#31
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What a great user name
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Enjoy the Journey.... Kev... KevWind at Soundcloud KevWind at YouYube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...EZxkPKyieOTgRD System : Studio system Avid Carbon interface , PT Ultimate 2023.12 -Mid 2020 iMac 27" 3.8GHz 8-core i7 10th Gen ,, Ventura 13.2.1 Mobile MBP M1 Pro , PT Ultimate 2023.12 Sonoma 14.4 |
#32
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Well, to get away from the physics for a moment, there's a couple of things I always like to do when recording acoustic.
Firstly I try different miking positions and hardly ever just point at the soundhole. When we listen to guitar we don't just stick our ear by the soundhole, so I never mic there unless I want a really 'boomy' sound (which sometimes I do). I've miked from over the shoulder, with the mic facing the wooden floor in front of the guitar and with a mic in an open cupboard about four foot from the guitar. I often hang duvets about in order to tame a little ringing in the less than perfect rooms I've been recording in. I normally use a Rode NT1 (LDC) or a Rode NT55 (SDC, with omni capsule) but that's only because they're the only mics I've got! I also change the pick I'm using, sometimes thick, sometimes thin, depending on what sound I get. For a lighter zingy sound, I like really thin picks, but more often use medium to thick picks and you get a bit more expression with them. Once I've recorded the acoustic, in terms of treatment I try to limit it to eq and compression. For EQ I'll put a high pass filter on as high as I can go without hearing anything I don't like. Due to the nature of the rooms I'm recording in, there's often a few little room frequencies that I'm not keen on, so I'll try to zero in on them and filter them out a bit. Sometimes I'll put a little high shelving on to add a bit of 'air' and sparkle, and I've been known to scoop the mids a little bit, which I find provides room for the vocals to sit in the mix. For compression I generally only use it to bring down any aggressive strums by a few decibels, I wouldn't really recommend any heavy compression for acoustics. All of this is only advice based on what I've learnt from recording myself (the music is on my myspace in my sig.) so take it with a pinch of salt, but I find it's served me well.
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#33
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1. Record clean tracks 2. Turn knobs till it sounds good 3. Stop Step 3's the hard part :-) What matters in the end is how it sounds, not how the math works out.
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Music: Spotify, Bandcamp Videos: You Tube Channel Books: Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), Christmas Carols for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), A DADGAD Christmas, Alternate Tunings book Online Course: Alternate Tunings for Fingerstyle Guitar |
#34
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Record clean, pleasantly warm and balanced tracks. That is really what counts (but not all that easy). Get that right and very little if any post recording manipulation is needed (ok, almost always some reverb) for an acoustic guitar solo.
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Derek Coombs Youtube -> Website -> Music -> Tabs Guitars by Mark Blanchard, Albert&Mueller, Paul Woolson, Collings, Composite Acoustics, and Derek Coombs "Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Woods hands pick by eye and ear
Made to one with pride and love To be that we hold so dear A voice from heavens above |
#35
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I've seen many of your video recordings for Acoustic Guitar magazine, and it always sounds great to me. Do you do any compression or eq-ing for these recordings? Even the Taylor baritone video with the H4n sounds really good! I'm sure much of it comes from your playing but I would like to know maybe, how you did the eq-ing/compression, if any for maybe say, the Taylor baritone video. How much a factor does the room in which you are recording in play? Thanks! Pier. |
#36
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Also, the funny thing is, I have this nice treated studio room, and I used it for some AG videos I did a while back, but I got tired of tripping over video gear in my music room, so the more recent videos, including the Bari-8 were shot in a completely untreated small 10x11 spare bedroom. I'm a believer in room treatment, but this untreated room's doing ok, at least for video. If you want to hear what happens when you add some EQ, I just posted a performance video of that Bari-8 on You Tube earlier today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDbYbdd4Qn0 on this, I did a bit of stuff, since it wasn't for a review. You Tube's mangling the sound a bit, but it's close to the original, considering. This was recorded in the same room, and again, I'm just using the H4n's mics, but I also added the pickup into an extra channel. I have this project, so I'm checking the details. There a tiny bit of compression on the mic track, I usually try to do it so I can't even see the meters move. Subliminal compression :-) There's a tiny high end boost (1.5 db at 12KHz), and a little midrange cut, -1db at 220Hz. The pickup track has a stereo expander on it, and a few db of EQ cut in the mids around 500Hz and a rolloff above 2KHz. The pickup is blended in 8 db below the mics, so its just a touch for some extra oomph. There's some reverb, and a light multi-band compressor over the final mix, just a sort of mastering step. If I was doing a recording to be professionally mastered, I would leave this off, and let the mastering guy do it if needed, but when I'm doing it myself, it just adds a little bit. So there's a bunch of stuff there, but each one's pretty subtle. I can probably turn any single one of the processing modules off, and not really hear any difference, but they add up. Again, this is just for my own stuff, not the AG demos. Whew, that was long winded....
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Music: Spotify, Bandcamp Videos: You Tube Channel Books: Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), Christmas Carols for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), A DADGAD Christmas, Alternate Tunings book Online Course: Alternate Tunings for Fingerstyle Guitar |
#37
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Thanks for the detailed response Doug. Wonderful playing.
Currently I find that my room is boomy and I kind of have to struggle with positioning to get a clear sound - do you think I should get some bass traps to treat my room? |
#38
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Sounds like a good idea. Room treatment is the most useful this you can do to get a better sound, I think.
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Music: Spotify, Bandcamp Videos: You Tube Channel Books: Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), Christmas Carols for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), A DADGAD Christmas, Alternate Tunings book Online Course: Alternate Tunings for Fingerstyle Guitar |
#39
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Doug, on a side note, are you fully cut over to Logic/Mac? I'm doing all my new stuff there now but still using Audition for any tricky audio cleanup (chiefly the wrist crack I will never get rid of!).
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Edward http://www.edwardhamlin.com Doerr Artist custom Cedar/Mahogany Lowden F10C Cedar/Mahogany Lowden F35C Sinker/Tasmanian blackwood Paragon MJ Sitka/Maple Paragon MJ custom Carpathian/Malaysian blackwood Brunner custom travel guitar I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones. - John Cage |
#40
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Music: Spotify, Bandcamp Videos: You Tube Channel Books: Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), Christmas Carols for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), A DADGAD Christmas, Alternate Tunings book Online Course: Alternate Tunings for Fingerstyle Guitar |