How to reduce bleed when singing with guitar?

rgonzale

New member
I'm trying to record a single take containing my vocal and electric guitar at once. Unfortunately, the vocal mic is picking up a lot of pick noise from the guitar. That's a problem if I try to pan the vocal away from the electric guitar!

To try to reduce the amount of pick noise reaching the vocal mic, I got a Studio Projects B3 multipattern mic, and set it to figure 8. I aimed it so the voice was on the main axis and the guitar was at 90 degrees, to try to get it in the notch of the figure-8 pattern. I was disappointed to find that this was not very effective.

Is there a technique I'm missing here, to try to reduce bleed?

Thanks for any suggestions!
Ralph
 
I'm sure people who know more than me would suggest experiment with mic placement is key.

But really the ideal way out of this is to bite the bullet and record both separately.

if it's that you can't play the guitar well enough without singing try singing it in your head or whispering. if its that you can't sing well without playing guitar, then record the guitar first and then overdub the vocal afterwards playing unplugged guitar again at the same time but close micing the voice to stop the clicks of the plectrum ending up on the vocal take.
 
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But really the ideal way out of this is to bite the bullet and record both separately.

if it's that you can't play the guitar well enough without singing try singing it in your head or whispering. if its that you can't sing well without playing guitar, then record the guitar first and then overdub the vocal afterwards playing unplugged guitar again at the same time but close micing the voice to stop the clicks of the plectrum ending up on the vocal take.
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That's another, larger issue which has been really holding me back!

I'm not quite a good enough guitar player to simultaneously play and sing expressively. However, in this song, sometimes the guitar keeps the beat and sometimes the vocal leads the guitar. I tried doing the guitar first and it was hard to sync the vocal when overdubbing, and same problem doing the vocal first and overdubbing the guitar. Plus it's just got a better "live" feeling if I do it in one take.

The other alternative is recording the vocal and guitar separately using a metronome or click track to help sync, but that means a fixed tempo. (Or I can tediously put tempo changes into my sequencer, but once again it becomes hard to anticipate. With a "real" band, I could watch the drummer and he could watch me to anticipate the beat.)

So for the time being the best solution I can come up with is to try to do a good "live" take. But like you say, maybe I should bite the bullet...
 
rgonzale said:
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I'm not quite a good enough guitar player to simultaneously play and sing expressively. However, in this song, sometimes the guitar keeps the beat and sometimes the vocal leads the guitar. ...

My singer feels most comfortable when she's strumming and singing as well... And she plays acoustic (talk about bleed over into a vocal mic.) :eek:

One thing that we have done that works well for her is to do the 'one-take' recording to capture the chemistry, and then have her sing along with her self (with no guitar) a 2nd time to record a clean vocal track.

Her acoustic has a direct line in, so we usually get a pretty clean guitar track to work with. Hearing herself in the headphones playing and singing lends itself to recreating the magic from the first take...

Hope this helps...
 
I use the same vocal mic:

Try using it on cardiod, with the mic horizontal, with the active part of the mic point up at 45-60 degrees towards you (follow me?)...

Ie. have the mic mounted horizontally, just below your lower lip, tilt it up so that you are singing into it at roughly 45 degrees, so the guitar is well below it and it should minimize the bleed.... however... I never use a pick, I am a finger guy all the way
 
I realize this is probably going to rub some people the wrong way. :D

But then again, most of the things I say probably do that, so what's news there?

... Anyway, I belive that if you can't record a guitar and voice track separately, then you're really not a real musician to begin with, and therefore have nothing really to gain by recording in the first place.

That's really how I feel about it. There are technological limitations that prevent getting an ideal recording while playing both live ... so I say it's the musician's responsibility to be a professional about it, adjust, and do what it takes to make it work. If that means you're brain is going to explode or something if you have to do each take separately, then tough. Learn to live with it. The world ain't perfect.

If you're a real musician, you can play a guitar part with emotion; on it's own and unaccompanied by a voice. If you're a real musician, you can deliver a solid vocal performance without a crutch in your hands. Real musicians should be able to perform and "turn it on" under whatever conditions that are presented.
 
Try using 2 figure of 8 mics. Point one mic at guitar while aiming it's null response at mouth. Point other mic at mouth while aiming it's null response at guitar.

Isolation of up to 20dB can easily be had. Problem is you have to have 2 fig-8 mics at hand.
 
chessrock said:
... Anyway, I belive that if you can't record a guitar and voice track separately, then you're really not a real musician to begin with, and therefore have nothing really to gain by recording in the first place.

I don't agree with the real/non-real musician bit but I completely agree with doing separate takes. You can often get a better performance on the guitar by playing it without singing along and focusing on the part. And if you need to, you can hold the guitar while doing your vocals (so you feel comfortable).

Remember, the recording is lasting, so what you record you should try to get the best possible performance you can (it might not be "true" to the "live" performance, but it is a recording, you have to live with it. A live performance you can always play however you like later...).

my 2¢...
 
