At Last!... A Nice Acoustic Guitar Sound

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AdrianNewington
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September 11, 16 5:05 AM (permalink)

At Last!... A Nice Acoustic Guitar Sound

Hello All,
 
As a guy with a limited budget, and subsequently only 1 Microphone, (Mann NT21 Condenser Mic), I was forever battling to record a nice faithful rendition of a simple picked Acoustic Guitar, (Don McLean's Vincent, is an example of my style of playing & composing).
Anyway, My microphone is good for vocals, but can't seem to capture the nice clarity of the guitar no matter how much I fifddle with EQ.
So, I had an idea to record 2 mono tracks simultaneously, with track 1 using the Condenser mic, and track 2 using the piezo pickup via a direct cable into the mixer.
 
Well!... my my... I was very surprised at how nice the rendition was with a nice stereo spread.
The mic picks up the bass content, and the piezo pickup capture the clarity of the highs.
 
In the past, I have heard people's use of mid side miking, and was super impressed at the sense of intimacy this technique captures. In fact, the first time I heard such a recording, I had my headphones on and I thought someone was in the room behind me playing my guitar.
 
Anyway, for all you poor struggling musicians with only 1 mic, try this. I think you'll like it.
 
Regards
Adrian.
 

Music to Uplift & Inspire.
Windows 10 64 bit - HP 23" All-In-One PC
Sonar Professional, ( and X1 Producer, X3 Basic).
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5 Replies Related Threads

    pwalpwal
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    Re: At Last!... A Nice Acoustic Guitar Sound September 11, 16 8:31 AM (permalink)
    good tip adrian! i do this quite often, mixing a room mic with either the piezo or a "woody" pickup

    just a sec

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    Marshall
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    Re: At Last!... A Nice Acoustic Guitar Sound September 11, 16 1:32 PM (permalink)
    This is great - I did do this years ago, but had forgotten about it entirely. Thanks for the reminder and I'll make a point of doing it next time. 
     
    Have you posted a song for us to hear the results? 
    #3
    AdrianNewington
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    Re: At Last!... A Nice Acoustic Guitar Sound September 11, 16 4:34 PM (permalink)
    I'll post a soundbyte of it on SoundCloud very soon.

    Music to Uplift & Inspire.
    Windows 10 64 bit - HP 23" All-In-One PC
    Sonar Professional, ( and X1 Producer, X3 Basic).
    #4
    AdrianNewington
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    Re: At Last!... A Nice Acoustic Guitar Sound September 12, 16 0:06 PM (permalink)
    I'll post a soundbyte of it on SoundCloud very soon.

    Music to Uplift & Inspire.
    Windows 10 64 bit - HP 23" All-In-One PC
    Sonar Professional, ( and X1 Producer, X3 Basic).
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    lawajava
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    Re: At Last!... A Nice Acoustic Guitar Sound September 16, 16 0:10 PM (permalink)
    Adrian - glad you found a technique that is working well.

    There are probably many approaches that help get to a cool acoustic guitar sound, or a sound that becomes magical in a particular piece.

    I posted this link elsewhere of a very clear explanation of one technique. It is thought provoking and sounds pretty nice for their particular piece.

    Just another way to consider in terms of the acoustic.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSS8OZQKpeI

    Two internal 2TB SSDs laptop stuffed with Larry's deals and awesome tools. Studio One is the cat's meow as a DAW now that I've migrated off of Sonar. Using BandLab Cakewalk just to grab old files when migrating songs.
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