Recording singing guitarist

D

davecg321

New member
Hi.

So I gave it another shot of recording myself singing and playing guitar, my preferred way of playing.

I scrapped yesterday's session at this because I didn't like the initial results and was pushed for time.

I was using an NT1a on the vocals with SE reflection filter, and a rode M3 on the guitar.

I placed the rode about 5-6 inches from my mouth and the guitar mic was perhaps 8-12 inches away from 12th fret (further because the guitar is a classical) height wise they were pretty close in retrospect because I was sitting down.

I ended up with a really boxy/nasal sound. It sounded better when I just soloed one of the mics. The vocal seemed to pop out more with just one mic soloed.

It just sounded way to unprofessional. Looking at a few threads on here and articles elsewhere I'm almost certain it's a phase issue (even though I wouldn't be able to definitely define this audio phenomena) my room is pretty quiet and all my levels are set properly so no issues there.

I'm guessing the mic distance should of been exactly the same for each mic and I should of made the height distance greater between the two..?

Maybe the SE filter played some part?

Any other tips and tricks would be greatly appreciated

Dave
 
Did you try recording without the SE reflection filter? I've read that it is the best of the bunch - if you need/want that type of device. Of course you are only using it on the vocal mic, so the M3 is still picking up room reflections. 2 mics phasing wouldn't cause a boxy sound.
 
I hate this - "a phase issue" and then the "rule' of making sure paths are the same length. It took ages for people to stop calling that button on the desk 'phase' and reverting to 'polarity', and this notion that things cancel out is getting skewed and repeated badly and people now talk about it as one of these known things that need rules to control it.

We're really talking about cancellation - when two signals are combined when one is the opposite polarity. Making paths lengths the same increases the chances of cancellation but that nasty hollow kind of sound is really comb filtering, where the two combined signals add and subtract at different frequencies and time of arrival is also part of the deal.

Huge numbers of successful recordings are made with a vocal mic and a guitar mic, and most involve different types of mics, at different distances. You select the guitar mic and it's position to make use of it's characteristics - like where it's nulls are, so maybe the vocal sound source will be in these nulls, and then the vocal mic position will be made to favour the voice and reject the guitar.

The boxy sound is often comb filtering at it's worst. There are so many contributing factors to make good or bad sound. The filter can prevent some paths, and you just need to0 experiment. Personally, I just have a listen and see what I can hear before I even touch the mic box. How loud is the singer compared to the guitar. What kind of vocal recording do you want - a close warm cosy one, or a more distant hard sound? How will the guitar annoy this desire - will it leak badly, or does the person play more quietly with his fingers and not bash away with a pick? Maybe a hyper cardioid will give you a null at the right place to isolate the voice a bit, and maybe the vocal mic can be aimed in from a different angle to reject the boomy sound coming from the sound hole? You just need to spend time and experiment until it sounds right.

I've often tried to do it the other way around - with a singer going through a PA who has a loud monitor on the floor and I faff around to deliberately find cancellation. Rarely works very well, so if you set your mics up and raising both faders produces a nasty sound, then you need to just cure it. The most common one is just to get the vocal mic in closer - using the inverse square law to fix the problem. Moving mics to same distances is the wrong solution, and actually one that is designed to make comb filtering even more likely.
 
If you are actually good enough to pull off this performance, have a good sounding guitar, and are in a good (or at least not bad) sounding room, then all you need is a single mic or maybe a stereo pair. Put in front of you somewhere. Move it till it sounds good. Go. If you can't get it to sound good, feel the need to fix the dynamics of the vocal separate from the guitar, or turn the guitar down a little so it doesn't step on the vocal so much, or whatever, it's because you're not actually good enough to perform this piece this way. When you play live, this is what the audience years, and if it ain't good, you need to practice.

Or you need to record the two performances seperately so that you can really give each part the attention it deserves. You also then can go a lot heavier on the processing without worrying about bleed fucking everything up. I have heard and completely agree that sometimes you need the vocals in order to know where the changes are, and that playing and singing is important for getting dynamics to jive together and all that. I record most of my scratch tracks as guitar and vox at the same time. Once that's there, though, it's actually not that tough to go back and play to that and usually actually get closer to what you meant to do. Then you go back and sing along with yourself and you're done.

I have a number of singer-songwriter friends that I have recorded or reinforced over the years. The best of them really only need one mic, but I believe even they would play better if they weren't also singing. The worst will sound like ass no matter how many mics I put up, and actually tend to benefit from a more lo-fi sound like an iPhone in the room.
 
Wish said:
Here's something DOT had posted awhile back. I tried it and it's pretty cool.

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OK, here's another trick. This is a technique for someone who wants to sing and play acoustic guitar at the same time.

Set up the vocal cardioid mic at the height of the singer's mouth about 9" away – give or take a few ".

Put a second cardioid mic down past the bridge - out about 1' or so away from the guitar. And angle the mic at 45 degrees so it's facing the bridge of the guitar.

Set levels and make your recording.

