Recording Voice and guitar with one microphone

[Phyl]

I have a friend coming over tonight to record a few of her acoustic songs. She basically just wants to get a few ideas recorded so she won't forget them, and also plans to use the resulting CD as a crude promo/demo of sorts.

I've explained that ideally we would create a click track, record guitar and vocals separately and then mix to taste. She says that she may not be comfortable doing the guitar and vocals separately since she has never worked this way before.

My question: using just one mike (probably a Rode NT1) what is the optimal placement to pick up a good balance of guitar and voice?

If I use two mikes, (Rode NT1 for voice, Oktava MC012 for guitar) what can I do to minimize the bleed?

Thanks.

[kjam22]

For recording vocal and acoustic guitar with one mic....

Here's the musicians answer.............. Place the mic on a mic stand completely down (not extended at all). Sit on chair or bench that is about 18 inches tall. This should put the mic at about the adams apple level. Sit about 2 feet from the mic. Wear head phones..... and mix the sound while you perform. Lean in with the vocal when necessary. Lean back when necessary. Play guitar louder or quieter. Angle it up or not. A good musician is going to hear the sound in their headphones and make it sound good. Make it sound right. It is not difficult.

A pure engineer would probably stand her up with guitar strap, place the mic precisely x number of feet and inches pointed at y degrees of angle from the proximity of the longest point of the apex conversely squared. And then EQ and compress the daylights out of it.

[Harvey Gerst]

Originally posted by Phyl
My question: using just one mike (probably a Rode NT1) what is the optimal placement to pick up a good balance of guitar and voice?

I've had good luck using a single mic, placed about forehead high, aimed at the guitar, about 18" out from the singer. Adjust as needed to balance the vocal to the guitar.

If you have two mics, bring the vocal mic in to about 12", and place a second mic below the bridge, aimed towards the bottom bout, about 3 to 6" away. Sum to mono when placing the mics and listen for cancellations before you switch to stereo. Move mics around as needed for minimum cancellation.

[VOXVENDOR]

All i can say is..

Go with 2 mics and just get your sound going down as decent as possible...

I think a little bit of bleed won't hurt... especially for your purposes...

It will definately be more speperated sounding than having both sounds bleeding into one mic...

Just try and get her close to the vocal mic, and close to the guitar mic....

Mic the guitar at the start of the neck, right where the body ends... I have gotten good results that way.....

Im not familiar with these mics...are they dynamics?.....

If you have a condensor, use that on the vocal....

I think a dynamic on the acoustic would be better IMO.... then you can direct it away from the mouth, and get very minimal bleed from the vocal, so you can really, do some eqing on that guitar...

Good luck..

Joe

[VOXVENDOR]

Wow, two totally different methods.. Cool.

Harvey's sounds great...


Try them both, and some of the other suggestions you will receive and let us know how it goes..

Also, I totally forgot to warn about the phase cancellation...

[Phyl]

Thanks all, great ideas.

Joe, the Rode is large condenser, the Oktava is a small condesner. Using a SM-57 for the guitar sounds like an interesting idea...

[VOXVENDOR]

I recorded my acoustic on my song "Your life story" with an SM 57
The I double tracked it with a 4033......

I panned them extremly wide..... So if you listen to my song, you can fiddle with the balance and hear both mics.....

Due to terrible memory I can't tell you which one is the SM57, but I can say that both tracks are decent, (well at least to me) which says alot for comparisons

It's only during the chorus..

"Your life Story"
http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/...vendor/singles

[Rossi]

I like the one mic method a lot. Placement is crucial, and it's hard to do when you're the one performing. Oftentimes you end up with bad ballance between voice and guitar. But with someone else performing it shouldn't be too difficult. Place the mic while he/she is playing and singing, and you should be fine. I've had great results recording myself playing and singing with just one tube LD (a T.Bone/Superlux). It's also great for the performer to be able to play and sing without headphones. You can get great perfomances that way.

[ZPphreak]

yeah, har to tell. I'm leaning on the 57 being on the right channel though.. very comparable! Nice assessment there! As always.. Killer song too!

Peace-

[Richard Monroe]

Does the guitar have a pickup? Of course, the quality of the pickup matters, but going DI is a valid option. There are a couple of pesky songs on my current project with some weird tempo changes that I have never been able to track separately. For those, I split the signal of a Fishman Prefix Plus stereo blender. The onboard electret condenser goes into channel 1 of a Joemeek twinQ, and the bridge pickup into the other. A little notch control on the Fishman reduces boom. No EQ except what's onboard the Fishman, and voila!-useable tracks! I can sing quietly with virtually no bleed to the internal guitar mic, then overdub the vocals. NTK works perfectly for this. Most good pres these days have High-Z ins, so no direct box needed. Just a thought.- Richie

[Phyl]

I doubt her guitar has a pickup, but I might try and talk her into playing my Taylor (which does). I don't know if we'll be able to overdub vocals or not, I'm going to play it buy ear and see how comfortable she is with all the different options.

Thanks Richie.