Mics positioning and channels separation

[lightman]

Hello everybody,

I'm recording guitar+voice with a two mics setup. I have a Bluebird at mouth level, about 6-8" away, and a SM57 pointed at the neck of the guitar, 12th fret. Works quite good, but I still have a little problem with the channels separation. In the voice channel I still get, in the background, the guitar, and in the guitar channel I get a little bit of the voice.

Now, I understand that complete separation playing and singing at the same time is almost impossible to achieve, but, first off, any tips on how to maximize separation ? And, given that I will always have some background guitar in the voice channel, would it be possible to edit the channel so that to cut off the background guitar ?

Thank you all very much, and sorry if they're stupid questions

 

[Steenamaroo]

You're right, it's one of those things. You're never going to get complete separation.

The best that you can do is use dynamic mics in close proximity to the source (which you're already doing with the guitar), and angle them in such a way that the unwanted sound is behind them.

Last time I did this I ended up just recording guitar and overdubbing the vocals cos no matter what i tried, that just sounded better.


I know it's not what you asked, but the alternative is to just record voice and guitar as one entity. Set up a nice stereo mic setup or something if the room sounds ok.
Obviously that means you have to get the balance right live, but that's not always a bad thing.

 

[grimtraveller]

You say it works quite good. Is the bleed into both mics really that bothersome ?

 

[Armistice]

You can't really "edit a channel" to remove part of a sound with any success.... especially when it's sound that's largely in the same frequency range.

Learn to play and sing separately is the best advice. Is there some particular reason you're trying to do it all at once?