Editing acousti guitar

E

Emann

New member
Hello,

I am new here and just starting to record my acoustic guitar playing on a zoom h5 recorder. I am also attending a course on adobe audition CC and one of the assignments is to experiment with editing our own recording.

I have some basic ideas on where to start but would like to ask of a general workflow when editing acoustic guitar and the basic edits one would make to improve the recording.

Even if you have any links that show or discuss this would be of great help.

Thanks for assistance from anyone.

Emann
 
The best thing you can do is spend as much time as possible experimenting with mic (H5) placement, distance, angles, etc. to get the best possible sound recorded to begin with. If you don't have a studio/treated room, try different rooms, facing different ways so the microphones patterns are optimized. Try both XY and MS capsules if you have them. Really, there's not a lot of magic that you can do to fix a bad acoustic guitar recording IME. A good track, OTOH, can withstand a fair amount of abuse and still shine.

I think using the XY mics at an angle that allows both the body and neck to get recorded about equally is a good place to start, and try not to get too far away unless you're in a glorious room. Then, balance those two tracks to get the right amount of bass (body) and string (neck) sounds. Fix your technique if it's really noisy, or try moving the mic away (to a point, but clean technique makes mic placement more flexible).

Once you've got the balance, slowly consider EQ to fill out the sound and a little bit of compression - really a little. I'd consider sending both guitar tracks to a single aux and putting your FX on that channel so they stay balanced. Start with EQ for a good, full sound (and you might play with putting EQ on the individual tracks or aux). Then, only a little bit of compression, adjusting the attack to keep things smooth, but not take the life out. I'd start with an auto release and see how that feels.

I would not spread the XY tracks widely. A little bit of distance can sound Ok, but you don't want the guitar to sound like it's much more than a point. You can get more spread with reverb by sending those channels to one with a good room IR type reverb plug (stereo), placed on that aux.

Good luck.
 
Thanks for the response.

As regards to mic placement, the tutor was kind enough to spend some extra time with me and explain placement. In the end i finished recording by placing the zoom at about 30cm from the 12th fret and then fed the pickup of the acoustic guitar directly into the TLR input of the zoom...all in all I think it is a very good recording considering I am starting out.

Now...to your advise of editing...when you say balancing you mean doing this in audition or else balancing the recording channels themselves during recording...if this is done in audition any indication on how to start on this please.

The other thing is how to send the guitar tracks to a single aux in audition...then if I am understanding your flow would be:

1. guitar tracks to single aux
2. EQ for good sound
3. compression (try auto release)
4. reverb (room effect)

Thanks so much for your assistance...the tutor advised us to experiment as much as we like but having this guide is of immense help to me and I look so much forward for your reply.
 
Emann said:
Thanks for the response.

As regards to mic placement, the tutor was kind enough to spend some extra time with me and explain placement. In the end i finished recording by placing the zoom at about 30cm from the 12th fret and then fed the pickup of the acoustic guitar directly into the TLR input of the zoom...all in all I think it is a very good recording considering I am starting out.

Now...to your advise of editing...when you say balancing you mean doing this in audition or else balancing the recording channels themselves during recording...if this is done in audition any indication on how to start on this please.

The other thing is how to send the guitar tracks to a single aux in audition...then if I am understanding your flow would be:

1. guitar tracks to single aux
2. EQ for good sound
3. compression (try auto release)
4. reverb (room effect)

Thanks so much for your assistance...the tutor advised us to experiment as much as we like but having this guide is of immense help to me and I look so much forward for your reply.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I'm not an Audition user, but I assumed you had the XY mics both turned on, and you're recording them as separate tracks. I'd never use the pickup, personally, but if you've got 3 tracks in the DAW, you just use the fader (or maybe clip gain to start if necessary) to get each one contributing to the mix so it sounds the way you want. At this point I'll suggest putting a "reference track" in the DAW to make sure you're working in the right direction.

And, yes, that's pretty much what I'd do. Mix for levels, then EQ, then compression, and finally reverb. I'd probably have the reverb on another aux, though if the guitar is the only thing you're mixing you might put it on the guitar aux. It's just my practice to generally route all things through the same reverb/aux, unless I'm using different settings on some things to move them back/forward a bit. (Not that common in my small group stuff.)
 
ok noted...one thing as I cannot find this in audition..when you say place tracks on a single aux..I tried searching this in audition but cannot find anything really useful...do you know if this step maybe called in some other terms or explain to me what is actually happening to try and google more into this and how I can achieve it in audition please.
 
oh ok...just found the adobe forums and was trying to find some info in there...thanks a bunch once again.

btw..any idea of how to make a search in here...I am trying to search in this forum or others on editing fingerstyle acoustic guitar but I am just getting an error page...both with simple and advanced search.
 
I didn't see any errors. I don't think you'll get good results with "editing" because, to me at least, that's the kind of thing I do to a track to clean it up, like delete silent regions, maybe noise or breaths, etc. You might just do an advanced search and select Posts, search titles only, and enter "fingerstyle acoustic guitar" as keywords. I got a LOT of posts. You can refine from there.
 
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