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Barter? I Hardly Know Her! – Why You May Not Need to Spend a Dime on Your Next Recording Project

Joe Gilder — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:34:36 +0000

The day I sold my bass was a good day.

I had a problem.

See, I assumed that simply because I was capable of recording all the instruments on my recording projects that I should.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

I bought that little Fender Jazz bass, thinking to myself, “Wow, Joe. You’re so impressive. Imagine how it’s gonna feel when you tell someone, ‘Yeah, I played all the instruments on this song.’ They’ll think you’re amazing. Heck, you’re like Dave Grohl.”

I’m not like Dave Grohl. If you’re dripping with THAT much talent, then yes, you can probably pull off playing everything on the record.

I’m not Dave Grohl, and chances are neither are you.

I sold my bass once I realized that I suck at playing bass. Sure I can get the notes out, but I don’t think like a bass player, and I sure don’t play like one.

Rather than agonizing for 3 hours over a bass line, my brother-in-law Joel Bezaire can lay it down in 10 minutes, and it sounds awesome.

Just because I CAN play the bass doesn’t mean I should.

“But Joe, I can’t pay people to play on my projects.”

Really? REALLY?

If you don’t have the cash to pay someone, that doesn’t categorically mean that you cannot pay them in some other way.

Enter the barter system.

Sometimes I wish I lived back in the day where I could take one of my goats into town and come back with a loaf of bread, a wheel of cheese, and a basket of eggs. Ah…the good ol’ days.

We don’t do a lot of bartering anymore. We buy things with money. We do work for money. But there is still real value in a fair trade.

Trading Skills for Skills

What are your skills? What are you good at? What would people pay you to do? There’s a good chance you can offer those skills as a form of payment.

I do this all the time. Don’t get me wrong, I still 100% agree that you should charge for your work, but sometimes charging can come in the form of trading something other than cash for your service.

Are you good at graphic design or photography? Maybe you could hire a local drummer to play on your tracks, and in exchange you’ll do the photography and album artwork on his band’s next album. You’re both getting something valuable, without spending money.

That’s what my buddy David Dewese did for me. I hired him to design the album artwork for my album Out of Indiana, and instead of payment, he asked me to mix one of his songs. (See, he’s a musician, too.)

My bro-in-law Joel plays bass on all my projects. Sometimes I simply write him a check. Other times he has me track some guitars or vocals on one of his projects. (I’m a singer/guitarist, he’s a bass player…another nice trade.)

Or take my buddy Tim Horsley for example. Monster drummer here in Nashville. He’s starting to offer drum tracking to clients through the internet. I need a drummer on my next album project. So? He’s offering me a discounted rate in exchange for help building up his online business. (He’s a drummer, I run HomeStudioCorner…yet another fair trade of skills.)

I could share a bunch more examples, but you get the point. Sometimes you just pay the guy. Other times you can negotiate a nice trade that leaves all parties happy.

What do you think? Is this something you already do? Tell us about it. If not, tell us how you’re going to try it on your next project. What gear or instruments do you need to sell and start “hiring” other people to play/work on your projects?

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3 Home Studio Nightmares to Avoid

Joe Gilder — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:49:38 +0000

You know I couldn’t let Halloween go by without some sort of Halloween-themed post, right? Right.

I’ve had plenty of “scary moments” over the years in my studio. After all, you put your blood, sweat, and tears into the thing, an it definitely hurts when things don’t go exactly as planned.

If you’re just starting out, here are a few things you want to avoid as much as possible. If you’ve been recording for years, you should read this too and make sure you’re not getting lazy. Any of these can happen, and most of them are avoidable.

Losing Your Work

This is one of the scariest scenarios. You’ve been working for months, maybe even years, on a project. You’ve logged countless hours putting together this masterpiece of audio glory.

Then one day it happens.

You walk into your studio, fire up your computer and your hard drive and…nothing. Two hours later you have come to the horrifying realization that your hard drive has crashed, and your data is lost forever.

Now, there’s a good chance the data can be recovered, but it’s not unheard of for the drive to be damaged too badly to recover anything…or the data could be corrupted.

