mic'ing guitar and voice live

[Clementine]

I have recently noticed that in professional studio's that a guy will be singing, and that same guy, is playing guitar at the same time, is being mic'ed by two different mics that are fairly close togather. One mic lower, for the guitar, and the other mic higher, for a voice... if he is going to sing and play at the same time... would his voice bleed into the guitar mic, and wouldn't his guitar bleed into the voice mic?

That is kind of a hard question to explain!
But if anyone has info on why this works, and the disadvantages and advantages of the technique, I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks a lot.

 

[crazydoc]

Oh my darlin' Clementine -

There are lots more knowledgeable folks in this forum than I, but I'll give it a shot and will stand to be corrected.
The mics are likely directional cardioids, one pointed at the guitar and the other at the singer, and will reject a fair amount of the off-axis signal. One track will be predominently vocal and the other instrumental, with a small amount of bleed. This may even give a small amount of pleasing stereo effect when the tracks are mixed.
Just my guess.

 

[Clementine]

Ok- I get ya

Great! Appreciate your thoughts. I figured it had something to do with the directional "stuff" about the mic's. lol Anyway. I've often had a hard time recording myself live {guitar and vocals} for this reason. I guess the studios had a little bit better mic's than I do..... just maybe. lol

Anway... Thanks a lot!

 

[heylow]

Right....

Keep in mind though that performance is everything in that situation. Even though there is only a relatively small amount of bleed....you cant just go back and fix one track....guitar and vocal both need to be keepers.


heylow

 

[Harvey Gerst]

The big problems (unless the mics are positioned very close to the source) are bleed, and phase cancellation (comb filtering, a particularly nasty sound).