Live Take - Acoustic Thing

chrisharris

chrisharris

King of Bling
I got a pair of Rode M5's today to track acoustics in stereo, and I asked my daughter to sit down and just play a song. She obliged. I'm pretty happy with the acoustic sound, but not so much with the vocal. There are some phase issues. I'm missing my favorite vocal mic at the moment, and it matters. The vocal is sibilant and boxy at the same time - bad combo. Anyway, I'm really trying to get better at recording live takes, so any tips on this style would be appreciated. I had the Rodes at least 3x as far away from her vocal as the vocal mic, so I'm not really sure what the problem is.

Anyway, thanks to anybody who listens.

Buckskin Stallion
 
Last edited:
I have been wanting a pair of M5s but haven't had a project that really calls for them. I also don't have a daughter that sings and plays like yours. Wow.

Have you tried a phase/time adjustment plug-in like Voxengo's PHA-979 on the vocal track? Voxengo also has a free Sound Delay plug-in that might help (not a delay effect).
 
JMac52 said:
Have you tried a phase/time adjustment plug-in like Voxengo's PHA-979 on the vocal track?
Click to expand...

Thanks for listening - I haven't tried s plug. I tried sliding the vocal track a bit and reversed the phase on it.

It hadn't occurred to me to invert the phase on one of the stereo tracks, and that definitely changed something. When I get back to Texas, I'm going to play around with it and I'll post back if it's better.
 
chrisharris said:
I got a pair of Rode M5's today to track acoustics in stereo, and I asked my daughter to sit down and just play a song. She obliged. I'm pretty happy with the acoustic sound, but not so much with the vocal. There are some phase issues. I'm missing my favorite vocal mic at the moment, and it matters. The vocal is sibilant and boxy at the same time - bad combo. Anyway, I'm really trying to get better at recording live takes, so any tips on this style would be appreciated. I had the Rodes at least 3x as far away from her vocal as the vocal mic, so I'm not really sure what the problem is.

Anyway, thanks to anybody who listens.

Buckskin Stallion
Click to expand...

Props man! You must be a proud dad!

I love it as it is but as a daddy of a little girl myself, I understand your need for perfection. Keep doing that! :)
 
Did you have three mics altogether? One vocal, one up close to the guitar and one room mic?? If so, I'd say lose the room mic. You are filling with additional reverb so maybe you are losing the ambience of a room mic and it's not adding to the song. Maybe put both M5s up close to the guitar.

If you had a Fig 8 mic, you could try M/S on the acoustic and then the one vocal mic.

I am throwing in a lot of maybe's here only because I suck at live recording. But my problem has more to do with the source than the capture. lol.

Beautiful song.
 
The guitar sounds very nice. It's just a little crisp to my ear. But not super bad.

The vocal is a little weird. You have some widening on it? It seems to be wide for most of the time, but every once in a while it collapses to the center. The guitar is much dryer than the vocal.

Little pop at :47. Somebody dropped something at :57. Some other background noises. I suppose that's because this is mostly just a mic test?
 
jimmys69 said:
Props man! You must be a proud dad!

I love it as it is but as a daddy of a little girl myself, I understand your need for perfection. Keep doing that! :)
Click to expand...

Thanks, jimmy...working on it, lol. Updated the original file. I appreciate the listen.

Manslick said:
I think it is fine as is. I like the way the voice moves around. Very intimate and surprising.
Click to expand...

That's nice of you to say - the vocal weirdness was not intentional, but you are accurate. I worked with it some and updated the file. Maybe it's a little closer to stable now, lol.

Chili said:
Did you have three mics altogether? One vocal, one up close to the guitar and one room mic?? If so, I'd say lose the room mic. You are filling with additional reverb so maybe you are losing the ambience of a room mic and it's not adding to the song. Maybe put both M5s up close to the guitar.

If you had a Fig 8 mic, you could try M/S on the acoustic and then the one vocal mic.

I am throwing in a lot of maybe's here only because I suck at live recording. But my problem has more to do with the source than the capture. lol.

Beautiful song.
Click to expand...

It was 3 mics, but here's the setup. I got the Rodes at least 3x as far away from her vocal as the vocal mic. I was definitely using too much reverb, though. I pulled that back.

The other thing I changed was this - I was only using a single plugin on her vocal track. It's sort of a volume fader plugin that reads ahead and acts sort of like you're riding the fader - instead of having to envelope a track, because it was a pretty dynamic vocal. It has some of the benefits of a compressor without all of the artifacts. It works great, but I've only ever used it on non-blended tracks before. Obviously, the "vocal" track had a lot of guitar in it, so I think it was making the phase issue worse. It was making the vocal sort of move around. I ditched the plugin and updated the file with less reverb.

TripleM said:
The guitar sounds very nice. It's just a little crisp to my ear. But not super bad.

The vocal is a little weird. You have some widening on it? It seems to be wide for most of the time, but every once in a while it collapses to the center. The guitar is much dryer than the vocal.

Little pop at :47. Somebody dropped something at :57. Some other background noises. I suppose that's because this is mostly just a mic test?
Click to expand...

No widening, but your ears weren't lying to you. Read my reply to Chili. And there were some chair creaks. I thought about fixing them, but decided it wasn't worth the trouble. If you listen closely, you can hear paper rustling at the end too, lol. I updated the file with less reverb and sans the fader - hopefully it's a bit better now.

Thanks to all of you for your input and help. I really do appreciate it.
 
Guitar sounds really good. Vocal is good and well recorded. Not sure how you could make this better. Very nice!
 
Removing that fader plug made a great improvement, no more swishy in the vocal. And the reverb sounds good to my ear.

The acoustic now seems to have a little more energy in the upper mids. I don't know the freq, but maybe around the C# - F# range. The overall guitar tone has a great wood sound, so if you didn't change anything, that would work, too. :)
 
excellent! great tune and recording. I don't know if the file was updated, it looked that way reading through the comments, but I definitely heard the vocal moving around the stereo field before I read those remarks. Still, the performance was so good that I didn't really care. :) lucky to have a daughter that talented. i'd be incredibly proud.
 
andrushkiwt said:
excellent! great tune and recording. I don't know if the file was updated, it looked that way reading through the comments, but I definitely heard the vocal moving around the stereo field before I read those remarks. Still, the performance was so good that I didn't really care. :) lucky to have a daughter that talented. i'd be incredibly proud.
Click to expand...

+10000
 
Thanks y'all. Yeah, I updated the file a couple of times, and it does still move around some! But I'm calling this one done enough. I just wanted to thank you all for the help.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top