I’ve had this happen to more friends than I can remember. It’s not as “rare” as you might think. The truth is that your hard drive IS going to fail…one day. Are you running your entire studio off of one hard drive? If so, you need to stop what you’re doing right now, find a separate drive, and back everything up. Seriously.

Nothing demoralizes you more than losing something you’ve worked so hard on. The chances of you being willing to start over from scratch are slim.

Always, always, ALWAYS back up your projects. Some folks would say back them up to two different places. At least back it up once.

I’ll be honest, I go through spells where I’m lazy and don’t feel like backing up. But I remember how horrible it would feel to have to do that work all over again, and I start backing up.

There are lots of solutions for backup — automatic backup (Time Machine) and automatic online backup (services like Carbonite). I usually just drag and drop the files to a separate hard drive. Whatever you do, have a system in place and BACK YOUR STUFF UP.

Losing Your Gear

If your interface dies, your studio is dead in the water. Same with your computer. Are you doing everything you can to protect these important parts of your studio?

Taking care of your gear could be as simple as not letting it sit in the back seat of your car on a hot summer day, and making sure you put your condenser microphones back in the case when you’re done with them.

However, there are a couple extra things you can (and probably should) do.

Power Conditioner

If you don’t have a power conditioner in your studio, you should start budgeting for one. You can get a decent one for under $200. I’ve told you before why you need a power conditioner. Power surges are a fact of life. Electronic equipment doesn’t respond well to these, and that little $3 plastic power strip you just found in the closet won’t do much to protect your gear.

You need something that will withstand a powerful surge. I think of it as life insurance for my equipment. And it’s completely worth the investment. There are other benefits to power conditioners too, which you can read about here.

AppleCare and Warranties

If you’re a Mac user like me, then seriously consider buying AppleCare with your next purchase. It extends the warranty coverage out to 3 years, which is a really long time in the life of a computer. I don’t like warranties, and I don’t buy them…except for AppleCare. It could save you thousands if your computer decides to die on you 18 months after you bought it.

Also consider buying more gear from Sweetwater. They’re awesome (and here are a bunch of reasons why I think so), but they also have a free 2-Year Warranty of virtually everything they sell. That’s a big deal. All you have to do is buy your gear there, and it’s included. Very cool.

Losing Your Time

And finally, if losing your work and your gear isn’t a nightmare enough, it can be just as painful to lose your time. What do I mean?

I’m talking about those projects that you are so excited about at first, but then they take you months and months to every complete…or perhaps you never complete them. There are two reasons why this happens:

Poor Planning

If you don’t finish a project, it’s probably because you didn’t plan it well. Perhaps you got so excited about having that first recording session that you decided not to actually listen to the song and do some pre-production on it beforehand. This is by far one of the biggest time-wasters in the studio. If you spend 10 weeks on a song, only to realize that you wish you had rewritten some of the chords, added a bridge, and recorded it 5 bpm slower, you’re stuck. It’s nearly impossible to go in and make those changes after you’ve recorded a bunch of parts.

Take the time to plan out the song. It doesn’t have to be a big, complicated process. Just take a half hour to make sure YOU know how you want it to sound in the end. That way you can work towards that goal.

Poor Goal-Setting

Speaking of goals, you need them in your studio. Another word for goal? A deadline.

Deadlines force you to finish projects. Without them, you’ll just click around the screen, night after night, until the next thing you know it’s 5 months later and you haven’t finished a dang thing.

Set a deadline and go for it!

What about you?

Got any nightmares you want to share with us? Got a question? Leave a comment below.

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No-Brainer Recording Formula (Get Better Recordings EVERY Time)

Joe Gilder — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 03:27:50 +0000

Do you hear somebody like me or Graham say how important it is to “get it right at the source” and wonder how you do that? People will email me, saying they don’t even know what a good recording is supposed to sound like.

It’s a valid concern, and the good news is it’s all subjective. What sounds like a great kick drum to me may sound muddy to you. What you think is a killer mix may strike me as boring or lifeless.

It’s all relative.

Okay, Joe, that doesn’t help us know how to get great recordings. I’m getting to that.

