Guitar bleeding and ambient noise on vocal track.

[Delgado69]

I'm recording into a Digi001 with a Taylor acoustic and a Sennheiser(sic?) mic and I'm getting a lot of bleed on my vocal mic b/c of the high input. I have a couple of ideas:

1)re-record vocals
2)strip silence in Pro Tools
3)EQ

Anyone have any other ideas? Thanks.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

If your guitar track is fine, then I'd say just re-record the vocals.

G.

 

[TexRoadkill]

Yeah, just redo the vocals.

 

[Delgado69]

Thanks for the replies.

That's what I was thinking as well, but I am concerned that I will lose the vocal nuances that go with the song if I re-record the vox without playing the guitar as well.

 

[Tim Gillett]

Think of it as singing along with a band. It's harder in some ways as the track will not listen to you or adapt to you in the slightest but there are muso's I've played with who are not much better!
Playing or singing along with a pre recorded track is a great studio discipline, especially for musos who never or rarely play music with others.

all the best, Tim

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Thanks for the replies.

That's what I was thinking as well, but I am concerned that I will lose the vocal nuances that go with the song if I re-record the vox without playing the guitar as well.

The onus is on you on that one. There really is no reason why one shouldn't be able to give just as good of a performance empty-handed; millions of vocalists do it every day.

I can understand that you might be used to singing/playing and not just singing. If it makes you feel better, you can still hold the guitar and sit in your seat as if you're playing. But if you can't yet deliver a high-quality vocal without playing at the same time, the only thing you're missing is practice .

If you're looking for an alternative, you can embrace the bleed. Record the guitar and vocals together as a stereo signal instead of two mono sources. Set up a vertically oriented stereo pair mic rig or possibly even a horizontal Jecklin disk.

G.

 

[Delgado69]

I can understand that you might be used to singing/playing and not just singing. If it makes you feel better, you can still hold the guitar and sit in your seat as if you're playing. But if you can't yet deliver a high-quality vocal without playing at the same time, the only thing you're missing is practice .

If you're looking for an alternative, you can embrace the bleed. Record the guitar and vocals together as a stereo signal instead of two mono sources. Set up a vertically oriented stereo pair mic rig or possibly even a horizontal Jecklin disk.

G.

Well, this may be most of it. I play my songs differently everytime and don't want to be held down to having to follow a track. Seems a bit stale, but it's all part of recording, I know. Maybe I'll do the stereo track thing. Would require more mic's, though. I like that.

Sidebar: I also think I'm perfectly capable of laying down the high-quality vox w/o playing - I just like doing both at the same time.

 

[cusebassman]

If you don't want bleed between the mics that are picking up vocals and acoustic respectively, you will definitely need to re-record vocals. However, with the use of the proper mics you can generally get a decent separation. I've used a large diaphragm condensor for the vocals and a small diaphragm or dynamic mic on acoustic before and got pretty good results... of course with two live mic's, you'll always run into this problem.

As for ambient noise sneaking in on vocals, there's not much to be done short of creating a sound-resistant booth. I created such a thing in a closet with some extra mattresses against the walls, and a bunch of closet-poles running above them with a layer of carpet and then a bunch of layers of carpet padding sitting on top of it. It gets rid of a decent amount of noise, however, if there's heavy construction going on outside the house then yea, it still bleeds through. But, for getting rid of day-to-day noise from the people who live upstairs and downstairs, it does a great job.

 

[Delgado69]

Thanks.