Acoustic Guitar Instrumental

spantini

spantini

COO of me, inc.
One live guitar track and two clones. I recorded this on a DP-03SD using one of the built-in mics on the front - in a reflective room. I mixed it for my car's CD player (factory Bose) and it sounds ok there and on my portable mp3. Sounds like crap on my desktop computer speakers, even with the bass box.

The original guitar track is panned up the middle and dry. Clone1 slightly left, Clone2 slightly right - one EQ'd to boost mids; one to cut (I didn't record the freq). The whole mix has a preset room reverb - just enough to be able to tell when it's not there.

I plan on remixing this in Reaper when I get it.

Anyway, here is an mp3
View attachment Saturday ©.mp3
 
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I'm not understanding why you're making copies and panning them places with EQ cuts and boosts. I don't understand why you'd want to do that at all...

Just place it C and EQ it.
 
andrushkiwt said:
I'm not understanding why you're making copies and panning them places with EQ cuts and boosts. I don't understand why you'd want to do that at all...

Just place it C and EQ it.
Click to expand...
I had a long reply saying essentially that...

Here's some of it.

I'd try using an external microphone and experiment with placement. There's a lot of pick noise and what I'm guessing is mic or room noise, so maybe move away from right where you strum. Keep it simple with just a single mono track or the stereo from the built-in mics if you can't borrow a decent mic to work with. In any case, I'd just work with one track, mono or stereo, until you can get it sounding how you want it to. Try lots of different distances and angles to get the best recorded sound you can.

The standard refrain here: EQ and compression are your first tools (not cloning). Listen to a "reference track" of a bit of solo guitar recording you like and want to sound like. Compare critically to yours and start by removing those frequencies that are in yours that make it sound unlike what you want. Compress a bit to fatten things, and add reverb at the end, assuming your room doesn't supply enough already.
 
Thank you. I cloned and panned the guitar in an effort to get a fuller sound - experimenting. I didn't want a 12-string sound, just fuller. The panning was minimal at 11:00 Left and 1:00 Right (don't know the percentages).

I'll be getting an external mic next week, and will be recording it again in a smaller, quieter room.

I've got Reaper installed now and will be able to work it as you suggested.

That recording was not meant to be great for sure as I made it only to be sent in for Copyrighting. The room and pick noises are the result of a combination of me turning the input gain on the recorder up to max, and sloppiness on my part as I hadn't slept for 18 hours. I had to set the recorder about 20 inches away from the guitar neck - it was as close as I could sit comfortably to it.

"Listen to a "reference track" of a bit of solo guitar recording you like and want to sound like. Compare critically to yours and start by removing those frequencies that are in yours that make it sound unlike what you want."

Reaper should allow me to load such a guitar sample on one track for comparison to my recorded track - right? That would speed things up.

Ok... No cloning. EQ and Compression. No cloning. EQ and Compression. No cloning...
... Place it C and EQ it. Place it C and EQ it... got it :D

Thanks to the both of you for tips.
 
When you clone a digital track, then pan it nothing much happens. If you pan one full right and the other full left - the phase integrity is the same, so you get mono. Add another clone in the middle and you get more mono. The trouble is that any processing you apply to these individually take time to process, so you start to introduce comb filtering. If you start to do different eq, then you end up with strange artefacts as a chord is strummed, and high frequencies seem to gang up on you, which could be why the pick noise is emphasised. Maybe experiment with some delays in as inserts and see if the sound suddenly breaks apart in a pleasing way - it will either improve or get worse - rarely stay the same. Duplicating and panning is quite a strange thing to do unless you think it through. The delay will start to make it chorus and phase - without the delay, it can't.
 
Just jumping to say I agree with what the others are saying.

I noticed the track is quite bright - almost brittle sounding. I'm thinking that could be caused by the internal mic you're using. Don't know what mic you're getting, but it could very well help with that.

Spend some time with different mic positions. There are more than a few.

Longer term, if you're recording sparse tracks like this, you can venture into stereo micing.
 
"... so you start to introduce comb filtering. If you start to do different eq, then you end up with strange artefacts
as a chord is strummed, and high frequencies seem to gang up on you..."

Aha! Thank you. Stuff I'm not familiar with, yet.

My goal was to eliminate some low end booming , emphasizing the mids to fill it out more - experimenting to see if they could be mixed into one sound containing (what I thought at the time) were the best parts of each. The original (no FX or Pan) track was added into the mix at about half the volume of the others - that's one reason it sounds bright.. and I use a thin pick. A medium pick would produce more volume and eliminate a lot of those clicks, but I've never gotten used to their stiffness - they flip out of my fingers on too many occassions.

I have this song in a .wav file I can import. Then I'll remix it using all of your recommendations - except the dual mic placement. I'll only have one external mic to start.

Would all of you do me a favor and tell me what equipment you're listening to this song through? Did you play around with EQing it any - did that make it better or worse?

I usually play songs I DL here through the Windows Media Player using the player's EQ just for kicks, especially since my PC speakers don't sound good at lower 'don't wake the neighbors' volume levels.

Thanks again for taking the time. It is much appreciated.
 
Her you tried just the one track and then added some artificial room sound with a stereo reverb on a shorter (smaller) setting? This plus some gentle eq might work really well.

PC Speakers - as in cheap plastic things with super bass from a woofer, or proper small monitors that have a flattish response and sound good? Please - if it's the horrible PC ones, then fix that before you spend any more money. Decent monitors are really critical, and headphones, while practical are tricky to mix stereo on.
 
spantini said:
...
I have this song in a .wav file I can import. Then I'll remix it using all of your recommendations - except the dual mic placement. I'll only have one external mic to start.

Would all of you do me a favor and tell me what equipment you're listening to this song through? Did you play around with EQing it any - did that make it better or worse?
...
Click to expand...
I'd give it a go with the recording you have first. What have you got to lose except a few hours of your life :)?

I just downloaded and listened through my Senn HD280s that I keep plugged into my old MacBook Pro. No EQ. They are not my first choice for acoustic music, but they're kind of like studio monitors, in that they don't really overtly flatter a lot of music, either.
 
"I'd give it a go with the recording you have first. What have you got to lose except a few hours of your life :)?"

But those would be fun hours :p

"PC Speakers - as in cheap plastic things with super bass from a woofer...?"

Yup. They were free and sound ok with YouTube concerts and radio. Terrible for the studio. I used to have studio monitors - no more. My accommodations don't allow for the use of monitors, so I'll be using some decent headphones instead.

I played around with the .mp3 in Reaper last night. I added it as a single track and only got as far as adding ReaEQ, stretching it here and there to get an idea of the boundaries. That produced some weird FX sounds - like I had some pedals in there. Just making small adjustments with ReaEQ didn't seem to make much difference, but I know there's more that can be done there.
 
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