Go to the Eye Doctor

If you’ve ever been to the eye doctor, you know they make you look through a series of lenses before they determine your exact prescription. They ask, “Better one? …or two?” and you choose between the two lenses and tell them which one looks clearer.

They then offer you two more choices…and two more…and two more, until it’s perfectly clear to them exactly which eye prescription you need.

Imagine if you walked into the eye doctor, and they slapped a set of glasses on you and asked, “Can you see?” You slowly answer, “Yeeeeesss?” And they say, “Great! Thanks for the business!” They take your money and push you out the door.

How would you know if you got the right glasses? Sure, you can see out of them, but that doesn’t mean you can see well.

It’s all about Comparisons

It’s the same way with recording. If you place a microphone on a guitar amp and assume it’s right, you’ll never be very happy with your recordings. Why? Because you never compared it to something else. How do you know if what you’re doing is the best, if you’ve never compared it to another way of doing it?

If you ask me the best way to mic a guitar cabinet, I would tell you to grab a mic, stick it in front of it, and see what it sounds like. Then move the mic, and compare the two. Which do you like better? The first one may have sounded fine, but the second might sound SO MUCH better. You’d never know if you didn’t try…and it only took you an extra minute or two.

The Formula

Here’s my formula for getting great recordings. Always have two options. No matter what the session is, always try it at least two different ways. That’s how you learn. That’s how you get better.

So the process goes like this:

Try one setup, record a sample (just a few bars will do, or a whole verse-chorus)
Change one thing about that setup and record another sample
Listen to the two samples, decide which one you like better, and use that setup.
Now (if you want) compare THAT setup to a different setup…and so on and so forth

I don’t recommend doing this more than twice on a given session. For me it might look something like this:

Record the vocalist on my large-diaphragm condenser mic, singing the verse and chorus of the song.
Record the vocalist singing the same part through my dynamic mic.
Listen to the two and decide which one I like better.
THEN I may have the singer sing on the winning mic at two different distances, maybe 6 inches away and 15 inches away.
Compare those two and choose the one I like better.
Start recording the actual takes.

This lets the singer warm up, it lets me try out two mics and two different placements, all within a matter of 15 minutes TOPS.

The end result? I’m making informed decisions about the recording. I’m not arbitrarily putting a mic in front of a source and hoping it’s okay. I’m trying different things and making decisions BASED…ON…WHAT…I…HEAR.

I don’t magically know where to put the mics…I use my knowledge of how audio works to make an educated guess, but then I just have to put the mic in front of something and listen to how it sounds. Then I make changes from there.

That can be a very odd approach if you’ve never done it…but if you want to take control of your recordings rather than have them control you, you’ve gotta start implementing a process like this.

What do you think? I wanna know. Leave a comment below.

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Back That Vocalist Up

Joe Gilder — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:00:24 +0000

What do your vocal recording sessions look like?

You get the Pro Tools session ready (create the vocal track and extra playlists for takes, create a reverb track and route the vocal to it), set up the mic stand, pop filter, music stand. Maybe dim the lights, have a bottle of water handy…perhaps you even light a candle to “set the mood”?

Okay, I can’t remember the last time I lit a candle to record vocals.

What’s the next thing that happens? Where do you put the vocalist once she shows up? Do you plan to put her REALLY close to the mic, like an inch or two away?

Hang on there, cowboy.

The Pictures Lie

We’ve all seen ‘em. You’re flipping through your favorite recording magazine, and there’s a microphone ad. It shows a fairly well-known singer, belting away into a shiny microphone, lips almost touching the mic.

It looks awesome. It probably doesn’t sound awesome.

But that’s what we’ve conditioned ourselves to do, right? We place the singer as close as humanly possible to the microphone, hoping to capture a crisp, warm, clean, detailed performance. Right?

But then a few weeks later, when it comes time to mix the song, what do you do? You end up EQ-ing the vocal like crazy, trying to walk the fine balance between being too boomy and being too thin.

Why?

Proximity Effect

Yep. You forgot about it, didn’t you?

Proximity effect is the tendency of a cardioid (directional) microphone to boost the low frequencies of a signal as the signal gets closer to the source. While this might be great for a voiceover track you’re doing for a movie trailer, it’s not that helpful for singers.

