acoustic guitar + vox = spill problem

[dintymoore]

Cool about the little Sennheisers.

The thing with a mic is that you've got to think of it exactly like any musical instrument like a violin or flute. If someone handed you an expensive violin or flute you wouldn't try it for 5 minutes and then say "wow, piece of shit, sounds terrible" because you'd realize that it would take some time, and a good mic is the same.

Lately these guys are my "home recording heroes"!

 

[witzendoz]

Hi,

Have a listen to the tracks from this band, I recorded the whole CD with the band live in the studio, I remember the track exercise yard had the singer playing the acoustic guitar part live while doing vocal, there was probably others as well. What I do when having a singer playing guitar is to use a small condenser in this case a sennheiser me40 as the small condenser can be placed a little closer than the large condensers and still get a good sound. You also have to get the singer close to the vocal mic.

Check the phasing of the 2 mics to make sure there is no problems, make sure the vocal and the guitar sound good together as you don't want to have to do much eq later as there will go some effect on vocal from the guitar mic and guitar from the vocal mic and off you go.

Sometimes you just have to do the 2 together as the artist wants to do it that way, thats fine.

Cheers
Alan.

 

[mustardeer]

thanks for the link and the youtube video!
Just bought an SM7b. I promise this is my last piece of gear until the record and the score are done. No more gear

It took me 40 min to assemble the sm7b - ridiculous, 16 washers - all different. It better sound amazing. Curious how it'll match up against the U87. Will know in a minute.

 

[dintymoore]

It will be interesting to hear your impressions. Also in the end, it's the marriage between the source and the mic, not just the mic. One guy might sound better on an SM57 than a 10K vintage Neumann. There's numerous cases of that.

We were talking about mics in videos being actual or props, my guess is that this is real:



Sweet Pea Atkinson singing, Reggie McBride on bass and Randy Jacobs on guitar... Sweet Jesus!

 

[mustardeer]

Ha, yeah it totally looks real.
I think it's a great mic.
It's very different from the U87.
It likes about 72db for my vocals.
It's great to use in a crappy room - it's so directional.
But I definitely prefer my Neumann. I wish it blocked more from the sides but I still think it's just a better microphone imho.

 

[grimtraveller]

As silly as this sounds, a few times I've put the cardboard middle from a toilet roll over the head of the mic to isolate the sounds coming in from the sides. Sometimes on guitar, it's created a weird but nice 'tubular' effect and helped cut some bleed.

 

[gehauser]

The figure 8 pattern is the most common suggestion because the null in a figure 8 pattern is the most effective null.
You just have to point the null of the guitar mic at the singer's mouth and the null of the vocal mic at the guitar.
You're not gonna achieve total isolation because that's just the nature of sound waves, but you ought to be able to cut down from what the cardioid patterns were picking up.

+1000 on using the fig 8 nulls - best way I have found to accomplish minimal bleed with vox + guitar simultaneously. with this method you can use your great condenser mics.

 

[John Willett]

Something weird happened yesterday.
I found an old mic in my closet that I bought for my video camera a while ago.
It had two parts that turned out to be a Sunnheiser K6 and a Sennheiser ME64.

A great little SDC with the cardioid head and suitable for loads of things (and you can also get other directional heads for it as well).

Just for kicks I plugged it in and wow, it blew my Neumann U87 away. I was shocked. Then I ran to my band practice space and grabbed a n/d767a which is a dynamic mic for live shows, a bit better than a shure sm58 and gave it a try. I also liked it better than the U87.

Just different tools - some are good for one thing and others for a different thing. The nice thing about the U87 is that it is very kind to vocals and sits well in the mix.

Immediately I thought that I needed to sell the Neumann and buy the Shure sm7. Neumann sounded too thin and noisy in comparison to the other two. The other two mics I thought rejected more of the room and had more low end, which is what I wanted. I want a smokers voice you see, but I don't smoke so it's tricky. Then at 2am it hit me. Because the dynamic mic needed way more power, i was eating it, therefore I got less of my horrible room, and because of the proximity effect more low end. I got up, grabbed the U87 again, dialed down on the preamp from 55db to 40db, got right up on the mic and it worked. Beautiful clean sound with plenty of low end.

Yup - proximity effect for a vocalist.

But I definitely prefer my Neumann. I wish it blocked more from the sides but I still think it's just a better microphone imho.

Switch the U87 to fig-8 and it will block the sides superbly - but it will pick up at the rear, so be careful about sound reflecting into the back in fig-8 mode.

 

[moresound]

Cool about the little Sennheisers.

The thing with a mic is that you've got to think of it exactly like any musical instrument like a violin or flute. If someone handed you an expensive violin or flute you wouldn't try it for 5 minutes and then say "wow, piece of shit, sounds terrible" because you'd realize that it would take some time, and a good mic is the same.

Lately these guys are my "home recording heroes"!

This is a great duo dinty! check out stickboymusic in the mp3 clinic he also has some great stuff as well.