Mixing a "One-Mic" Performance

[Marcellovalerio]

I record myself, often just piano and vocals with a figure 8 pattern...(or guitar and vocals).

What would a "proffesional" do to it when mixing the wav.? What can you really do when it comes down to it? (if you only have free plug-ins ) What about stereo-emulators? I think they sound creepy...

[Fishybob]

Not sure i fthis is what you're looking for but it can give a sense of space...


Copy the audio track so that you have two running simultaniously. Nudge one forwards between 30 and 50 miliseconds. Pan hard left and hard right... add Reverb to taste.




It's worked wonders when I had to fix a drum recording someone did in mono.


I hope this helps

[gordone]

I record alot of my acoustic guitar/vocals with just ONE mic on both vocals and the guitar. I usually use my Soundelux U97 (in cardiod) and point it out front so I get a good balance between the voice and the guitar. At mixdown, I usually just cut a bit of bass and a touch of compression, oh and some reverb since my room is pretty dead.

Check out "Che Guevara T-Shirt" at http://www.evangordon.com/sounds.php for a recent example. Most of the stuff on that page was recorded this way.

[mshilarious]

Why not record them separately? You can do a lot with a mono piano to create a stereo effect, but those aren't necessarily the same things you'd want to do to a vocal.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Originally Posted by Fishybob

Copy the audio track so that you have two running simultaniously. Nudge one forwards between 30 and 50 miliseconds. Pan hard left and hard right... add Reverb to taste.

It's worked wonders when I had to fix a drum recording someone did in mono.

Oh yeah? Listen to that mix of your in MONO and see if you still like it......

[Fishybob]

Originally Posted by Blue Bear Sound

Oh yeah? Listen to that mix of your in MONO and see if you still like it......

Ah. How useful... Another agressive response, how wonderfully constructive. And YOUR suggestion is???

*** I'm just offering ideas that he can try.

[Marcellovalerio]

Thank You, ALL suggestions welcome!... I was basically wondering what steps a experienced mastering person would/could apply to just one channel of audio...I mean how much can you really do?

[Robert D]

Some people just perform better when playing and singing at the same time. There's a cohesiveness, an interaction between voice and instrument, hands and mouth, that gets lost when splitting the takes.
At the same time, I think there's a lot that get's lost trying to do this with a single mic. Having a figure 8 already, think about getting into M/S technique, or going to a stereo pair. For me, there's just no way after hours of tweaking a mono track that i could get to where I'd be in 30 seconds with a stereo recording. It's like the difference between black and white, and color......but some people like black and white.

RD

[HangDawg]

Originally Posted by Fishybob

Ah. How useful... Another agressive response, how wonderfully constructive. And YOUR suggestion is???

*** I'm just offering ideas that he can try.

I would say it is a proper response to a BAD suggestion.

[HangDawg]

Originally Posted by Marcellovalerio

I mean how much can you really do?

EQ, compression, reverb ..................