Whenever I mix vocals, I remove low end. I usually knock out everything below 150 Hz or so. Why? Because it’s unnecessary. Most normal, human vocalists can’t sing that low.

This lets me get rid of any low end rumble that would muddy up my mix. The proximity effect only adds to that rumble, so why not do something about it BEFORE you record the vocal?

Back the vocalist up. Just try it. Try recording the vocalist 12 inches away from the mic, maybe even 18.

You may think that you’ll only be recording more room noise, but I’ve found that’s normally not the case. As long as your room is fairly well-treated, it’s worth trying.

Intimate Doesn’t Mean “Close”

A lot of times you want a very intimate, or at least “up front,” vocal. You may think the only way to get that is to record the vocalist very close to the mic and deal with the excess low end later.

I thought the same thing for a long time. Then I tried backing up. As it turns out, especially when I’m using a condenser microphone, there is MORE than enough detail and presence in the vocal, even when I sing from 18″ away.

Condenser mics capture a lot of detail, even when the vocalist is farther away.

The Inverse Square Law

One final point. I’m not going to get too technical, but there’s this concept called the Inverse Square Law. It essentially states that every time you double the distance from the source, you cut the volume by half (or something like that).

This is another huge reason not to mic the vocalist too closely. Think about it. If the singer is two inches from the microphone, and he sways back to 4 or 6 inches while he’s singing, that’s going to cut the volume of his voice by 2-3 times. I’m a singer myself, and I move when I sing. If you’re wanting a more consistent leve out of your singer, something you won’t have to wrestle with later with heavy compression and automation just to get it to sound consistent, try having the singer back up.

If he moves from 10 inches to 14 inches, that’s not nearly as drastic of a change in volume. Suddenly things start to become more consistent, which is a very good thing.

As with everything I teach you, there are no rules. Do what sounds best for the song. If close-miking is the best-sounding option, DO THAT. However, if you’ve never even TRIED moving the singer farther away, you should. Let your ears take it from there.

If you want to dive deeper into vocal recording and mixing with me, join my latest live class. It starts tomorrow, October 6th, 2011. Get your questions answered and let me help you get better vocal recordings. It’s all here:

www.understandingrecording.com/vocals

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Great Acoustic Guitar Tone – The Preamp (Part 6 of 7)

Joe Gilder — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Everybody asks about what microphones and mic placements they should use on acoustic guitar, but rarely do they ask about the preamp. It’s a shame, because the preamp plays a huge roll in the sound of ANY recording.

As I told you in the Intro to Preamps video, there are lots of different types of preamps. If you’re starting out, you’ll just use the built-in preamps on your audio interface. That’s fine, but just know that a really nice microphone into a cheap preamp may not sound as amazing as you expected.

The Problem with Cheap Preamps

If you’re using cheap preamps, I’m not saying you can’t get a great-sounding recording, but there are things to keep in mind. You may think you don’t have the budget for nice external preamps. If that’s the case, then you REALLY need to pay attention to the preamp quality in the audio interface you decide to buy. If you’re spending $99 on an audio interface, I’m betting those preamps just aren’t going to be that great.

Really cheap preamps have to cut corners, naturally, to hit that low price point. One of the ways they cut corners is by reducing the amount of voltage the preamp has. They use cheaper power supplies, and the preamps usually don’t have a lot of gain. That’s not a problem if you’re recording a loud vocal or loud guitar amps. It DOES become an issue when you’re recording quieter sources…like and acoustic guitar.

To get the signal loud enough, you end up cranking the gain on the preamp. Since cheaper pre’s don’t have a lot of gain to begin with, you sometimes have to crank the preamp almost all the way. At that point, the signal gets very noisy. Yep, when you run cheap preamps really hot, they introduce a lot of noise.

Don’t get me wrong, you can still get a good recording, but at some point you may want to consider either better external preamps or an audio interface with better preamps. I’ll be using the preamps in my Presonus Firestudio Project (affiliate link) for the acoustic guitar class coming up. Nice, clean preamps with a lot of gain. Perfect for acoustic guitar.

