Mixing basics

R

Razien

New member
Hi, i was wanting to know the best way to mix recordings of just an acoustic guitar and vocals to get started really.

I only have one mic so im recording in mono, wanting to make a stereo type sound. Ive read on here that if you just duplicate a track and pan them both sides you're not doing anything apart from making it louder. If you Eq both tracks differently it should give it a stereo effect though right? Isnt that all two mics do, emphasize different frequencies?

Apart from that just wanting some general tips for mixing an acoustic & vocals. Do i add some compression, Eq the guitar part so the vocals sit in it better? Or should it not be an issue with just acoustic & vocals?

Thanks
 
Razien said:
you just duplicate a track and pan them both sides you're not doing anything apart from making it louder.
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I was going to congratulate you on being way ahead of most newbs just by knowing that.....but then this happened......
If you Eq both tracks differently it should give it a stereo effect though right? Isnt that all two mics do, emphasize different frequencies?
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No, 2 mics do a lot more than that. In fact, emphasizing different frequencies is probably the least of what using 2 mics will accomplish.
 
you are so funny rami.

Try recording the guitar twice than panning left and right. Place the vocals in the center and add some verb. Just a suggestion there are so many ways of doing this. :)
Hope this helps and opens your imagination a little.:)
 
Razien said:
Apart from that just wanting some general tips for mixing an acoustic & vocals. Do i add some compression, Eq the guitar part so the vocals sit in it better? Or should it not be an issue with just acoustic & vocals?

Thanks
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i think doing just acoustic and vocals is a great way to start because it should help you to get a feel for the mixing process. i would say the most important aspect is to train your ears so they can recognize when frequencies are interfering and then eq to drop those out. as you solo the guitar and vocal tracks in/out you should be able to hear its occurrence. its an oft repeated cliche but start out with good mic's and mic placement & the mixing and mastering will be much easier.
 
RAMI said:
No, 2 mics do a lot more than that. In fact, emphasizing different frequencies is probably the least of what using 2 mics will accomplish.
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Thats a very yes/no type of answer. What else will they do? Im asking cos i want to learn.
 
Ill try recording the part again to see how that sounds. Right now my ears arent trained to notice this stuff to easily ! Should i place the mic in different areas for the seperate parts or EQ each differently afterwards?

I do have to spend some time listening out for the details & training my ears yeah. Ive heard tests on other sites between two seperate takes of a part panned both ways & the same part duplicated and panned & i dont hear that much difference right now.

Just started learning about Eq'ing and all that so ill practise with that. Should i be compressing vocals/acoustic? I suppose a strummed guitar needs to be compressed more than one thats picked? etc
 
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I would sort of disagree with Rami, but still mostly agree. In essence, yes, two mics are emphasizing different frequencies, but not in a way that you could replicate with EQ. The easiest way to understand that is to put a pair of headphones on and monitor the input as you move the mic around while someone plays your guitar. That's how I usually find the sweet spot for the sound I want. If you point it at the hole, for instance, you'll get a very bass-heavy, boomy sound. If you move it up the neck, you'll get a lot of string noise, but not much body. The mics are actually picking up different aspects of the guitar, not just emphasizing different frequencies (though they do that, too).

The key thing to take away from that is that when you use two mics, you point them at different places to get two different sounds. What TheChickenMaster proposes is called doubling, and it's used a lot when you want big guitar sounds. If you're just going for an intimate, guitar-and-vocal feel, you probably don't want so much guitar. If you only have the one mic, you can't do what I suggested you do with two mics, but there is a way to get a similar effect with EQ. For instance, you might filter out most of the high frequencies and pan that slightly left, and on another duplicate track, you might filter out those lower frequencies and pan that slightly right. It adds a little space in the middle for the vocal and makes the guitars sound a little more open, but you don't want to pan too far. I'm sure if you experiment with that idea, you'll find out where the right spot is. Again, it's not the ideal solution, but it can work. There are some good ideas about that technique in a book called ReaMix: Breaking the Barriers with Reaper. It's mostly focused on the software Reaper, but it has some good techniques you can use with any DAW.

