Fingerstyle Acoustic Guitar - Recording and Editing

E

Emann

New member
Hello,

My first time at this and I am interested in recording myself playing fingerstyle on my acoustic guitar. I am attending a beginner's course at a local institution on adobe premiere and audition and on premiere I am now getting quite to grasps with it - audition still just starting.

I take video on a canon DSLR and record audio on a zoom h6 with guitar plugged directly and a mic pointed at the 12th fret and plugged into the zoom...sound seems quite good for me but I am clueless on what and how to edit the audio before synching with video on premiere pro. With the zoom i received a license for cubase elements I think and so I am also confused which would be the better software to use on editing my acoustic fingerstyle playing...and again what to edit for such type of audio...on another thread I was advised on EQing, compression and reverb....from the little knowledge I found that these can be done on both audition and cubase but I do not know how much or what changes I need to see to say this is correct...or else if I just go by the ear until it sounds correct...at least to me.

So basically this is my intro and I would be glad of any pointers anyone can give me on recording and editing my fingerstyle playing.

Best wishes.
 
There are no set answers. Record, and experiment wit hthe various settings, see what works and what doesn't.
 
Hey there,
+1.

Might seem like a cop out answer but it's true. People here can (and will, gladly) tell you how these tools work, but whether or not you need them is a different matter.
Knowing when to use eq/verb/compressors/whatever comes from listening and hearing what you do or don't like about the recording.

Starting with the basics let's say your recording is really boomy sounding. Maybe you'd want to use an eq to roll off low end.
On the other hand, maybe you'd want to move the microphone so it's pointing farther away from the sound hole, or maybe the room you're in is doing you no favours?
Maybe the guitar is just boomy! :eek:

That's one example but the options are endless so let's start at the start.
How do your recordings sound, to you, at present?

Feel free to attach an mp3 for our opinions too. :)
 
Hello,

ok..so I am attaching two samples of the recordings...please bear in mind I started fingerstyle playing just last November so don't expect any shredding!!...but am really glad one can upload items for others to advise on here.

The sound is not bad for me however I have no clue what to check for and if there are any particular settings like frequencies or dBs that one should always look forward to achieve in order to have a better sound...the intention is to maintain a youtube channel for me and monitor progress along the line and then maybe later on have a vlog for others to learn and note the learning curve required in playing the guitar.

So from these and as a start maybe you can let me know what sounds good, what sounds bad (if not all of it hehe) and what to try and adjust and also how with maybe some tutorial links to audition (preferably) or cubase...mind you I can look for tutorials but at least I know that the workflow should include eg normalise then compressor etc.

[MP3]https://drive.google.com/open?id=1D8TuNEUF4AhzsEiUJDoZx8tQn64sAkr2[/MP3]

[MP3]https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rZX07Xyype4O2ve4RS4Ao8l0G4subqXa[/MP3]

I am not sure this is the correct way to upload files...but actually I get a failed message when I try to attach.

Thanks a bunch.
 
Hey,
This sounds fine to me. Nice and clear, well balanced, not particularly roomy.
I'm hearing a little bit of background noise here and there but nothing massively distracting in the context of your goal.

Honestly, I don't think I'd bother tinkering too much.
If you want to play with tools to learn what they do then dive right in and have a play,
but if I watched a youtube video of someone learning, or teaching, guitar and it sounded like this, I'd be more than happy.

There are some god awful laptop-microphone videos out there. You're already a cut above. :)

The only thing you might want to consider is figuring out where your peaks are and making sure the recording is as loud as it can be without clipping. (normalise).
It's a set-and-forget thing. If the absolute loudest point of your recording peaks at -10 and you normalise to 0, everything gets turned up by 10.

I don't think there's a need to start getting into compressing and limiting but, at the same time, you don't want it to be unnecessarily quiet.

It's a bit of a pain when flicking between videos of mixed volume.
 
thanks a lot Steenamaroo for your encouraging comments...seems a good start then for me.

So I will try to proceed a bit with adobe audition - as for normalising should I set 0dB or 10dB then as not sure I understand how this works.

Also I can see two waveforms...one is the direct input of the guitar pick up and the other is the mic...how would I know which is which in order to apply some noise treatment and afterall can I apply noise to one of the waveforms only?

And yes regarding the volume...I would like to have the performance a bit more louder...so how do I increase the volume overall for the two waveforms then and not increase any noise as well.

Finally, I note that one waveform has a lower volume than the other - is there any means to get the volume of both waveforms to match please.

Once more thanks for your help.
 
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