Recorded my first little snippet with my first recording setup. Advice please.

Sounds great to me with just an acoustic and voice. I might turn down the compression though, sounds a little bit too compressed.
 
Were you recording voice and guitar together/at the same time? I'd play with the mic placement to try and get some more bottom end from the guitar, or at least a fuller sound. Maybe the mic was too far from you?

It does sound overcompressed.

And the background noise at the beginning is high. What is that? Are you recording 24-bit at an optimal level?
 
keith.rogers said:
Were you recording voice and guitar together/at the same time? I'd play with the mic placement to try and get some more bottom end from the guitar, or at least a fuller sound. Maybe the mic was too far from you?

It does sound overcompressed.

And the background noise at the beginning is high. What is that? Are you recording 24-bit at an optimal level?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure. I am using compression. I'm not sure why, I thought you were supposed to. I tthink the noise might be a result of overcompression, maybe?
 
dchalo said:
I'm not sure. I am using compression. I'm not sure why, I thought you were supposed to. I tthink the noise might be a result of overcompression, maybe?
Click to expand...
True, it's rare not to use some compression on any recording, but it sounds like a little too much.

But, what are the settings you are using? 44.1/48kHz? 16/24 bit?

Are you plugging the guitar in or micing it?

I would leave the noise gate off to start with. It usually has only a few places (IMO) where it might be useful, and rarely acoustic guitar + vocal. Just mix the guitar and vocal so they blend as well as possible. If you are using just one microphone, you have to get the microphone position correct to do the blend.

Here's videos from therecordingrevolution.com - it's not the one/only way to do things, but it's pretty straightforward, and in this series he covers 1 mic, 2 mic, and mixing, so it's not so confusing by getting stuff from a lot of different sources. (But, repeating, others have different opinions.)

1 mic recording video
YouTube

2 mic recording video
YouTube

mixing guitar+vocal recordings
YouTube
 
Thank you Keith. That post was very helpful. I ended up cutting out the compression and started messing more with the gain on the interface instead.

One thing I found out is that I am using a Shure SM-57 mic, which is actually an instrument mic. Could this be a potential source of my problems? Is it a bad mic to record vocals with?
 
dchalo said:
One thing I found out is that I am using a Shure SM-57 mic, which is actually an instrument mic. Could this be a potential source of my problems? Is it a bad mic to record vocals with?
Click to expand...
That's what he uses for vocals in the 2nd video!

While the old SM57 been largely relegated to mic'ing amps and drums because it's so durable, it's still a darn good vocal mic live; and in the studio, it can work better for some voices than more expensive mics. Short answer: It's not going to keep you from getting a really good vocal track, so don't worry about that now. And, you might get away without a pop filter on the SM57 (note: he uses one in the vid) that would be required for something more sensitive. (Google "sm57 vocal mic" for a ton of discussions, some on this forum.)
 
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