Micing a classical guitar

If that was the guitarists impression then I might try a stereo set up about 30" from the guitar body.

If you do that you'll need to work with placing the musician in your room so that the guitar sounds best and the mics are in a good sounding place to.

Close micing works well in most rooms but not everyone is interested in that sound. Near-far micing is great for getting a natural, familiar sound, but you have to assure that the natural sound is pleasing and some rooms make that difficult.

Keep it positive and help the guitarist find what they are looking for.

best regards,
mike

I personally like the close in miked sound.... and I can get a bit of distance in the sound with levels and reverb. 

Miking an acoustic guitar is an art.  The main thing is to have it sound natural after the fact in the mix. 

Similarly to Bats,

If you have he mics and inputs at you disposal, a close setup and a room setup blended to taste. I have only recorded classical guitar twice, but I like the sound of a large condenser and a small condenser blended. I didn't take notes, so I don't remember which one was where. I believe the SDC was aimed at the picking fingers to get the attack. The blended tone can add the articulation that you may need later if other sounds are added.

"Theoretically, it should pick up the exact sound I'm hearing."

Yes, IF you use a omni pattern mic.

:-)


best regards,
mike

When I do it, I like use one of my "shotgun" mics, like a MKH70 or a MKH60.


The omni comment was referring to the way our ears hear in omnidirection.


best,
mike

for what it's worth, i used to record my acoustic using an x/y pattern, but instead of two matched mics (because i'm really cheap) i used an SDC instrument mic (MXL603s) and an SM57. the 603s was pointed toward the bridge and the 57 was pointed toward the neck. i usually lined up the mics around the 12th fret to avoid directly picking up the soundhole. this gave me a pretty thick sound, which i panned hard left/right for a wider feel. because the mics were vastly unmatched, the wideness effect was pronounced but not over the top.


since then i've stopped doing that as i generally had to cut out big portions of low end, but in this situation it might work for a fuller sound. 

A useful setup is an M/S setup resonably close 2 or 3 feet away in a deadish area. The convolution reverbs are so good and nice now you can put the guitar into any situation but you also have the the more intimate close up sound to work with too. 

But looking at your OP the M/S setup 6 to 8 feet away in a nice sounding room could also be the a good option. At least with M/S you have some choices later in post production.

If you are going to the trouble of getting into a nice space do both. 2 M/S setups, one close in and the other 8 to 10 feet away. You will need 4 tracks but will have a lot of options later then.

The distant setup might work with the M microphone in omni and the S figure 8 as usual side on. The closer setup could have cardioid and figure 8 as per usual. Measure the distance between the close and distant setups too so you can alter the timing of them if you are using both for any reason at once in the mixdown.

You don't want the room too big and wet. A little wood and carpet in the right size room can be very effective. If you are doing distant setups make 3 test recordings different distances away. eg 3 feet, 6 feet, 9 feet etc. I did this with a clarinet quartet and we listened there (need some reasonable speakers on the job though)  and were able to decide what the nicest distance was to use. Take the guesswork out of it.

Make sure the guitar sounds good in the room.
I you have them, use a pair of small diaphragm omni's... or LD condensers that have a thin diaphragm (will respond similar to small diaphragm mics).  Typical LDC mics may fatten/thicken the guitar too much.
Move around the guitar (using your ears) to find the sweet-spot.
That should capture what you're hearing in the room.

I'll point out that in Craig Anderton's Advanced Workshop for Sonar X1, the first one he did, has a chapter just on this topic. It's very specific and very inspiring. You can really get some good ideas from what he conveys. It's Chapter 16 to be exact. I go back to replay that segment more than occasionally. His tutorial is worth the investment.

Hi Tom, I've tried almost every possible way of recording a classical guitar, and was a concert guitarist myself for a while, so it's a topic I feel quite qualified to comment on. Here's what I've learnt;

Your setup is going to depend on the style of music your client is recording - classical, or 'pop'. Let's deal with classical first...

Classical music in the 'right' room
- Put your gear in your car and go to a purpose built recital hall or a church with suitable acoustics. Sounds like a lot of effort (and it is!) but totally worth it, trust me. I won't go into what the 'right' room should look like - there's plenty of info out there on that already. Just make sure that whatever venue you choose, that it is very, very quiet! CG is a quiet instrument anyway, and you won't be close micing for classical music, so the noise floor of the room becomes a very real issue.