Well you don't need to be a 'real' musician in order to produce some interesting sounding music, especialy with today's technology.

It's a bit fascistic to say that unless someone can play and sing to a certain standard (whose standard by the way?) they have no business in doing home recording!

I have heard some very charming 'incompetent' recordings which have more artistic content than some big production jobs from top class techincal musicians who have little creativity left in them.
 
Hey, thanks so much for all the replies. The diversity of suggestions and philosophies has really helped me out. I guess I'll "bite the bullet" and record separate rhythm guitar and vocal takes. It's a compromise but I guess that's what chessrock's comment was really about.

Like I said before the issue of which part to record first has been dogging me for a long time. If I was a band I could record drums, guitar, voice, bass all at once with visual cues to keep everyone in sync. If I used a strict metronome or click track it would also be easy to do an overdub approach. But if I want the tempo to ebb and flow with the music then this approach gets difficult (tediously inserting tempo changes in the recording software), and you're still left with having to anticipate changes in tempo without visual cues.

The "scratch track" approach of recording a live "scratch" vocal and then recording a final take over it doesn't solve all the problems: if the vocal is leading the guitar, then there is no cue ahead of time to tell you when to come in when you are recording the final vocal... by the time you hear the scratch vocal it is too late to come in.

I'm going to try to lay down the guitar part first (singing it in my head), inserting some muted plucks as lead-ins to anticipate where the voice would go. Then I can edit out the muted plucks after overdubbing the vocal. Else I can do a scratch vocal part while recording the guitar and utter a cue (like "go") just before any verse which doesn't have a guitar cue...
 
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One more comment...

Chessrock's comments are in no way shape or form valid. You have every reason in the world to record! You have an idea that you want to convey and you're using music as the medium and there's nothing wrong with that. I guess not being able to play well and sing at the same time puts you in the "not a real musician" category with other musician / artists like Frank Zappa and Peter Gabriel for example.

According to the great philosophy of chessrock, they too have no reason to record.

Keep playing, Keep practicing but most importantly, stay true to your ideas. They're worth more than musical precision. Leave that to the "musicians" to execute the artists' work.

Sincerely,

wire-shock
 
rgonzale said:
Hey, thanks so much for all the replies. The diversity of suggestions and philosophies has really helped me out. I guess I'll "bite the bullet" and record separate rhythm guitar and vocal takes. It's a compromise but I guess that's what chessrock's comment was really about.

Like I said before the issue of which part to record first has been dogging me for a long time. If I was a band I could record drums, guitar, voice, bass all at once with visual cues to keep everyone in sync. If I used a strict metronome or click track it would also be easy to do an overdub approach. But if I want the tempo to ebb and flow with the music then this approach gets difficult (tediously inserting tempo changes in the recording software), and you're still left with having to anticipate changes in tempo without visual cues.

The "scratch track" approach of recording a live "scratch" vocal and then recording a final take over it doesn't solve all the problems: if the vocal is leading the guitar, then there is no cue ahead of time to tell you when to come in when you are recording the final vocal... by the time you hear the scratch vocal it is too late to come in.

I'm going to try to lay down the guitar part first (singing it in my head), inserting some muted plucks as lead-ins to anticipate where the voice would go. Then I can edit out the muted plucks after overdubbing the vocal. Else I can do a scratch vocal part while recording the guitar and utter a cue (like "go") just before any verse which doesn't have a guitar cue...

Do it with a scratch track. The re-record the guitar, then re-do the vocal separately
 
Why dont you record the guitar and vocals at the same time.
Then re-record the vocals in sections.
You will know when to switch tempos because your only working on that one section. Then if you happen to mess up just cut the vocal sections into phrases and move them around. It's non linear editing....this is what it's good for.

I took the same vocal track for a session I had and the artist changed the tempo of the song and we kept the original vocal track thanks to this method.
 
If it took being a perfect musician or singer to create and perform "real" music, then we would have eliminate a lot of great music. Lets consider all those "nasal" singers like Bob Dylan or Willie Nelson, I don't care for either of their voices but I have to admitt both of them have written, performed, and recorded some major selling songs. Just something to think about.
 
Stefan Elmblad said:
Try using 2 figure of 8 mics. Point one mic at guitar while aiming it's null response at mouth. Point other mic at mouth while aiming it's null response at guitar.

Isolation of up to 20dB can easily be had. Problem is you have to have 2 fig-8 mics at hand.

Figure eights can definately work pretty well for recording even acoustic guitar and vocal at the same time if you get them placed right, another way is hyper or super cardioid mics. I have a Beyer M260 that has great rejection for this kind of thing.

I take it you are putting the guitar amp in another room and the problem you are talking about is bleed from the guitar itself ??? If this is the case you either need to keep working on mic placement or you are expecting too much in having absolutely no guitar at all on the track. Having your mouth fairly close to the mic is crucial and singing loud helps as well but like I said this can be done fairly well even with acoustic guitar so you should surely be able to accomplish it with an electric.
 
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