How best to record singer acoustic guitarist?

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optimus
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2012/03/11 08:50:24 (permalink)

How best to record singer acoustic guitarist?

I will soon be attempting to record a singer who accompanies himself on acoustic guitar, in preparation to recording a band. The idea is to lay down some guide tracks first, and then later record the band using these tracks as a guide.
 
My question is, how do I best record the singer playing guitar? I have done some experiments recording myself singing with guitar using two microphones. One mic for voice and another for guitar. Although I achieved a reasonable result, I feel there is too much bleed from voice to guitar mic and vice versa.
 
I have one studio condenser mic and a number of Shure SM57 and SM58's so am limited for choice of microphones. What would be the best way to utilise what I have to get the best seperation of voice and guitar, or, is it really necessary at this early stage.
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    Danny Danzi
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    Re:How best to record singer acoustic guitarist? 2012/03/11 09:12:49 (permalink)
    If you are just using this as a guide track, I'd not worry too much about bleed or anything else. The main thing to worry about is making sure the capture of the voice and the guitar are good enough for the band to track over. If the guitar sound is so bad they have a problem hearing it to where it affects their tracking, you can have a problem there...so make sure it's all decent quality and very audible.

    When you go to create the real print of this, have the guy singing/playing just track his guitar while the guide track plays. This way you'll get a clean guitar track of him without his voice being involved. After that's done, have him sing to the guitar track you just had him play and you'll be in good shape. That's how I do it over here. Best of luck!

    -Danny

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    tvolhein
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    Re:How best to record singer acoustic guitarist? 2012/03/11 09:16:58 (permalink)
    Optimus

    If the acoustic guitar has a pick up, you can always DI the guitar.  The vocal track will have some guitar in it, but the guitar track will be clean.

    Like Danny says, don't worry about it too much now.  This is just a scratch track.

    Tom

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    Blown306
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    Re:How best to record singer acoustic guitarist? 2012/03/11 11:03:35 (permalink)
    Utilizing the figure 8 pattern of ribbon mics will give you the best rejection and minimize bleed for that setup IMO. Mount them horizontal and aim the vocal mic up so the edge of the ribbon is aligned with guitar, and aim the guitar mic down so the edge of the ribbon is aligned with the singers mouth. One thing to consider is that some singer/players do much much better performing both at the same time. Sometimes they just can't get the feel or groove tracking everything separately, and the life of the performance can be negatively affected. However, bleed is not always a bad thing. If the bleed sounds good (quality-wise), there is usually no problem with it being there.

     - Jeff
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