Recording vocal and guitar with some separation

[shufflebeat]

A small aside to all this good advice. Often (usually) embracing the bleed is a wise approach, particularly for music where authenticity is a factor.

Our ears don't hear in multitrack and are very good at sniffing out little idiosyncrasies which are artefacts of the recording process and can become a barrier between the performer and the listener in ways we might struggle to quantify and discuss, but we can hear it.

One more point - *using multiple mics always introduces the question of phase alignment as, for instance, the vocal hits the two mics at slightly different times, when this signals are combined they introduce a cancellation effect at certain frequencies. A coincident pair, equi-distant from the sources will help but will limit how close you can get to each source unless you're a really tiny person.

*Apologies if I'm teaching my Grandma to suck Genelecs but not everyone is aware.

Phase issues can kill an otherwise satisfying performance so it's good to avoid causing two problems by solving one.

[b1j]

Of all that I’ve read here, the method that seems best for me is to start with a combined instrument/vocal guide track, and then follow it up with a polished guitar only track and a final vocal only track. Then dump the guide track.

[shufflebeat]

Don't forget, most people don't listen to recording technique, they listen to a song. If the performance is best suited to playing and singing at the same time then a bit of mic bleed will be insignificant.

[ssjk]

Report….The responses saved me a bunch of flailing with stuff that wasn’t going to work. I appreciate it.

I ran a bunch of tests along the lines suggested, including all three mic types, differing angles, and singing/playing toward the treated or live end of the room. And sure enough, I ended up pretty much where the suggestions led me:

Playing from the dead end of the room with treatment on the wall behind me

Locating the mics about 30% of the way from the dead wall

Angling the mics at 90 degrees, although I found that for me that was more about having each mic 90 degrees from the sound I wanted excluded rather than mics literally perpendicular to each other

And using the SDCs for both. I found that the separation was not really different using the dynamics and the sound is a bit fuller with the SDC. As for my cheap LDC, well I got what I paid for and it’s back in the box.

All this got me to the stated goal of enough separation to at least manage volumes independently.

Thanks again for the responses.

[Adrianw]

I've often used the dual figure of eight system with a pair of CAD M179 mics with decent results. Lately I've been using a single figure of eight M179 on guitar with the null pointing toward the vocal and a close mic'd Shure SM7b on vocal. That has also worked pretty well. Depending on the guality of the guitar pickup it never hurts to get a direct recording as well. Since there's no bleed mixing the two guitar tracks can sometimes work well. In the past I've panned the guitar tracks left and right about 50% and it adds some depth to the guitar.

[gmatkin]

I've often struggled with separating guitar mic and vocal mic adequately. I'm not at all happy with my vocals (I think they're thin and I was suffering from dry vocal chords) but what worked reasonably well for me today was:

- a hypercard Beyerdynamic M201 pointed down towards the upper right bout of my fingerpicked guitar (I've heard miking that area is a BBC technique). The angle of the mic puts the vocals close to the Mick's null area
- an AT4040 on vox. The AT4040 is a particularly challenging choice because my impression is that it has a fairly wide cardiod pickup pattern compared with some other near LDCs and with many actual LDCs

https://youtu.be/SqzHa-akVks

I'm thinking of waiting for the voice to improve (I think the voice problem may be caused by central heating) and trying again using an sE V7X. I think the V7X may add some appealing upper-mid to higher range sparkle.

Gavin

[kellyb]

For fun, I'd suggest checkout this video of Steve Albini (very good and experienced engineer) recording a singer/guitarist. I never thought you could even achieve that level of isolation (fast forward to about 12 mins in to hear what I'm talking about, it's uncanny).



I've done as others suggested here, too, with varying degrees of success, but I've found that unless some amount of bleed and phase incoherence is inevitable. I do have a long-experienced engineer friend that talks about how some engineers actually use that phase cancellation and "mix with phase" (i.e., use the comb filtering of an imperfect phase relationship to shape the recording)...go figure.

FWIW, I often just try to record both into one tube LDC or ribbon mic, angling it down to a sweet spot where I can favor one or the other as needed. Ribbons are especially good at this because they can (and often want to) be a foot or two back for natural and not exaggerated bass. It's fast/efficient (less gear), no phase problems, and it forces me to learn to perform the song as I would in a room without individual vocal/guitar volume control.

[hazmuz]

S. Albini link doesn't function for me

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by kellyb

For fun, I'd suggest checkout this video of Steve Albini...

When linking to a YouTube video, only copy what comes after the = symbol.

For example, if the YouTube address for a video is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idb72UD8i9Y

The part you paste in after clicking the YouTube link button when creating a post is:
idb72UD8i9Y

If you paste the entire web address, the video doesn't show up.

[keith.rogers]

Originally Posted by jim1960

When linking to a YouTube video, only copy what comes after the = symbol.

For example, if the YouTube address for a video is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idb72UD8i9Y

The part you paste in after clicking the YouTube link button when creating a post is:
idb72UD8i9Y

If you paste the entire web address, the video doesn't show up.

In the @kellyb's case (post) the "magic key" is Ualm3rCZRz0

[gmatkin]

Originally Posted by keith.rogers

In the @kellyb's case (post) the "magic key" is Ualm3rCZRz0

Thanks!

Gavin

[kellyb]

Thank you, thank you! Link fixed!