Going back to the beginning

[fritsthegirl]

Heeding some advice to get back to the basics, so I recorded a bit of finger picking.

This was meant to be a simple exercise, but it's the hardest thing I've done so far. It feels like I've been polishing a very fragile turd for hours. Might have been a bit heavy handed.

I'm of the opinion that it sounds a bit like it was recorded in a tube. But instead of spending hours trying to figure what that is exactly, I'd see what you learned folk think about it to get some direction. I used a little bit of reverb and a touch of (what I think is panning). And I played around a bit with the threshold using Reacomp.

Thanks for listening.

 

[TripleM]

I liked the playing and the song. Very nice. I thought the recording was pretty good.

There seemed to be a little boominess there. I'm guessing a notch somewhere around 120hz, give or take, might help. You also might be able to do a high shelf boost. Maybe 8K and above? Might add a bit of sheen to it.

 

[fritsthegirl]

I liked the playing and the song. Very nice. I thought the recording was pretty good.

There seemed to be a little boominess there. I'm guessing a notch somewhere around 120hz, give or take, might help. You also might be able to do a high shelf boost. Maybe 8K and above? Might add a bit of sheen to it.

Oh cool, cheers. Yes, I heard that boominess as well. I tried, but I couldn't figure out what was causing the problem. Excellent to know where to look for the problem now, thanks for the tip.

 

[TripleM]

That's only a guess. That might not be the best place though. Try a very thin, very large boost at first. Start at maybe 80hz or so and start to slide it up. Maybe go as high as 180hz or so. Hopefully somewhere in there the boominess will jump out. When it does, change the large boost to a cut. Then hopefully that will tame it.

 

[Armistice]

I guess seeing I'm one of the people giving that advice, I'd better have a listen

I'm not getting boom but I'm only listening on small 'phones, and I trust Triple M's ears...

What sort of guitar is it, what mic, and where is the mic?

I had a lot of boom issues myself, using very big loud all-wood dreadnaughts - over the years I've learnt to control it by mic placement and judicial use of high pass filtering. And sometimes "radical" mic placement. It's all about what works for your guitar in your room with your style of playing.

It's a little trebly for my ears, but you're not primarily going to be recording unaccompanied acoustic guitar so it probably will work just fine in a mix once you get other elements, such as your voice, in it. But it's not bad at all - I've heard a hell of a lot worse, including from my own studio!

In terms of the playing, I'd suggest you're not really "at one" with the piece just yet... don't know if you're just focusing on the recording side of things at this stage, so if so, apologies, and just ignore what I'm saying.

Fingerstyle is hard to play well enough to record, and it's all about being relaxed in the hands, as far as possible - sounds to me like you're a little tense and grabbing at the strings a little still - treble ones especially.

Good though.... keep pluggin'... keep learning.

 

[fritsthegirl]

That's only a guess. That might not be the best place though. Try a very thin, very large boost at first. Start at maybe 80hz or so and start to slide it up. Maybe go as high as 180hz or so. Hopefully somewhere in there the boominess will jump out. When it does, change the large boost to a cut. Then hopefully that will tame it.

I've had a go, and you were right about the 120 give or take, well I think it sounded a lot better once I pulled it down a bit. Which is what I had done in earlier versions but then wimped out thinking the adjustment was too much for someone who didn't know what they were doing. I'm not quite sure I understood the high pass filter advice, I think I did find where to change this in the REAEQ but will have to learn a a bit about it to be sure I'm doing it right. Thanks again!

 

[fritsthegirl]

I guess seeing I'm one of the people giving that advice, I'd better have a listen

I'm not getting boom but I'm only listening on small 'phones, and I trust Triple M's ears...

What sort of guitar is it, what mic, and where is the mic?

I had a lot of boom issues myself, using very big loud all-wood dreadnaughts - over the years I've learnt to control it by mic placement and judicial use of high pass filtering. And sometimes "radical" mic placement. It's all about what works for your guitar in your room with your style of playing.

It's a little trebly for my ears, but you're not primarily going to be recording unaccompanied acoustic guitar so it probably will work just fine in a mix once you get other elements, such as your voice, in it. But it's not bad at all - I've heard a hell of a lot worse, including from my own studio!

In terms of the playing, I'd suggest you're not really "at one" with the piece just yet... don't know if you're just focusing on the recording side of things at this stage, so if so, apologies, and just ignore what I'm saying.

Fingerstyle is hard to play well enough to record, and it's all about being relaxed in the hands, as far as possible - sounds to me like you're a little tense and grabbing at the strings a little still - treble ones especially.

Good though.... keep pluggin'... keep learning.

Thanks, I will!

