If you’re a home studio owner, then you will inevitably be recording a lot of acoustic guitar. Whether you play yourself, or you’re working with a local singer-songwriter, it pays off to spend some time learning how to mic an acoustic guitar.
There are as many ways to mic an acoustic guitar as there are engineers in the world. For the purposes of this article, I want to show you why you should consider stereo-miking acoustic guitars (that is, using two microphones on the guitar instead of just one.)
Most home studio owners will throw a single mic on an acoustic guitar, point it at the 12th fret, and hit record. While there’s nothing wrong with this, I think a lot of people are missing out on some very cool guitar tones.
With that in mind, I’ve come up with 3 Reasons to Stereo-Mic Acoustic Guitar.
1. It adds width to your guitar-vocal demos (or solo acoustic guitar).
If you’ve recorded a basic guitar-vocal demo using one mic on guitar and one on vocal, you’ll notice that while the recording may sound great, it can be very narrow, very mono. You can play around with reverb plugins to add some space and width, but acoustic guitar rarely sounds all that good (or natural) through a reverb.
One technique a lot of engineers will use is to slightly pan the mono guitar track to the left or right, creating some separation between the guitarist and the vocalist. This may help a bit, but it still comes off sounding very mono.
There’s nothing wrong with mono. But having that extra width may make your demos stand out from the rest of the mono crowd.
2. It captures the entire instrument.
If you were to mic up a big Steinway grand piano, would you use one microphone? Of course not. It’s a big instrument, and it would take at least two if not four or six microphones to adequately capture the sound.
The same holds true with acoustic guitar. The tone of the guitar is spread out over the entire instrument. If you stick a microphone three inches from the 12th fret, you may get a nice sound, but you’ll only be taking a snapshot of a small portion of the guitar’s overall sound. You won’t be capturing the sound of the guitar as it was meant to be heard – as a whole.
As you may know, if you place a microphone along the neck, you’ll get a lot of high-end. If you place the mic down below the bridge, you’ll get a lot of bottom end. Each one by itself gives a bit of a misrepresentation of the guitar as a whole, but when combined you get a very full-sounding acoustic guitar track.
3. It allows you to place the mics closer to the instrument, picking up less noise.
This is particularly applicable to home studio owners. As you well know, noise is one of the biggest issues we face. While it would be nice to place the microphone four feet away from the guitar, that’s simply not possible in most situations. AC noise, computer noise, neighbor noise, traffic noise — they all come into play.
The beauty of stereo-miking the acoustic guitar is that you can place the microphones right up on the instrument.
For example, this past weekend I spent a lot of time recording acoustic guitar. I had one microphone above the bridge, angled inward. The second microphone I placed at around the 6th fret, angled inward. Both mics were roughly 4 inches from the guitar.
Because the mics were so close to the guitar, they picked up more of the guitar’s sound and less of the room noise. Also, because I had two microphones, I didn’t sacrifice tone, since I was picking up both the lows (with the first mic) and the highs (with the second mic).
The end result was a huge acoustic guitar sound with minimal noise.
Give it a shot
Stereo-miking acoustic guitars isn’t for everyone, nor is it for every guitar or song or recording. However, if you’ve not given it much thought, try it next time you record acoustic. Once you do, come back here and post a comment and let us know what you think!
Audio Samples
I’ve got four samples for your listening enjoyment. They’re mono and stereo recordings of the same performance. Listen to the mono version first, then listen to the stereo.
With the mono tracks, you’re listening to the single microphone along the neck. It doesn’t sound bad at all, but then when you add the second microphone, a fullness enters the mix.
These are dry tracks with a bit of EQ, but no other effects or compression. (And they’re all 16-bit WAV files.)
Thoughts? Suggestions? Leave a comment.
UPDATE: I’ve written a follow-up article to this. Check it out: 3 Reasons NOT to Stereo Mic Acoustic Guitar
Hey Joe,
I hear a big difference between the mono and stereo recordings, the one thing I’m curious to know is the exact panning positions, because the stereo image tends to flirt with the idea I’m hearing 2 guitar parts?….at least on my hr824s. By the way, i dig your site:)
thanx
T
I don’t remember exactly, but I think I just panned them fairly hard left and right. It’s NOT two guitar parts though. That’s a good question. You’re hearing the same exact guitar performance, captured by two microphones simultaneously.
It really doesn't matter. It can be a stereo track, with one mic
feeding the left input and the second feeding the right. Or you could
record one mic to one mono track and one mic to a second mono track,
then just pan one left and one right.
In Pro Tools, for example, you can record to 2 mono tracks and
collapse them into one stereo track if you want. Or you can record to
a stereo track, then split them out to 2 mono tracks. Hmm…that's a
good idea for a video. Thanks!!
Joe,
I understand the benefits of stereo miking but I'm a little confused about the technical process. Do you record on one stereo track with one mic taking the left and the other taking the right? Or do you use 2 separate mono tracks and then pan them together?
Thanks,
Chris
One technique I’ve recently tried was stereo-miking with a pencil condenser at the 12th fret and a pencil condenser at the bridge angled toward the butt of the guitar both about 3 inches from the guitar, then throwing a large diaphragm condenser in its omni setting about 2 or 3 feet above my head to capture the room. The mic was about 6 inches from an untreated wall too, so it caught a lot of reflection too. Oh, and the capsules were parallel with the wall/my shoulders.
Obviously I had to worry about other noises in my house but I got a good take with it and with very little disruption too. I just blended it in the background to give it a little more… UMPH! It thickened it up quite nicely. Much more than I expected.
- Josh Law
For the stereo examples above, did you pan the two mono recordings slightly off center?
They may not be panned evenly. One mic (on the right) had a bit more low end than the other. It felt more balanced if I panned them a little off-center.
I’ll have to give it a try. It sounds like it make an incredible difference in over-all tone.
Joe,
Do the mics need to be a matched pair? If not, what are some combination (types) that you would recommend?
Thanks,
Bill
A matched pair would be nice, but it’s certainly not required. With acoustic guitar, once you start spacing out the mics, each mic is picking up such a different sound that it really won’t matter all that much if they’re matched. You’ll blend the levels to your liking anyway.
A matched pair is more beneficial when you truly want an exact stereo representation of something as a whole. (When miking a choir or when overhead-miking a drum kit.) In these scenarios, you want two identical signal paths, so you can hear the differences between the left and right. I don’t think this applies to most styles of stereo-miking acoustic guitar.
For example, I tried Jon’s over-the-shoulder technique this weekend. It worked quite well. I didn’t use a matched pair. I had two VERY different-sounding microphones, but the blend ended up sounding very musical.
My preference for stereo miking acoustic guitar is: spaced pair over the shoulders about head level. With a pair of small diaphragm condensers.
I find this gives a great representation of what the guitarist is hearing as he is playing it. They always say it sounds just like their guitar.
I find that fits in the mix quite well too.
Alternately I also like an ORTF setup a few feet away. It really depends on the role of the guitar from a production standpoint how you mic it and with what. (chordal/rhythmic/thickening/percussive/brightness etc)
I’ve not tried the over-the-shoulder technique, but it makes sense that you’d get a good tone, and you wouldn’t have to deal with all the boomy-ness coming directly out of the sound hole.
I agree about ORTF. That and XY work great if you have a nice, quiet room.