Then, at mixdown, take the track that used the mic to record the guitar at the bridge, and pan it hard right and reverse the phase. And the track with the vocal should be panned dead center. What will happen is that the guitar track [ while being played with the vocal track on ] will suddenly spread to both speakers and "back up" a bit in the mix – and any of the "boominess" will be gone due to the phase cancellation with the vocal mic. And the track with the vocal will have more room and sit in this nice hole created in the center.

Very effective, and can give a nice, polished sound.
__________________
Dan Richards
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All that said, I have had decent results by putting my stereo mic about chin height and a foot or foot and a half out, pointed "up and down" so that the left side gets mostly face, and right side gets mostly guitar. You can mess with distance and angles to get different characters from each. There is still bleed, so you can only go so far with mixing or processing them separately, but the "phase issues" are minimized by having the two diaphragms very close to each other. You can do the same thing with two separate mics. They don't really even have to be matched.
 
Beating my head against the wall just trying to record some songs. I have a step-son who will mix them for me if I ever get some recorded but he wants them in split track. I was online looking for Cubase information- specifically LE5. I have a small home studio and am having a very hard time figuring out how I recorded the first time- a couple years ago, and am looking everywhere for some good instructions. I am just trying to record acoustic guitar and my vocal. I have a condenser mic for vocal, a Lexicon Alpha Desktop Recording Studio, and an M-Audio Audio Buddy. The M-Audio and condenser mic are new. My step-son told me this: "Record in stereo. When you play it back your voice will be in one speaker, and the guitar will be in another (or should). " Do you understand what I am saying? lol I have Cubase LE5 on my pc and am about knocking my head against the wall. I don't know how to set up the VST connections. In Cuebase, I just added two audio track to record to. What am I doing wrong?
 
What does VST have to do with it?

Simple answer is record guitar and voice SEPARATELY. Guitar first, but if you think you're really good, you could try vocals first.:thumbs up:

You're not going to be recording in stereo anyway, you're going to be recording two mono channels, probably.

The main things you're doing wrong are (a) not breathing whilst typing (b) not using paragraphs.

From your listed gear, you have two audio interfaces and one microphone. You need one two channel audio interface and two microphones if you're recording voice AND guitar at the same time, which I wouldn't advise, by the way. Unless you're going direct with the guitar. Are you? You're a bit light on for actual detail.

How about you take a breath, go start a new thread of your own instead of resurrecting this one, and state the problem a bit more clearly and perhaps someone can help you.
 
oh ye of little faith.............. The reason my post looked like that is because I sent a lot of that info to my step-son to ask him about it.
He doesn't use Cubase to record so he isn't really too much help in that area.
Thanks !
 
Armistice, yes, my guitar is direct into the Audio Buddy along with a mic. I prefer to play and record vocal at the same time. I have recorded successfully like that before but it was 2 years ago and I did not write down my set up's. Thank you for your advice so far.

The VST, I tried to set up the Input and Output. I have a feeling I am setting things up wrong, which is why I cannot record correctly. Are you saying I can ignore that part of the set up?

When I record, my vocal is in my right ear, the guitar is in both my ears. My step-son said I should hear guitar in one ear, vocal in the other.

To have split tracks- one vocal, one guitar, is my goal.
 
Are you using two microphones?

Edit - oops, never mind, I see you have the guitar going direct, plus a mic.

Sounds like a panning problem with the guitar. Pan it to the opposite side of the vocal mic.
 
Your stepson is wrong--why would you want to hear the guitar in one ear and your voice in the other? That's massively disconcerting, isn't it? Try to get a nice mono monitoring situation going, where you hear the guitar and your voice centered in your head. Or not--maybe you like doing it the way you're doing it, but I can't imagine doing it like that.
 
TimN said:
Your stepson is wrong--why would you want to hear the guitar in one ear and your voice in the other? That's massively disconcerting, isn't it? Try to get a nice mono monitoring situation going, where you hear the guitar and your voice centered in your head. Or not--maybe you like doing it the way you're doing it, but I can't imagine doing it like that.
Click to expand...


I'm pretty sure what was meant is recording each to a separate track - if you can hear one left and one right, then you have done that.
 
I haven't read everything in this thread, so my apologies if this has already been suggested.

Aim the guitar mic so the back of the mic is facing more upward. This will help reject some of the vocal getting into the guitar mic.

You will probably need to move the mics closer to accomplish this. In my head I am envisioning the two side address mics placed top to top, one pointing up (for you to sing over) and one pointing down to get the guitar. Phase won't be much of an issue, since the mics are the same-ish distance from the source and the maximum rejectionpoints on both mics are facing the thing you don't want the mic to pick up.

My favorite setup for acoustic and singer is having two figure 8 mics, one aiming at the guitar and one at the vocalist, with the rejection zones aimed so that the vocal mics rejection zone is posted at the guitar and the guitar mics rejection zone is pointed at the singer. Same as above, but the rejection zones are on the sides of the mics, instead of the back, so placement is a little more forgiving.
 
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