As for compression, I find it helps most with picked notes. There are two reasons you would use compression: to make the sound "even"--that is, so that all your strums are at the same volume--and/or to enhance the attack of your strum/pick--that is, make the initial hit stick out more. You'll have to experiment with compression to find out exactly what you want for the settings, but I find it's more useful on vocals than on a strummed guitar. If you're playing fairly evenly, you probably only want a little bit to enhance the attack. Vocals and picked notes tend to be less even, at least in my experience, so I usually like to use compression on those so that parts don't get drowned out. If you want to know more about compression, there are some guides in the book I mentioned, but there are also plenty more available freely here and elsewhere on the internet.
 
Oh god, opened up a whole can of worms here! Some of this stuff gets horrendously complex to explain! I'm struggling just thinking about where to start. Meh, psychoacoustics.

And I don't know what thebigcheese meant by "sort of disagreeing" - I wholeheartedly agree with Rami.


Yes, two mics will have different frequency responses, but for this topic I would not worry so much about the mics themselves and instead thinl more about the different positions of the two mics and how this will affect the sound they pick up from a single source...

Two mics may also each capture different tones depending on their positioning as described by thebigcheese.

The different positioning of two mics might also result in one capturing different amounts of room reflections, etc.

But most importantly, sound travels relatively slowly and there will be differences in the signal in the time-domain... anything from very tiny differences to very large differences, depending on how they are positioned. The sound from the source will hit the diaphragms at different times, as well as the complex combinations of different room reflections also reaching each mic at different times.

These timing differences that act as spacial cues, in fact usually moreso than intensity differences. Well, its never just a combination of one thing. If you hear something almost equally in both ears, but slightly louder with a bit more of a full frequency range in your left ear, and the sound reaches your right ear a tiny bit later and has more of the room sound in it, then your brain will interpret all these cues and come to the conclusion that the sound is coming just from the left of you.

So sometimes we try to replicate this when mic'ing so that the positions of the microphones are intended (to some extent) to imitate our ears and pick up the vast combination of complex spacial cues that can then be somewhat recreated upon playback. However, when mic'ing something like an acoustic guitar in stereo we're not usually so worried about perception in terms of localisation - the usual aim is to achieve a more 'open' and wide sound, which is again caused by the complex aggregation of all these differences, but the differences will be more subtle.

A wide effect can also be created from playing the same part twice and hard panning them; the differences between the two takes contributes to the wide sound.



Most of that was probably typed really badly and I probably left a load of stuff out. It seems simple when you first think about it, but then once you start trying to explain it you realise that there's such a large and complex combination of factors going on.
 
So. like you know when you can hear something and you can tell which direction it came from or how close or far away it is? Think of your ears as 2 microphones. You can tell because one ear hears the same sound differently than the other ear based on where your ear is in relation to the sound source. So, apply that to microphones- especially if you are after a stereo sound (not all two-mic applications are for the purpose of stereo).

If you are doing acoustic guitar, I'd really look for a pair of small diaphragm condenser mics. There is not really anything you can do with eq or compression or panning that will get you the same effect.
 
Thanks for all the good info everyone

Lots on everything i was asking about, very helpful.

You all explained it well, i understand what you're saying about slight timing differences, different sounds of the guitar etc Makes sense that redoing a track would create a similar effect through the very slight tempo differences or ways of playing each time.

So i suppose from that, itd be a good idea to aim the mic at slightly different places during each take? To get the different frequencies/room reflections on top of the effect playing two versions of the same track together has?

With compression ill just test out different things. Will make sure to try it on picked tracks now & see how they sound doubled or on their own. Kinda assumed id want to double everything, but keeping it more intimate sounding might work better sometimes yeah, i hadnt considered it.

All good tips so far thanks :D
 
There are several two-mic techniques that are popular (and sound good) for acoustic guitar. You can get a budget pair of SD condensers for ~$100. Worth imo, even for the cheap ones.
 
Razien said:
Hi, i was wanting to know the best way to mix recordings of just an acoustic guitar and vocals to get started really...
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Here's what I'd do:

Keep it real simple. When you double tracks it will sound cool sometimes, but you've got to make sure it fits the song. Most of the time, if I was recording just guitar and voice, I probably wouldn't double anything.