How Should the Preamp Sound?

If you go for an external preamp, you’ve got a lot of choices. Typically on acoustic guitar (and most acoustic instruments) I reach for a nice, clean-sounding preamp. I don’t normally use tube preamps on acoustic guitar. I want a clean, accurate, non-colored signal, so I go with a clean solid-state preamp usually. I’ve used the True Systems P-Solo and Presonus Eureka (affiliate links), both great for acoustic.

What preamp do you use? Do you like it?

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Great Acoustic Guitar Tone – Mic Placement: Stereo (Part 5 of 7)

Joe Gilder — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:00:00 +0000

If using one microphone is great, two must be twice as good, right? Sometimes.

Some of the best acoustic guitar tones I’ve ever gotten have been with two microphones, this is sometimes referred to as stereo mic placement (although two microphones doesn’t always mean it’s technically “stereo,” but that’s for another day).

As with most things, if there stands to be a bigger benefit (better guitar tone), there are also greater risks (phase issues).

Stereo Width

One of the main reasons to use some sort of stereo mic technique is to capture a much wider signal. Rather than a guitar sound that’s fairly one-dimensional, using two microphones lets you capture more realistic, wide-sounding guitar. This is especially good for songs that have very little instrumentation. Full band productions typically don’t benefit from stereo-mic’d acoustic guitar, mainly because you just can’t hear it in the mix.

There are lots of ways to stereo-mic acoustic guitar — XY, Blumlein, Mid-Side, ORTF, Spaced Pair — to name a few. Each of these has its own benefit and drawbacks, and some have a “wider” sound than others. They all, however, give a wider, more realistic sound to the guitar. Think about it, we listen with two ears, it makes sense that two microphones would capture a more realistic sound.

Phase Issues

Whenever you use more than one microphone on a source, you introduce the issue of phasing. Simply put, when a single signal reaches two microphones at different points in time, the resulting sound can be thin or hollow. The slight difference in time (or phase) causes certain frequencies to cancel out.

The key to this is two-fold. First, observe the 3:1 Rule. If the microphones are too close together, phasing WILL happen…and you’ll wish you had just stuck with one microphone.

The second way to combat this is to listen in mono. When you’re placing the microphones, listen to them in mono, NOT stereo. Stereo will sound awesome, but it won’t let you know if there are any phase issues. Listening in mono will quickly point out any problems. If the signal sounds thin, or maybe even boomy, or boxy, or hollow, try moving one of the microphones a few inches. Listen as you move it. Once it sounds good again, THAT’S your placement.

So, what do you think? Leave a comment below and let us know if you stereo-mic acoustic guitar (and why).

If you want to learn all about recording acoustic guitar, join me for the 4-week class, starting this Thursday. Limited spaces available. Click here to check it out.

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Great Acoustic Guitar Tone – Mic Placement: Mono (Part 4 of 7)

Joe Gilder — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:00:00 +0000

So, you’ve got a good-sounding guitar, you’ve placed it in the right spot in the room, and you’ve picked the right mic for it. Where do you put the mic?

Mic placement can have a dramatic effect on how the guitar sounds in the recording. (Remember how mic placement transformed a floor tom into a kick drum?) A great guitar can sound absolutely horrible with the wrong mic placement. On the flip-side, a mediocre guitar can sound better than it is if you find the right mic placement for it.

There are two main factors to consider with mic placement – distance and location and today we’re simply talking about mono mic techniques, that is, using only one microphone.

Distance

People tend to focus solely on where to point the mic, at the expense of thinking about how far away to place the mic. Distance is just as important as location, in my opinion.

We automatically tend to think the microphone needs to be really close to the guitar to capture that warm, upfront sound. So we place the mic 3-6 inches away. That can work, but it can also be more problematic than anything. Placing a mic really close to the source brings into play a phenomenon called proximity effect. I’ve written on this before, but it simply means that the close you place a directional mic to the source, the greater the bass response of that mic.

Translation: Mic too close = Guitar too boomy.

You may think that moving the mic 12 inches or more away from the instrument would make it sound too thin or roomy, but just try it. I’m always surprised by how great it sounds, even from 12-18 inches away.

