Acoustic

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Lomas

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I'm planning to record a song that will have nothing but two acoustic guitar tracks and vocals. Everything I've read so far about mixing talks mostly about mixes with more elements.

Can anyone give any good pointer to what I should think about to get it to sound ok (or better!)?

I know it's a very open question, but any pointer are much appreciated. Typical traps, EQ etc?

Any tips about the tracking prosses are more than welcome too, even though we're in the mixing forum.

Edit: I'm NOT recording a "snog" as I first wrote. Never again! ;)
 
Lomas said:
I'm planning to record a song that will have nothing but two acoustic guitar tracks and vocals. Everything I've read so far about mixing talks mostly about mixes with more elements.
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A sparse arrangement and soundfield lends itself to having room for stereo images, and maybe include a touch of room tone?
Wayne
 
I've posted the following elsewhere, but I'll repeat it here for convenience:

I read a lot of huffing and puffing about acoustic guitar recording strategies, and, to be honest, it caused me a lot of heartache for a while. I describe below how I ended up for my new cd, and beyond. (Note this is primarily intented for solo guitar, or guitar and vox tracked separately.)

I'm afraid I've given up entirely on spaced mic techniques for guitar recording. I only use X/Y with SDCs. (I would try mid-side, but I don't have a figure-8 mic.)

My reasons for this are three-fold:

1. When I listen back through a hi-fi system at normal listening distance, a guitar recorded with a spaced technique sounds unrealistically big. In fact it sounds about 12ft wide. This might sound impressive to some, but it makes me nauseous.
2. Phase cancellation. No matter how big it sounds in stereo, if I hit the mono button, the middle of the guitar disappears, leaving the sides hovering disembodied in space. More nausea. Maybe that has more to do with my skill at setting up a spaced pair, but for the other two reasons, It's now academic.
3. To a listener in an audience any further than 6 feet away, the guitar is a mono source. Any stereo information is by virtue of room reflections.

This is what I've settled with: I use two Neumann KM 184s in an X/Y setup about 18" from the guitar. These aren't matched, but I don't consider that so important. I used ORTF for a long time but the killer was phase cancellation - it just didn't translate to mono without a lot of stuff disappearing! Not good if I aspired to some radio plays! I had actually recorded more than 30 guitar parts using ORTF before being forced to admit it wasn't going to work for me and had to abandon them and start again using X/Y. Now, X/Y can appear to give a very (too) tight stereo image, but it truth I find it more accurate - the guitar doesn't sound 20 feet wide when played through a hi-fi! And anyway, if the image needs a bit of stretching, I can use a bit of mid-side processing in the box. I'm considering getting a figure-of-8 and do some M/S for real for the next record. Or two, and do Blumlein. This gear purchasing never stops.

(Now an A/B setup with mics pointed at saddle & neck / body joint can sound fantastic - just make sure you audition in mono. Mono-compatabililty doesn't matter to a lot of folks, but it does to me - so I don't use it.)

More for general interest, here's my signal path:

Mics: KM 184s (guitar); Audio Technica AT 4033 (vox)
Pre-amps: per Allen & Heath GS3 console
Soundcard: RME Multiface
Software: Cubase SL
Plug-ins: Voxengo and Kjaerhus dynamics and Voxengo convolution reverb.
Monitoring: Mission Cyrus amp and JBL 4208 monitors (it'll do for now!!)
Phones: Sennheisser and Beyerdynamic
PC: self-built using QuietPC case, Seagate Barracuda HDDs, AMD 64 CPU, Zalman heatsinks, fans and controller.

The following is new to this thread:

1. I recommend you record the guitars with a very tight stereo image with a view to panning them quite far apart. If each guitar has a wide stereo image, and / or panned close together, I suggest the whole thing could become a bit mushy with guitars' individual voices getting lost.

2. I would consider EQ-ing each guitar differently to further differentiate between the instruments. Try to find the each guitar's best and worst tonal characteristics (all acoustic guitars have them) and EQ to suit. Or more generally: if you cut a bit of bass from one guitar, compenstate with a boost in the same are, to the same degree, in the other. Ditto top-end cuts & boosts.