It's a Tanglewood semi acoustic, so yeh it's ALL wood and pretty loud and all. Like what sort of radical mic placement have you tried? I recorded this at around the 12th fret, bout a foot away, pointing slightly to the body. I am thinking now it's that which caused the boominess. It's a condensor mic, AT4033. I'd love to get a second mic, like a SM-57 or something. I heard you can get some nice sounds recording guitar with these two types together.

BUT I haven't got any money for that right now, and I think my priority should be to get some decent recordings with what I've got, so any advice here will be appreciated. Will try to be a bit more avant-garde with the placement in the meantime to see what sort of results I get.

It's good to get feedback on the playing as well, and I totally agree with you. It wasn't the focus of this exercise true, but it still should always be as good as it can be. I hear you on the treble strings. I didn't like this heaviness one bit when I heard it back at work on some speakers that really brought it out.

Anyway, thanks for your time spent teaching this NOOB some tricks, I really appreciate it.

 

[Armistice]

Well the conventional wisdom is to do pretty much what you've done regarding mic position... all I'm saying is feel free to try other mic position options.

I haven't done any fingerstyle for a while but for strummed, for instance, I always use 2 mics - one, an AKG451B pencil in some variation of that standard position, pointing at about the 12th fret, never the body, and lately I've taken to using my stage vocal mic, which is a Neumann KSM104 (which is actually a condenser) and placing it parallel to the fret board at about the 9th fret or so, and between the two of them , probably two thirds AKG one third Neumann panned to the same position, I can get a really nice sound, once I roll off via a high pass filter (more aggressively on the second mic) and notch a bit here and there (as Triple M suggested).

I also record exactly the same thing twice and put one left and one right.

A standard trick but gives you a beautiful rich sound - especially, with your case, where you'll be singing straight down the middle. Worth a try.

But as I've said before, what works for me may not work for you, or you may not actually like that type of sound... but if you play around enough, you'll work out how to get the sound that you do like.

Even with just one mic, try the double tracking thing on a simple strummed song, or bit of a song, put the tiniest bit of reverb on the guitars, then sing and put something a bit more lush on your voice, and see if you like the effect. You learn something either way... if you like it, you can use it in the future, if you don't like it you've learnt a bit about playing discipline and being able to repeat, exactly, what you play.. useful info on your journey..

You'll also find plenty of the people here who do really good recordings of acoustic guitars use a single mic anyway, so yeah, save your pennies for something else, but in the meantime...

 

[fritsthegirl]

Nice, thanks heaps. I tried the double take thing on this finger picking tune but it sounded like it was recorded under the sea. I abandoned it after about 15 attempts to get it right. Keeping good time has always been a bit of a sore spot, as for playing to metronome - you'll just hear me blame the latency issue that I don't have. I need to work on it though, you're right to say it's an exercise more than anything.

Strumming is a bit easier in the meantime and I'm keen to try that with the rest of your ideas. Quite interested to see how that sounds. Maybe see what it sounds like recording one take at the 9th fret and the other at the 12th.

Gad, so many possibilities!

 

[moresound]

I liked it.
Play around with the microphone placement and you shouldn't have to worry in the future about boominess.

 

[Manslick]

The AT4033 is an excellent mic for anything. I have one. Short of getting another and reading this https://homerecording.com/bbs/general-discussions/recording-techniques/acoustic-guitar-recording-101-a-290919/, you might try a lighter picking technique. I hear either nails or finger picks making a bright ringing sound.

 

[Armistice]

On the metronome thing... I never use one.

What I do do, however, is program a basic drum track (I use Addictive Drums - you can download their trial kit for nix) via Reaper's MIDI editor. This track has the rhythm feel of the track in it and it's soooooo much better tracking to that than a soulless click click click click of a metronome..

Worth considering when you get to it.

 

[fritsthegirl]

I liked it.
Play around with the microphone placement and you shouldn't have to worry in the future about boominess.

Thanks a lot! I was playing a John Fahey tune along side to help me pick the sound. I'd give a right arm, well maybe a toe, to spend an hour with that guy.

 

[fritsthegirl]

On the metronome thing... I never use one.

What I do do, however, is program a basic drum track (I use Addictive Drums - you can download their trial kit for nix) via Reaper's MIDI editor. This track has the rhythm feel of the track in it and it's soooooo much better tracking to that than a soulless click click click click of a metronome..

Worth considering when you get to it.

Will try the Addictive drums, sounds sweet.

 

[fritsthegirl]

The AT4033 is an excellent mic for anything. I have one. Short of getting another and reading this https://homerecording.com/bbs/general-discussions/recording-techniques/acoustic-guitar-recording-101-a-290919/, you might try a lighter picking technique. I hear either nails or finger picks making a bright ringing sound.

Aye, you're right about that Manslick. I have random finger picking nails available on my right hand, so have this uneven awful sound going on. I never learned to use a pick unfortunately, I try once in a while, but find it so hard.