12th Fret – The “Magic” Spot

Every guitar is different, but I’ve found there’s one spot on the guitar that usually gives me a nice, balanced sound. If nothing else, it’s a great starting point. It’s the 12th fret.

For some reason, pointing a mic at the 12th fret usually captures plenty of low end from the sound hole, and plenty of brightness/fret noise from the neck. After placing the mic on the 12th fret, play with the angle a little bit. It’s like a natural EQ. Angle the mic towards sound hole if you need more bass. Angle it towards the neck if you need less bass. This is really effective and MUCH better than slapping an EQ plug-in on it later.

That’s not to say the 12th fret is the ONLY place you can mic an acoustic guitar, but if you’re just starting out, it’s a great place to begin. As always, experiment, experiment, experiment.

What’s your favorite place to mic an acoustic guitar with one mic?

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Great Acoustic Guitar Tone – The Mic (Part 3 of 7)

Joe Gilder — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Once you’ve got a great-sounding guitar in a great-sounding spot in the room (and don’t underestimate how important those two steps are), you’re ready to pick your mic.

If you only own one microphone, your choice is easy. If you own several, here are some tips for choosing the right one.

Condenser Mics

95% of the time, I use a condenser microphone when I record acoustic guitars. Condenser mics, as opposed to dynamic mics, tend to capture much more detail, particularly in the high-end. They’re also fairly sensitive, which means they capture the subtle nuances of an acoustic guitar much more effectively.

Because they’re so sensitive, though, they can pick up more than you want them to. It’s part of the trade-off of having a nice condenser mic.

Large-Diaphragm Condenser

For years I always used a large-diaphragm condenser on acoustic guitar. I would just use one of my favorite vocal mics. These tend to work well. They’re sensitive, but not overly sensitive. If you can own just one mic, make it a large-diaphragm condenser.

Small-Diaphragm Condenser

Recently I’ve been using small-diaphragm condensers on some of my acoustic tracks. These “pencil mics” have a much smaller diaphragm, so they’re even more sensitive than their large-diaphragm counterparts. This makes them especially sensitive to sounds like pick noise, finger noise, the musician breathing, etc.

They can provide an incredible amount of detail. But it can sometimes be too much.

Dynamic Mics

I rarely use dynamic mics on acoustic. But sometimes they’re perfect. If your guitar is super bright, a dynamic might tame things down a bit, since it doesn’t “hear” as high as a condenser. Also, if you simply have a bad-sounding room, and you can’t really fix it, a dynamic will pick up less room reflections because it’s less sensitive.

The downside to dynamic mics is that they need a lot more gain from the preamp. If your preamp doesn’t have enough gain, you may end up with a recording that’s too quiet or a recording that has a lot of preamp noise. (Preamps get noisy when you have to crank them all the way.)

Know your Mics

Regardless of what type of microphone you choose (I’ve used ribbon mics with good success in the past), you need to know what your mics sound like. For example, my tube microphone tends to hype the 2-3 kHz range. I always keep this in mind when recording. If I think that will hurt rather than help the sound, I reach for a different mic.

What do you think? What’s your favorite mic for acoustic guitar?

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Great Acoustic Guitar Tone – The Room (Part 2 of 7)

Joe Gilder — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:00:00 +0000

We’ve look at how important it is to record a quality instrument and to really know what that instrument sounds like. Next? Microphones, right?

Hold on there, cowboy. There’s another HUGE variable that comes into play. Before you ever set up the microphone, you need to have a good understanding of what’s happening to the sound BEFORE it hits the mic.

The first step is the instrument itself. The second step is the room.

As Gavin and I talk about in Understanding Your Room, your room is lying to you. That’s right. The way the guitar sounds in your room isn’t exactly what the guitar sounds like. Unfortunately, we can’t take the room out of the equation. But fortunately, we can use the room to our advantage.

Move Around the Room.

When sound waves bounce around a room, a lot of crazy stuff happens. Flutter echo can causes the strumming sounds of the guitar to become wobbly and indistinct. Room modes can causes certain frequencies to be exaggerated, while other frequencies seemingly disappear.

