mic bleed thru

[paresh]

I just moved into a new room that is very live. I'm recording someone singing & playing guitar at the same time & getting too much bleed thru w 2 mics. It sounds the same if I use 2 or just 1. Is there anything I can do to minimize this? Thanks.

 

[LemonTree]

I wouldn't worry too much about the bleed although there are a few things you can do to cut it down a bit.

Mic placement is the first one. Setting up some sort of baffle between the two mics and sources.

You could also record to a click track and have them record the whole thing playing and singing as a scratch track then go back and redo the guitar seperately and then the vox seperately.

I've done a lot of vocal/acoustic guitar recording in tandem and what I usualy do is forget all about the bleed. Get your guitar track sounding exactly like you want it with EQ, compression, reverb...whatever and forget about how the vocal sounds that's bled into it, then do the same to the vox, then blend them.

Bleedthrough can be your friend and add to the cohesion of your mix.

Play with it and have fun.

 

[Cult_Status02]

I think unless you have to push the levels of either WAY up, then you shouldn't have too much of a problem. I think if you wanted to get rid of bleed through you could set up the vocal mic with the back facing the guitar (so like straight up to you and not angled [unless of course it's a tube mic]). It depends on what mics you're using though also. I think as far as micing the guitar goes you'll have a hard time getting rid of vocal bleed thru though unless you record the parts seperatly or as Lemontree said set up a baffle.

 

[Fletcher]

The best way to isolate a vocal from an acoustic guitar [and vice versa] when you're recording both at the same time is by using two microphones capable of "Figure 8" pattern.

You point one mic at the singer's mouth with the "null" of the 'Figure 8' pattern aimed at the guitar. You point the other mic at the guitar with the "null" of the 'Figure 8' pattern aimed at the singer's mouth.

This pretty much only works with Figure 8 microphones as the two sides of a Figure 8 mic pattern are 180' out of polarity and cancel "broadband" at the null point. With a cardioid microphone the pattern becomes more and more "omni-directional" the lower you go in the frequency spectrum which means that you'll not only get bleed between the two sound sources [vox and gtr] but it'll be in that 'mud' area you really won't want to reinforce if you're aiming for clarity in the recording.

I've used ribbon mics for this [Crowley and Tripp; AEA's; Royers] as well as several FET condenser mics... the Microtech Gefell UMT-70S being one of my drop dead favorites for this application.

Best of luck with it.