What I'd go for is try and record the vox and guitar so that you don't need any eq later. I always try to do that and only use eq if I have to. It sounds way fatter and more normal if you can pull it off.

If you do use eq, subtract, don't add as a general rule.

I might pan the vox just slightly to the right and pan the guitar slightly left so they aren't in the same spot competing with each other.

Try a touch of reverb, but not too much. On fast songs, use short reverb times like .5 to 1.7 sec, and on slower songs it can go as long as 3.5 sec. You might try messing with compression on the tracks, use a mild ratio like 2:1 or 3:1 and bring the threshold down so it just starts to engage on the loudest parts.

The main thing is: use hardly any eq (none ideally), just a taste of reverb and compression sparingly. Try to get "the sound" mainly by how you play and how you position your mic.

Here's an alternative: Record the guitar part twice, and pan those two tracks left and right, and put your vox in the center.

You'll probably find that the biggest variable will be from your actual playing.

The best recording will be the one you hardly do anything to after, maybe just a little reverb and maybe a touch of compression. It's sorta like adding salt to food.
 
The single mike approach has worked for me in the past - the KISS method. Keep it simple stupid . . . for the intimate approach mentioned earlier. While seated - put a 57 on a boom about head level - or above - 18 inches to 2 feet away pointed at the soundhole.
 
Jeff_D said:
There are several two-mic techniques that are popular (and sound good) for acoustic guitar. You can get a budget pair of SD condensers for ~$100. Worth imo, even for the cheap ones.
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Are there any examples anywhere of proper stereo recorded tracks/guitar parts so i can hear?

Ive only just got the stuff i have now round christmas & right now ive a hard time hearing subtle differences so might be worth be learning a bit more before splashing out on more mics.
 
Thanks Dinty.

What you're saying is along the lines of what i was thinking. I do already like the sound of it following recording. I tried to overdub vocals over a fuller track i made with drums/electric guitar/strings etc and the vocals just sounded out of place. Like they were sitting on top of all the music rather than being part of it & more amateurish in general. Thats what made me get interesting in learning about mixing.

With just the acoustic though it already sounds nice to me, i just want to learn what else is possible. But i think ill only be making subtle changes yeah & trying out all these different ideas to see how that effects things.
 
I don't personally do much acoustic guitar recording. I have done 2 albums for these guys. There are a shitload of mics up on that though- There's three people playin all live. Two mics on acoustic and 2 on the banjo and 3 on the standup bass and a pair of room stereo mics plus a vocal mic for both singers. We may have overdubbed a part here or there, but nothing is double tracked. http://www.myspace.com/thetillersthree

The way we did the acoustic guitar and banjo, was one dynamic pointed at the 12th fret about a foot away and a SD condenser up at the headstock pointed down the neck of the guitar. The room mics pick up a good stereo mix of everything.

None of this probably helps you.
 
Mattr seems to know basically what I'm talking about, even if he doesn't think so :p I just meant that if you're using the same mic and moving it around a bit, yes, it is actually hearing different things, but part of that is because it accentuates different frequencies more at certain angles. I was mostly agreeing with Rami, I was just saying that you can still mimic that effect with EQ, if not quite as well.

Generally, yes, you want the mic in slightly different places for each take. When I'm going for the wall of guitars sound, I generally mix up my distortion/overdrive settings, guitar tone settings, amp settings, etc to vary the sound a bit. It sounds better than if you just rerecord the same thing again.
 
dastrick said:
Check out this thread by WhiteStrat.


https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=290919


Also, go to youtube and search for "recording acoustic guitar".

Here's one. I didn't watch the whole thing, btw.

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That link just what i was after. I actually use a RodeNT1A also, so that vid was useful for me. I normally just point it at the 12th fret from a few inches away, didnt know about angling it towards the soundhole etc. His sounds kinda tinny in the highs to, which i havent heard from mine.

Are small condensor mics considered to be more ideal for recording guitar then? Seems many are using those mainly.
 
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