The mic seems to do most things for me no hands, which is a bonus. Its not mine though, so my time is limited with it. My friend's going to want it back soon, or I'll bust it and have to buy it off him, we'll see what comes first!

 

[RAMI]

Sounds like a good recording and great playing to me. I wish I could play guitar like that.

This keeps looping in my player as I'm posting...now I don't want it to stop.

 

[robgreen]

I've had a go, and you were right about the 120 give or take, well I think it sounded a lot better once I pulled it down a bit. Which is what I had done in earlier versions but then wimped out thinking the adjustment was too much for someone who didn't know what they were doing. I'm not quite sure I understood the high pass filter advice, I think I did find where to change this in the REAEQ but will have to learn a a bit about it to be sure I'm doing it right. Thanks again!

I think it's really good advice from triplem. I use a large bodied acoustic too, and really struggled with boominess until I learned to do this. I loop a very small section of the track with the problem frequencies in and just run the narrow high spiked EQ along the band until I find where it goes crazy. Then I reverse the spike and it removes the boom.

I find there's always an element of tradeoff to be made as you end up sacrificing some of the fullbodiedness of your sound doing this, but trust your ears and find a happy medium. As triplem mentions, you're looking to sweep between around 80-180hz, which is pretty much the exact range of frequencies of your bottom three strings.

You'll probably find that the arrangement of your song dictates how savagely you can cut the lower frequencies - with bass, drums etc. in the song you can cut a little more as it won't be so noticeable. I'd be quite conservative here though where the guitar is on its own and could sound quite thin if you go too far.

I also wouldn't get too hung up on trying to double track the fingerpicking - it's probably a nightmare to match up exactly and sounds absolutely fine on its own. Pretty tune!

 

[fritsthegirl]

Sounds like a good recording and great playing to me. I wish I could play guitar like that.

This keeps looping in my player as I'm posting...now I don't want it to stop.

Yikes, watch out your ears will bleed! It has got that roundabout thing going on, I have played this maybe 10,000 times in exactly such a fashion.

I think it's really good advice from triplem. I use a large bodied acoustic too, and really struggled with boominess until I learned to do this. I loop a very small section of the track with the problem frequencies in and just run the narrow high spiked EQ along the band until I find where it goes crazy. Then I reverse the spike and it removes the boom.

I find there's always an element of tradeoff to be made as you end up sacrificing some of the fullbodiedness of your sound doing this, but trust your ears and find a happy medium. As triplem mentions, you're looking to sweep between around 80-180hz, which is pretty much the exact range of frequencies of your bottom three strings.

You'll probably find that the arrangement of your song dictates how savagely you can cut the lower frequencies - with bass, drums etc. in the song you can cut a little more as it won't be so noticeable. I'd be quite conservative here though where the guitar is on its own and could sound quite thin if you go too far.

I also wouldn't get too hung up on trying to double track the fingerpicking - it's probably a nightmare to match up exactly and sounds absolutely fine on its own. Pretty tune!

I just want to ask this if you have the time to reply. Say you didn't double track the same recording (music to my ears), would you still duplicate the track you have and pan/ apply the sweep of EQ equally on both tracks? Or just run the one recording down the middle with the adjustments? Or perhaps I can answer this myself and say: try it both ways and do whatever sounds best...?

 

[robgreen]

I just want to ask this if you have the time to reply. Say you didn't double track the same recording (music to my ears), would you still duplicate the track you have and pan/ apply the sweep of EQ equally on both tracks? Or just run the one recording down the middle with the adjustments? Or perhaps I can answer this myself and say: try it both ways and do whatever sounds best...?

Hey, definitely the latter. By duplicating identical tracks, you're not doing anything at all except increasing the volume. You're not gaining anything by panning identical tracks either - they effectively remain mono because there's no difference between them at all. It doesn't widen the stereo spread. The purpose of double tracking a line is to add depth through the subtle differences between the two waves.

If you can do it, then all well and good but I personally would find it really hard with something as intricate as this.

One thing you could try which is a bit of a gimmick, but can work occasionally is to duplicate a track, pan them hard and nudge the waveform of one very, very, very slightly forward. I wouldn't overuse it though as it gets a bit tiresome.

 

[fritsthegirl]

Hey, definitely the latter. By duplicating identical tracks, you're not doing anything at all except increasing the volume. You're not gaining anything by panning identical tracks either - they effectively remain mono because there's no difference between them at all. It doesn't widen the stereo spread. The purpose of double tracking a line is to add depth through the subtle differences between the two waves.

If you can do it, then all well and good but I personally would find it really hard with something as intricate as this.

One thing you could try which is a bit of a gimmick, but can work occasionally is to duplicate a track, pan them hard and nudge the waveform of one very, very, very slightly forward. I wouldn't overuse it though as it gets a bit tiresome.

Another thing or two learned, thank you.