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Post by Matt Milton on Aug 9, 2023 11:52:11 GMT
Does anyone have any recommendations for minimising bleed in the microphones when recording acoustic guitar and vocals simultaneously?
For instance, do you use hypercardioid microphones? Or the 'figure of 8 microphone trick', whereby you position the side of a Figure of 8 microphone to reject the voice?
I've been doing a lot of home recording recently. I find I get hardly any bleed from the guitar in the vocal microphone, no matter what mic I use. Which is great. But unfortunately I get a lot of voice in the guitar microphone, no matter what mic I use.
I've tried to do the thing with the nulls of my AKG C414B XLii miccrophone, set in Figure of 8 mode, as described above, but it doesn't seem to work. That might be because I'm recording in a small room, so perhaps it's picking up my voice from the back of the mic. (I might try putting something absorbent behind it, come to think of it, see if that makes a difference) Or it might be because there's a sweet spot and I just haven't positioned it right. Or it might be that that C414B XLii just doesn't have very good Figure 8 nulls.
Anyway, I'm interested to know if any of you lot have had any success with mic'ing up acoustic guitars in ways that minimise the vocal bleed in them. And if so, what mics did you use and how did you position them?
Thanks all!
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Post by lavaman on Aug 10, 2023 8:40:10 GMT
Hi Matt I normally record the guitar and vocals seperately but lately I've been recording simultaneously because the energy of the performance is so much better. I think with recording voice and guitar simultaneously you have to accept that there will be some bleed. As you say minimising bleed on the vocal mic is the most important as that gives you freedom to use compression, reverb etc in the mix. For the vocal mic I use an sE4400a that offers cardioid and fig 8 patterns. More often than not I'll select cardioid, with the mic position below my mouth but angled upwards away from the guitar. Guitar bleed is minimal and is masked by the guitar mics. The guitar mic(s) is more difficult. If using one mic, conventional wisdom is to angle it towards the neck/body join. Even using a fig 8 it picks up a lot of vocal. I use two small diameter condensor mics (Rode NT5) with cardioid pattern; one pointing at the neck join, the other towards the bridge. Initially, I positioned them 8" away from the guitar and 24 " apart. This minimised vocal bleed, BUT, for me, it picked up too much mechanical noise from playing - e.g. finger nails hitting the strings, palm rubbing on the bridge when muting etc. My solution has been to move the guitar mics further back - at least 15" from the guitar. The guitar sounds good but the guitar mics do pick up my vocals. But actually, in the mix, you usually want the vocals louder than the guitar so the vocal picked up by the guitar mics is masked by the main processed vocal track. It important to minimise reflections from the walls and floor. I sit at one end of the room and place soft furnishings and acoustic material behind me and on the floor by my feet. The huge downside of simultaneous recording is that you can't edit the recordings , you have to sing and play perfectly for the whole length of the song. Here's an example from a song I'm working on at the moment. The mix is a bit muddy but you can hear the seperation of the vocal and guitar. keep experimenting Iain soundcloud.com/iainpaterson-1/ramble-on-test-piece/s-qTP3qqQfRV4?si=1948529151a7486891ceac974464f500&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
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Post by Matt Milton on Aug 10, 2023 10:39:56 GMT
Sounds great Iain. I'm a bit of a microphone junkie and over the last 25 years I've assembled quite a collection. My main setup has been AKG 414G XLII on vocals - it's quite a transparent mic and seems to suit my voice - and two AT451B mics on guitar. I normally have them in the same positions as you, but I sometimes just put both of them at the neck join and pan left and right.
Recently I bought a Beyerdynamic M88 - a dynamic mic which has a condenser-like top-end - and I've been favouring that on vocals. Not least because the AKG 414B has developed a bit of noise and needs to go off for repair.
I've given up on Figure 8 positions. Since posting this thread, I've realised that there's no point in me trying a Figure 8 position in my room - the room's just too small. Irrespective of its null points, figure 8 captures the rest of the room from the back of the mic. I'm better off with cardioid/hypercardioid mics.
I'm accepting the fact that there's going to be vocal bleed on the guitar mic - the question for me now is 'which mic gives me the nicest sounding bleed?' I'm methodically going through my mic collection to test which bleed sounds best. At the moment it's a Beyerdynamic M260N ribbon mic. While it's a dark microphone it sounds brighter than I would have expected on guitar, while the vocal bleed that it picks up sounds very natural and is not infected by boxy-sounding room reflections.
I can't record guitar and vocals separately = I lose all the timing and pace, plus I hate singing with headphones on - but I do find that I can edit and comp together takes. It's well worth spending a bit of time practicing your editing chops in Logic, Cubase, Garageband or whatever you use. You can really zoom in on those waveforms to such a microscopic degree - I find it's possible to cut'n'splice sections even when it's quite busy fingerpicking. I find my internal clock is pretty good, and most takes tend to be about the same tempo once I've warmed up.
Nice recording Iain - thanks for sharing. Not very muddy really - I'd have thought it only needs a little EQ and compression and you're done...
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