Slightly odd mic advice needed

[fakesens]

This may seem a bit strange, but at the moment I'm finding I get a better vocal performance when I'm playing guitar and singing at the same time - and I don't just mean acoustic, sometimes I'll play an electric DI'd, just so I'm strumming something.

Now obviously I'm getting bleed into my vocal mic, which I want to eliminate, so my question is - seeing as I don't need to mic up the guitar (I'll track it later or whatever), should I get hold of a hypercardioid? If so, what do you recommend, and if not, then what's your advice on a good mic in that circumstance?

Thanks for your help.

Edit: oh and I'm looking to keep things around the ?200 ($400) mark!

[A-Barr]

If you really want isolation, a dynamic is your best bet, in my opinion. That should also help you stay in your budget, maybe an SM7?

[Professor]

Figure-8 patterns work well for that problem, but you could at least experiment with your current microphones by turning them until their rejection point is aimed at the sounds you're trying to reject. It might mean craning your neck a little and singing about 90? off-axis to the mic, but it's worth a try. But remember that a hypercardioid rejects the most at 135? off-axis, so it won't be much different. Just plain singing louder will help a little too.
Another thing that could help would be to make the guitar strumming quieter which may be as simple as putting down the pick and using your fingers.
Of course, the biggest help would be to actually play the guitar parts that you wish to keep so that it doesn't matter if they bleed into the mic a little bit.
It's really just signal-to-noise ratio, where your voice is the signal and the guitar is the noise. To increase the ratio you can increase the signal and/or decrease the noise, and use microphone type, pattern and position to help maximize that ratio.

-Jeremy

[pixeltarian]

I have the same problem, sort of.

my solution is to sing along to the recorded track. for some reason it makes my vocals better because I'll remember a few seconds a head of how I'm about to sing something and so it gives me time to alter it if I wish.

I know it doesn't seem like it solves anything because you don't strum the guitar when you do this, but I'm just saying I had the same problem and this is what solved it for me.

maybe give it a shot?

[fakesens]

thanks for advice. i know what you mean professor but there are certain issues - i.e. my vocals aren't the greatest in the world so need some help in the mix, and any compression brings the guitar nosie up as well, obviously. i'd love to be able to just play with one mic, but i don't have the kind of room that would give me the sound i'm after.

i'm intrigued by how dylan pulled off his vocals while playing electric guitar in the mid '60s, this picture is especially interesting.

[joel hamilton]

I have to say this:

Dont bother looking at pictures of shit like that.
I cant even count the number of times someone wanted to take a picture for a record/interview/magazine thing/the village voice/their mom and I simply put up a couple of really expensive mics that maybe or maybe not were the ones we ACTUALLY recorded with, and pt them up in such a way that it made a nice picture for the photog. Do you think Dylan just spit out the harmonica on the floor to sing? did he maybe have superhuman powers to make it levitate onto the music stand?
SO many pictures like this are most certainly NOT how things were actually recorded. Just had to say that first....AND...

An M49 has good off axis rejection, and like the professor said, if the guitar take was a keeper, then a little bleed doesnt matter. ALSO, if the super awesome vocal that was being put down (in that picture again) was just a scratch, guide vocal, to get the take down before actually recording the REAL vocal take maybe not even with an M49, then the voice certainly would sound great and certainly the guitar would not be an issue.

If you are making noise while singing, you sort of have to figure out whether what you gain performance wise outweighs the fact that you are putting nise in the main vocal track that doesnt 100% HAVE to be there.

I hope that helps!

[calaverasgrandes]

you can go totally crazy and intersect the guitar from the bottom of the vocal mike with sheet music stand, maybe with a piece of cardboard attached to widen it. It wont stop everything but it helps. I have actually seen this done before.
But at the same time, sometimes gettign absolutley perfect isolation is what kills a song, gives it that antiseptic hardness.
Is what you are playing when you are singing so different from the final guitar that it needs to be excised? Sometimes its sounds kinda cool to hear a little kachinka-kachinka in the background while the big guitar is up front.
But I know what you mean, I can sing in key much better when I play bass along with it.

[fakesens]

heh heh, fair enough joel!

seriously though, dylan didn't overdub his vocals did he? he was playing and singing away in the same room as kooper and the rest of 'em right? i know he'd have been isolated from them (i assume) but he'd still have been doing rhythm guitar while singing wouldn't he? maybe i haven't looked closely enough at the stills in 'No Direction Home' but i'm sure that's what i saw... or again, i could be a victim of the 'completely posed pictures that have no bearing on the reality of the actual session' thing again!

[lionaudio]

AIR GUITAR.. I had the same problem for years and i just played air bass while i sang until i was comfortable enough to just sing.. either that, or put some kind of foam crap under your strings so they don't actually make a sound and you can still strum..

[A-Barr]

heh heh, fair enough joel!

seriously though, dylan didn't overdub his vocals did he? he was playing and singing away in the same room as kooper and the rest of 'em right? i know he'd have been isolated from them (i assume) but he'd still have been doing rhythm guitar while singing wouldn't he? maybe i haven't looked closely enough at the stills in 'No Direction Home' but i'm sure that's what i saw... or again, i could be a victim of the 'completely posed pictures that have no bearing on the reality of the actual session' thing again!

Pretty sure he didn't overdub guitars over the originally recorded parts he played as he sang, and I would prefer not to whenever possible. The vocal/guitar interaction is an important part of the performance of a singer/player, imho, and I would rather keep the original take, even if it has a couple flaws. So in your situation, I would record the geetar DI and then re-amp it later, shouldn't cause too much trouble that way.

You can drive yourself crazy over isolation, it's good to have a realistic goal. If I can get a 10 db difference between bleed and intended source for a singer/player, I'm happy, 15 db and I consider myself lucky, I am talking about acoustic guitars and condensors though...

[markmeat]

AIR GUITAR.. I had the same problem for years and i just played air bass while i sang until i was comfortable enough to just sing.. either that, or put some kind of foam crap under your strings so they don't actually make a sound and you can still strum..

Ryan Conner of Dirty Old Men had this problem doing his backups... this was my solution for him... maybe it's a midwest thing...

MEAT

[A.David.MacKinnon]

I second the Figure 8 sugestion. Fig 8 has the best rejection of any pattern.
I've recorded people playing and singing with 2 fig 8's (one on guitar and one on voice) and had pretty amazing isolated sounds.
Try it. You'll be amazed.