Recording Acoustic fingerstyle questions

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git90

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Okay.. first post here :-)

Im a 20 year old musician that just started using pro tools. I have an mbox3 and pro tools 8 and I want to record some original tunes.
I play mostly fingerstyle ala Tommy Emmanuel and this is what I'm planning to record. I was wondering if someone has any tips on how I should record this kind of music? Most of the tunes are just solo guitar and others have some overdubs in them..
To record im using an se electronics x1 mic. Im really new at this so please bare with me..

- Should I record in mono or stereo track?
- I have heard of people recording with a mic as well as plugging the guitar in and recording line signal and then mixing it together. ? anyone know anything about this?
- Where should I place the mic and how far from the guitar should it be? What room should I record in? I know that this probably needs some experimenting and trying out different things to see what sounds good but i want some tips before I start :-)
- Some of the tunes have overdubs in them. Mostly just some harmony and guitar solos things. How should I go about recording and mixing these tracks together. Mono? Stereo?

any info on this will be helpful. please keep in mind that I'm new at this so please explain in an easy way :-)
Thanks for reading!
 
Welcome to the site

I record finger picking guitar also, but not as a solo iinstrument. I usually have it in with a typical band setting so some ambient noise and less-than-perfect capture doesn't matter much.

The room and mic are going to be the biggerst factors in recording. For the room, pick the biggest you can find, hopefully with a hardwood or tile floor. If you are at home, wait until everyone is gone so the house is quiet. Turn off the HVAC system. Find a spot in the middle of the room.

For mics, there are several options. I use an LDC at the 12th fret pointed in towards the soundhole. I have experimented with a second mic back 3 ft as a room mic, but I never liked the overall sound. Some people do a Mid/Side mic placement. I have not tried that before. It requires a mic with a figure 8 pattern and a second mic. But I have heard a recording of a solo guitar with M/S capture and it is very very nice and full sounding. Search these forums for topics on mid-side micing.

Mic selection is key to getting the guitar to sound good. I use an old MXL mic that's a little dark. I love it because it captures a lot of the wood sound from the guitar. I have tried an Studio Projects C1, but thought it was too brittle for that style of playing.

In the Guitar section is a Stickie thread by White Strat that talks about how he records his guitars. It's quite detailed and answers a lot fo questions; AND his recordings are beautiful. He talks about Stereo and Mono choices.

Hope this helps,
 
Okay :) Theres is one room in my house thats very big and has hardwood floors. Ill try it out. What about recording in the bathroom? I sometimes bring my guitar in there and play because of there great acoustics. :)

Sadly I don't have any mics to choose from. I only have the se electronics x1 mic with is a large diaphragm condenser mic. I usually have the mic pointed at the 12 fret 20-30 cm from the guitar. So far Im not a huge fan of the sound I've gotten. It just sound kinda "dead".. Its probably cause I'm just recording in my room though..
Thanks for the help! :-)
 
git90 said:
Okay :) . What about recording in the bathroom? I sometimes bring my guitar in there and play because of there great acoustics. :)
Click to expand...

You might think it has great acoustics because you hear it reverbing, but what you don't hear is the mid-low freqs building up. Your mic will hear it and it will sound like mush. The bathroom is too small a room to record in. You don't want to record in small rooms unless it is completely dead, you'll never get rid of the box sound from the recording.

You shoul dpost a clip if you want specific comments on your mic and recording.

HTH,
:)
 
Thats good to know. Thank you!
Ill try to make some recordings :)
 
anyone else got any advice? I wonder whats the best way to go about recording fingerstyle guitar in pro tools. Should I record in mono or stereo? Should I record both with a mic and direct line in and mix those together? For the tunes with overdubs should I record mono/stereo?
 
You should do all of the above and pick your favourite, ideally.

It's hard to commit, because for every opinion I have, some one will have the opposite.

That said, I generally record acoustic with a stereo setup if the guitar is the main instrument in the mix.
I'll probably go mono if it's contributing to a mix with several guitars, and I'll only ever use a direct line in if I want that particular sound.

Direct line in has the benefit of bypassing the acoustic sound of your room, but on the flip side it's not going to sound very natural.
Often it can be quite percussive sounding.

Like I say, it's a list of things to try.

If you only have one mic, it isn't a problem.
Just spend a lot of time trying that mic in different positions and at different distances.
Don't forget to try the instrument in different positions around the room too!
Play into corners, out of corners, bang in the middle, facing a wall, with your back to a wall, etc.

For a quicker method, get a friend to wear the guitar and slowly move around whilst playing.
You can turn one ear towards him and cover the other to get an idea of how the guitar sounds as you both move.
 
Thanks man! Ive just started to record on my own so I wanted to know if there was an ideal way of recording that kind of music. I have never really been a fan of the sound of a direct line on an acoustic but I have heard of people doing it that way..
So just one stereo track will do the trick? I have seen guys duplicating one track to get a richer sound ..

Thanks for the help! :-)
 
The digital duplicating thing is a messy debate, but the fact under it all is that there are certain things you have to do to make duplicating tricks work.

Just duplicating will do nothing but make the track louder.
Panning the two will just move it around, but it'll sound the same.

If you use some kind of different processing on each copy, then there are results to be heard, but personally, I would not recommend this approach for a solo acoustic performance.

No matter what it is, it isn't natural. :)

If you only own one mic, then either do a single mono recordings, or do two mono recordings of the same thing and play with the volumes and panning between them. This is double tracking.

Equal volume and panned apart will certainly give you a richer sound. You'll have to be tight though!
 
If you have only one mic, by definition you are recording mono. Duplicating a track does nothing but make it louder. Duplicating a track and shifting it slightly in time is a technique that people try that will give you a far inferior result to playing the piece twice.

So set your mic up, get your pickup line in, record your piece. You now have two mono tracks. Repeat the process. You now have four mono tracks. Pan the two mic tracks 50-75% L and R. Pan the two line in tracks with their respective mic track perhaps a bit further in or out. Set the mic tracks to 0 and slowly add some line in to see if it improves the sound at all. Some form of blend often does, especially with less than stellar mic, mic positioning, guitar and room.

Record in the middle of the biggest room you have and move all the furniture you can in there, as well as any soft furnishings and/or fat people who can be trusted not to move or speak whilst you're playing... these will help absorb reflections. Make sure you have plenty of padding BEHIND you.

Bathrooms are where you chop your cocaine... they're not suitable for recording, generally...

That's everything you need to know for now and it will give you a starting point from which you can explore further options. Now stop hanging around here and go and record something. Come back and tell us how it went...
 
See.. Steen and I independently told you to do approximately the same thing... so do it.
 
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