Vocal Overdubs

M

mfa

New member
I want to record my acoustic guitar while I also sing, however, I realize that vox track might not be a keeper whereas the guitar probably will be.
What are the work-arounds for this???
Newbie here. Perhaps this is an age old question. Sorry.
 
The obvious answers are A) Do one or the other first, and then do the other, or B) Practice until you can be sure of the vocal... You can get some isolation with the proper pattern on a microphone, but I'll leave that up to the guys that actually do that sort of thing. I'm an A person...:D
 
Record the guitar while you sing.

Record a guitar only track alongside the vox & guitar track

Record a vox only track along side the new guitar track.

Delete the vox & guitar track
 
mfa said:
I want to record my acoustic guitar while I also sing, however, I realize that vox track might not be a keeper whereas the guitar probably will be.
What are the work-arounds for this???
Click to expand...
You could mime while you play the guitar.
 
Another option.. play an electric guitar while singing the vocal. Don't record the guitar, just monitor your playing. Do record the vocal. Then add the acoustic over the vocal.

If you don't have an electric, maybe grim will loan you one of his.. :eek: ... ;)
 
If you record both, then you really have to punch-in both, in most home recording setups. There's usually just too much bleed, even if you've got a plugged in acoustic, the vocal track is going to have acoustic guitar, and if it suddenly disappears in the overdub, it will be noticeable, except if there's a much bigger mix yet to come. (You *might* be able to compensate by raising a plugged-in guitar track slightly, but it'll be less work to just do both, at least that's my experience.)

Just set up everything like the original recording, if you're doing this in a different session, so the levels are about the same. I create new tracks for both instruments, and automate the original vocal level down a lot where the overdub will be. Practice playing and singing along to the original and making the correction a time or two, than do a take to get it right. Edit the new take down to the overdub, and, depending on your DAW, splice both the guitar and vocal in using clip gain to match the original and crossfades. In Logic, I can "pack" the new tracks into the original as a "take folder" so creating a comp is just a couple mouse swipes - probably something similar in some others, but the manual method works too.
 
spantini said:
Another option.. play an electric guitar while singing the vocal. Don't record the guitar, just monitor your playing. Do record the vocal. Then add the acoustic over the vocal.
Click to expand...
That's a pretty neat idea actually. I do that when I want to have drums on a song where the main guitar is an acoustic one. I used to just track with the drummer while playing acoustic but every time over a 18 or so year period, the bleed from the drums was too overpowering for my liking and it contributed to making mixing such a burden for me. That and the fact that I was pretty crummy at it anyway ! Part of the reason I used to do it that way was that I felt the freshness of what was created live would really add to the feel of whatever song and to an extent it really did. But I soon learned that actually, by DI~ing the electric, whoever was on drums and I could still create some good stuff spontaneously and that importantly, I had a clear set of drum tracks at which point I could "acoustic" to my heart's delight and it actually never made any noticeable difference to the freshness and spontanaiety of the feel. In fact, I find that I hate that electric track so much, I can't wait to get the acoustic laid down so I can delete it and proceed from there.
I can empathize with the OP for wanting to do it the way he has told us. But I think that being a live and recording musician are two different disciplines and while one can remain in just one of those fields if that is where they are most comfortable, I think one loses nothing by becoming versatile and being able to do both. It's a bit like my click track philosophy ~ learn to record with one. And be able to record without one
spantini said:
If you don't have an electric, maybe grim will loan you one of his.. :eek: ... ;)
Click to expand...
My electrics are so cheap they even call me a cheapskate !! :guitar:
 
gecko zzed said:
Yep. The result would be the same.

But sometimes, a performer needs to sing along to know where they are in the song.
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Yeah, that's very much a thing.
I have some people who just to guitar and then do vox and others who just can't get comfortable that way so they use a live vox+guitar as a guide for recording separates.
 
I'm able, at this point, to record the acoustic first and then my vocal. I've recorded people who simply can't or won't do this, but in every case they were able to get things right fairly quickly. Doing things separately of course gives you total flexibilty as far as overdubds go.
 
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