3. I would consider using reverb creatively to further create a sense of distance between the guitars - perhaps a touch more on one, than the other. Differential EQ can also add a sense of distance: brighter = closer, darker = further away.

4. I wouldn't propose to compress the guitars differently (if you need to use it at all.) That IMHO would "unglue" the "perfomance".

Please use the EQs and reverbs and compressors sparingly. I know from bitter experience that recording and mixing acoustic guitars requires patience and a gentle hand. Acoustic guitars don't respond well to extreme settings in any department.

Hope this helps.

Good luck!
 
Yeah Iains post has some really good stuff. I have used spaced pair to good effect (or what I percieve to be good effect) but you'd do well to read up on the differnt mic techniques and try them out for yourself. You'll soon work out which suit your style best and/or achieve a sound you're happy with.

Some good info here:

http://www.dpamicrophones.com/page.php?PID=131

I usually leave the main guitar (recorded in stereo) centre along with the main vocal and pan the second guitar (recorded in mono) and any additional vocal to wherever they sound good (not too wide). I guess it depends on the voice but I find more often than not that a male voice and an acoustic guitar don't get in the way of each other in terms of panning. But more than one voice or guitar and you'll need to give them some seperation.

I certainly agree with Iain on the less is more thing with regard to processing. I guess you could say the same for most sources but acoustic guitar is really sensitive to over the top treatment. I never compress acoustic guitar and the eq is always subtle, usually a hi pass filter and occasionally a fairly surgical cut in the low mids to get rid of any mud. You might also want to try a subtle broadband boost (2-3dB) in the presence range of frequencies on the main guitar and cut the same range on the other guitar, this will further serve to seperate them in the mix.

A really subtle plate type reverb (only 6-8% wet) will lift it a bit. Like Iain says you could afford to up this a bit for any additional guitar in order to push it back a bit.

Obviously this is relevant to my style of playing, my guitars, my room etc. but maybe just a few ideas to get you going.
 
Thanks! I've found that when I try to record a song with just guitar and vocals, I get impatient and pretty soon I start throwing other stuff in there that I didn't plan on from the start. I'd like to be able to finnish a song the way I intended it from the start for once...

...actually, I'd like to finnish a song, period. :)
 
I agree that X/Y is usually the best method for acoustic guitar micing. The exception is if the guitarist moves around much while recording, which will cause a radically shifting image with X/Y. In that case, spaced pair is better.
I would never compress or EQ on the way in with AG, and generally just add lite eq and reverb. For a AG track that has occasional boominess, employing a single band of a multiband compressor can be a better way to fix this than using a static eq or a regular compressor.
 
Would you guys say I should record the guitar totally natural even though the sound is very bassy and boomy to me? If I "eq" a bit on the mixer I get closer to the sound I want, but maybe it's a bad idea to do that? It's just that it's a lot harder to track when the guitar is that bassy.
 
At the end of the day if you apply a little eq on the way in and you know it's giving you a better sound (and especially if it enables you to concentrate on the perfomance better) then go gor it, there are no hard and fast rules, just make sure you're getting the best out of the mic before you twiddle them knobs.

If the guitar is boomy when you're tracking move the mic or mics so it's less boomy.

This could mean laterally (the more away from the body/towards the nut you go the less boomy the guitar will sound) or distance between mic and instrument (ie. reducing proximity effect). This can be difficult using some stereo configurations when the distance between source and mics needs to be fairly specific. It's also unwise to record from too much of a distance in a crappy sounding room.

And of course if you have a variety of mics you can try, you have an even better chance of getting the sound you want at source.

Of course the reality is that you might well need to use a little eq at some stage (be it tracking or mixdown) but try and get the best sound possible at source.
 
I've found a single stereo-miked acoustic, using the ORTF placement, is excellent for a song with just acoustic and vocal. It's a wider/bigger sound than XY (which is also good).
 
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