Vocals too quiet and guitar[elec] too loud. Help!

A

Andrew1610

New member
Hi there! I apologise if this has been covered already in another topic, but I'm such a novice when it comes to the editing & mixing of my recordings that I don't understand a lot of the posts. I consider myself a fairly decent singer and an alright guitar player. Been doing both for many years. I use cool edit pro (outdated I imagine! soon to upgrade to adobe audition as my brother works for adobe lol) but I'm afraid the extent of my capabilities are: adding reverb, normalising, adding fade ins/outs & other such novice techniques!!

To cut a long story short me and my good friend laid down an old 1950s R&B song today. Me on vocals and acoustic guitar/him on electric guitar. We just stuck his recorder in the middle of the room. Only problem is we placed it too close to the amp. The electric doesn't drown out the acoustic/vocals, but it is too loud. My question is: are there any ways to boost or make the vocals louder and/or lower the sound level of the electric guitar? Bear in mind it's not a multitrack recording. Just stuck one mic. in the middle of the room - :facepalm: I'll be gutted if not cos we won't have a chance to re-record for a good month or two!

Sorry for long post, hope I didn't put you all to sleep. Any help appreciated :)
 
You can dick around with EQ, automation, maybe even multi-band compression, but it will probably just end up sounding even weirder, and it's probably not worth it. You get what you pay for, and you obviously didn't care enough about it to try any harder, so...

To put it a bit more positively if it is actually a great performance worth listening to, then it should shine through even the shittiest recording and you should be happy you caught it at all. If not, then it's not worth the trouble trying to unfuck it now.
 
One mic in the middle of the room. What the hell is there to mix?????
All you can do is fuck around with eq and stuff.

Sounds to me like it's more of a mono mastering situation than a mixing one.
 
I guess mix/mixing/whatever was the wrong term to use. As I said, my terminology isn't very great. Can anyone tell me how to muck about with the EQ? Would really appreciate it. I really have no idea about it at all sadly. As for the comment saying we obviously didn't care enough to try any harder, I can see why you would say that given my questions about how to improve the sound quality from a single track recording. But the circumstances aren't always the same. If we'd decided to try and make a properly recorded multi-track recording we would have done it that way but we were just jamming and decided to stick a microphone in the middle in the heat of the moment. I'm not trying to turn this recording into a studio quality file, I'm just trying to find out how to improve it a wee bit and from what I've read so far it might be worth fiddling with the EQ a bit! If that doesn't work I'll just wait to re-record :) Didn't mean to aggravate anyone. Cheers for any advice given!
 
I can't figure out how to delete my thread. I realise I've obviously posted it in the wrong section. If this forum has Mods - feel free to move/delete it!
 
Andrew1610 said:
I guess mix/mixing/whatever was the wrong term to use. As I said, my terminology isn't very great. Can anyone tell me how to muck about with the EQ? Would really appreciate it. I really have no idea about it at all sadly. As for the comment saying we obviously didn't care enough to try any harder, I can see why you would say that given my questions about how to improve the sound quality from a single track recording. But the circumstances aren't always the same. If we'd decided to try and make a properly recorded multi-track recording we would have done it that way but we were just jamming and decided to stick a microphone in the middle in the heat of the moment. I'm not trying to turn this recording into a studio quality file, I'm just trying to find out how to improve it a wee bit and from what I've read so far it might be worth fiddling with the EQ a bit! If that doesn't work I'll just wait to re-record :) Didn't mean to aggravate anyone. Cheers for any advice given!
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Andrew, there is nothing at all wrong with a heat of the moment recording. I am not one that was proposing that you "didn't care enough".
I was talking about mixing in relation to the post before me.
Sometimes you have to document stuff however you can as the moment strikes. The ideal situtation is to have something permanently set up with a good room, mics set up, a drum kit always miced up, etc. That way when inspiration strikes, you are ready to go.
If it is a good song, well, you have the ideas captured so you can properly record it in the future if you want.
 
Thanks, RFR. We do have some okay equipment but it is always a bit of a shambles - you know, gone to his place and left some at mine & vice-versa. I think you're right. If we have it prepped we'll avoid audio problems like we had today. Thanks for the advice, appreciate it.
 
I'm a little off my head today. Didn't really mean to offend, but I did kind of mean what I said. Use it to review and re-record and save this recording for the boxed set. ;)

As for the EQing, you basically have to find a frequency range or (hopefully) a couplefew ranges where the vocals are and the guitar is not and bring them up. Or more likely vice versa. Find parts of the guitar range that you can turn down while keeping some of the vocals. The only way to find those spots is to listen, and unfortunately they are extremely likely to overlap quite a bit. You might search around above 5K which probably the top end of the electric guitar and see if you can find some of the consonants from the voice. That'll probably also emphasize the worst parts of the acoustic, though... You really just need to grab a parametric EQ and start turning knobs till it (hopefully) sounds better.
 
ashcat_lt said:
I'm a little off my head today. Didn't really mean to offend, but I did kind of mean what I said. Use it to review and re-record and save this recording for the boxed set. ;)

As for the EQing, you basically have to find a frequency range or (hopefully) a couplefew ranges where the vocals are and the guitar is not and bring them up. Or more likely vice versa. Find parts of the guitar range that you can turn down while keeping some of the vocals. The only way to find those spots is to listen, and unfortunately they are extremely likely to overlap quite a bit. You might search around above 5K which probably the top end of the electric guitar and see if you can find some of the consonants from the voice. That'll probably also emphasize the worst parts of the acoustic, though... You really just need to grab a parametric EQ and start turning knobs till it (hopefully) sounds better.
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Ashcat - No offence taken. No point asking people for advice if you can't take some criticism. I'll try fiddling with the EQ'ing tomorrow, thanks for the suggestions. Bit aff my heid too at the moment so definitely not attempting to learn about EQ etc now so soon before bed time :D Worst comes to the worst, we'll record it again anyway next time we meet.
 
The best way to record would be either find the spot in the room where everything is balanced, or use individual mics. Eq is not going to help in this case. Guitars and vocals are very close in eq and you need to reduce volume, not eq. Consider it a scratch track.
 
Hi Andrew -

Don't sweat it - you learned a great deal in that session. I think it's a really good idea, by the way. You messed up only because you didn't audition the mic placement before the session.

Mono recording setups are no joke. Some really great ensemble performances have been captured by a single mic, with key players placed deliberately around the room in order for that mic to capture the mix correctly.

If you can do that, most modern recording is easy. Most people don't audition mic placement. They will set up the mic on the source and hit record and then fuck with it in post production. It's always better to get it sounding right on the way in, and the time you take auditioning mic placement is always time well-spent.
 
I would use some compression to even out the overall performance and then sweep a parametric EQ around to hopefully find some frequencies that boost the vocal without the electric guitar if at all possible. Watch these..

 
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