source they are capturing.

Just my thoughts.

Mike

[logancircle]

I find if I do a stereo mic technique on the guitar in these situations I get an unbalanced sound on one side or the other. Also if you position the capsules of the mics toward the source they are capturing.Mike

If your stereo pair is set up right and the stereo field is still unbalanced, you can always collapse them it into mono without creating tonal holes. THis is often a good idea anyway if you're going to add overdubs, because in the end your stereo feel will be coming from the image of everything, and suddenly a stereo voc/guit is less interesting and more problematic. Not always, but often.

If you use the one-mic method, you can make most of the eq changes you want by moving the mic around. Try putting a mic in the hall, too.

[JohnDavisNYC]

if the singer/guitarrist is good, you can't really beat a single good mic through a single good preamp to tape... maybe some good compression in there, too.

to me, multi mic'd singing/acoustic playing alwys sounds wierd and phasey... especially in the sibilant stuff... there is almost always some comb filtering going on on the esses or something, and i have found no way to really get it to work... somthing always suffers.

with one mic, everything just sort of sounds right, and the mix is achieved by positioning the mic, and talking to the performer about the volume of voice to guitar and letting htem mix themselves with their dynamics.
my .02

john

[Yosh]

I think those recommending the one mic technique are spot on. The problem I've run into is that not all singer-songwriters do well adjusting their own voice/guitar dynamics to match that technique. If you run into this, then you may have to use two mics. Then its all about phase. I usually set up the guitar and vocal mic at fairly typical starting positions, then I put on a pair of closed-back isolation headphones and move either the vocal or guitar mic around (or both) until it sounds good. An inch sometimes makes a BIG difference.

-Josh

[wilburguy]

Use figure 8 mics and aim the null spot at the less desired sound source, eg:position the guitar mic with the null pointing toward the singer's mouth, and the vocal mic with the null pointed toward the guitar. Excellent seperation and no phasing.

[???????]

if you have access to one, you could always try using one of those little relatively inexpensive matchstick-sized Crown GLM-100 (or similar) condensors, and use some gaff tape and a popsicle stick (or something) to rig that mic up so that it is inside the soundhole of the guitar. Or failing that tape the popsicle stick to the body of the guitar and use that mic (the directional one, not omni) and point it at the neck/body joint, in pretty close. Mic the vocalist as normal and maybe another LDC out in front.

I would probably use the out-front-LDC almost exclusively if I had a nice room. Then I would just blend in either or both (or neither) of the other two until I had what I wanted.

That's what I would try. But that's just me probably.

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

I was using a (physically) clumsy form of this and then saw a PBS special of Sir Paul McCartney. He was showing off Beatles studio tricks in the original Abbey Road tracking room.

Anyhoo, player sits on chair (or stool) facing single mic stand. Vocal mic on shorty boom at top of stand for singer with clamp-on clip half way up stand with guitar mic pointed at 12th fret. Mic selection as preferred/suitable for artist/engineer. Good suggestions in posts above.

Great sound and low intimidation factor for performer. Kind of a coffee house vibe that folks easily get comfortable with. Chilled performer = top performance.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bill

[jetboatguy]

Without sounding too preachy, and all...

For acoustic guitar:
one of the best possible rejecting condensor mics (with focused directivity) while still also capable of retaining a fairly nice natural sound, has got to be the Neumann KM184... and suprisingly, you don`t actually need to be on top of the source either.

For vocals:
with that lovely germanium transistor preamp, try a dynamic mic for vocals, I bet a Beta58 would be a good place to start... set feeback control to taste.


curious...?
what kind of germanium transistors are in the Chandler ?
I'm guessing NTE... ?

[honkyjonk]

One thing that has been working really good for me is having the guitar mic quite a bit behind the bridge, pointing at the body (behind the bridge) at a 45 degree angle.

My guitar, albeit is awesome sounding and doesn't take a lot of work to sound good. ('62 J-50)

But give it a try. It accomplishes two things. It separates the mics more, so phase should be better, and it gets it pretty far away from the vox (not that vox bleed into the guitar mic is a real problem, but anyway.) And some (dryer) guitars have a really cool mikable spot behind the bridge there.

My favorite mic for this purpose is an Sm57.

Now, I wish I had the complement for my voice on the other end. I have a recently aquired ribbon, that is figure 8, and while I can get an amazing amount of separation (fig. 8 is AWESOME) this mic doesn't seem to work that great for my voice.

I don't have any fig.8 condensors, and I wish I did. Oh well.