To make it even more confusing, these acoustical anomalies are different from spot to spot within the room. The guitar will have a different sound in the corner of the room than in the middle of the room. Spend time listening to the guitar in different locations, and pick the one that sounds best to you.

Put Up Barriers As Needed

If your room doesn’t have a lot of acoustic treatment, and there’s a lot of natural reverb to it (and you don’t want that in the recording), try putting up barriers. Something as simple as a bookshelf or a mattress can work wonders. They’ll help absorb or disperse the sound, cutting down on the “room sound” in the recording.

Barriers can also help block out unwanted noise from the computer, hard drives, or outside noise coming through the windows.

Also, don’t sweat the noise too much. You’ll spend all your time fretting over a little noise in your recordings, when you won’t actually be able to hear it in the mix. Even if you can hear it, it’s generally not as big of a deal as you think it is.

What do you think? Do you experiment with room placement? Or do you just stick the guitar in the corner and play around with mic placement?

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Great Acoustic Guitar Tone – The Guitar (Part 1 of 7)

Joe Gilder — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Acoustic guitar. It can be your favorite instrument to record, or it can be your arch nemesis. Some days you think you’ve got it figured out, then you listen to that guitar part you just recorded, and it sounds boomy, muddy, harsh, tinny, lifeless — pick one.

The word frustrating comes to mind. I know. I’ve been there. What’s the deal?

Well, for one thing, the acoustic guitar is an acoustic instrument. Aside from the human voice, a lot of us simply don’t record a lot of acoustic instruments. We use virtual instruments and samplers. If we need a piano sound, we use a piano plug-in. If we need an orchestra sound, we use an orchestra patch in our favorite sampler.

[I know this is a gross generalization, but I imagine it's true for the average home studio recordist.]

Accurately recording an acoustic instrument isn’t always a matter of throwing a mic on it and pressing Record. They’re complex instruments with complex sounds. There are all sorts of places where the sound originates, and there’s an ocean of harmonic content present as well. That’s why the same guitar can sound completely different from one day to the next, depending on where and how you record it.

That’s a long, befuddled introduction to this series called Great Acoustic Guitar Tone. Over the course of the next several articles, I’ll share with you the things I’ve learned over the years about recording acoustic guitar. (And at the end, you’ll have the chance to sign up for even more in-depth training from me. Sign up for the newsletter to find out about that as soon as I announce it.)

Step 1 – The Guitar

Chances are you’re going to gloss over this step. You want to get to the good stuff. Go ahead, that’s fine. But this step is important.

Great acoustic guitar tone begins with a great acoustic guitar.

There’s really no other way around it. If the guitar sounds dull, you can’t do any sort of fancy mic tricks to make it sound bright and vibrant. At best you’ll have something that sounds a little…different. If the guitar buzzes a lot, you can’t hide that with a plugin. If it won’t stay in tune, you can’t AutoTune it (at least not yet).

Am I telling you to go out and buy a brand new $5,000 acoustic guitar? Or that you only need to record high-end acoustic guitars? No. But you need to be honest with yourself. You can’t make a $300 guitar sound like a $3,000 guitar. Remember that.

I’m going to share with you all about mic choice, mic placement, etc. and you should practice those skills and get really good at them, but remember that the biggest variable is the instrument itself.

Know the guitar

Whether you’re working with an expensive guitar or not, take the time to get to know how it sounds. That means spending time with your ears in front of the guitar. Once you’re familiar with how it sounds, you can make a better decision on how you want to capture that sound.

If it’s a really boomy sound, you probably want to mic closer to the neck than the sound hole…unless you’re going for a really boomy sound on that particular song. If there’s a lot of “finger squeak” noise, you may not want to put a mic directly on the fretboard…unless you like the sound of those squeaks for the song.

Whether your goal is to capture the sound as accurately as possible or capture an “altered” version of the sound, you need to know what the guitar sounds like first. That’s important.

That’s all for now. Much more to come, but we have to start at the beginning if we’re going to make great-sounding acoustic guitar recordings.

What do you think? Agree? Disagree?