- If he's playing classical music, limit yourself to true stereo configurations. I personally hate the results yielded from 'bastardised' stereo pairs/multi-mic setups in this context. It sounds very unnatural, which for some reason I always perceive as an undesirable quality when listening to classical music.

- I like an M/S configuration for CG playing classical music when in a suitable room. I need to go to work, so I won't go into why I prefer this setup - I just do! You won't need an additional room mic, just fade up the side signal to add the ambience you require. And don't worry that the majority of your mixdown will come from the 'M' signal - there isn't any stereo information on a guitar at the distance you need to place the mics anyway - your depth and space will come from the side mic. A Blumlein pair also works well, but placement is much more critical I've found, as you must get the ambience levels (distance from the player) correct at the time of recording, which can be hard to judge, depending on your monitoring setup. X/Y and ORTF don't work so well in this context when you pull the mics back. A/B spaced pair can work, but don't space them far apart. 

- For classical music, start by placing your stereo pair about 1.5 - 2 metres from the player. Every room, player, and instrument is vastly different, so you must allow a good chunk of time for experimenting with distances and height for your stereo pair. If you get too close to the player, you get too much 'nail clicking' - a sound all guitarists hate. If you place the mics too far away, there will be too much of the room in your signal, and background noise becomes increasingly problematic. Listen, listen, listen!

-  Don't try and overcomplicate things. As with all classical recording, you need to spend more time experimenting with placement, but once you get it right, roll with it. Don't go trying to add mics all around the room just because you can, or because you saw it in a magazine, or because you want to use all of your toys. You shouldn't need any more than 2 mics to make a stunning recording of a classical guitar in the right room.

Classical music in the 'wrong' room
- The room you described is definitely the wrong room :-) Is there any way you can move to a different room, even if it's just another room in your house? That 12' x 12' is going to kill you!
- If you can relocate to a larger room that isn't a square, you can still pull the mics back further than you normally would, but it's impossible to comment more on this without hearing your room, as that will change everything. Is it a 'dead' space that you've treated? Whatever the case, listen out for nail clicking - yuck.
- Even when the room is bad, I still prefer to stick with true stereo configurations for classical music.

Popular music on nylon string guitar
- Anything goes! Again, i don't want to sound like one of those pretentious, arrogant so-and-sos, but without providing more details about the project, I don't want to comment more on this, as your setup will vary hugely, depending on what it's for. For instance, is it a solo recording? What genre? What other instruments, if any? Music for media?
- Your ears rule here (as always!) - have an idea of what you'd like to hear, then set out to achieve that sound.
- Watch for excessive proximity effect if close micing with directionals
- I'm sure you've heard the usual advice - lots of lows around the body of the guitar, very muddy at the soundhole, more midrangey the further up the neck you go.

I'm sorry, I'd love to go on but I've got to go to work (incidently, recording myself playing CG for a TV ad ) but that should be enough to get you thinking. Feel free to provide more details, and I'll see if I can give you more specific advice.


If you listen to Nuages here, that one was recorded with a single M/S pair in a recital hall with budget gear. 

I'm just downloading some files I need for the session so I'll add a couple of things...

I mentioned 'nail clicking' a couple of times. Your potential client also said your test recordings sounded too close. For classical music on a classical guitar, a lot of the attack of the sound produced is very undesirable, which is why close mic'ing is generally a terrible idea in this context. It's not just the nail clicking that's the problem - the usual string squeeks, breathing, chair creeks, the sound of the skin in the right hand fingers passing over the string as it moves onto the nail - everything just sounds too close. 

It's an important concept to grasp when recording classical music - virtually all of the advice you read online and in magazines is intended for recording of popular music which calls for a completely different technique. Indeed, when recording pop music, we can use some of these characteristics, which were problems in our classical recording, to our advantage. The exaggerated attack portion of the sound can help a nylon string guitar cut through a mix, the sound of the skin on strings can yield a very intimate sound which can enhance a song etc. The key is context. Same thing applies for other instruments - close mic'ing a violin might give great attack and grit for a pop song, but try close mic'ing a classical violinist, and watch how hard he pokes you in the eye with his bow!

Try and understand why we do certain things when recording, and you'll become a much better engineer (I hope I don't sound condescending, like I'm a great engineer - I'm not! No Grammys for me!). Why would we want to close mic an instrument in the first place? To achieve better isolation when recording in an ensemble, to increase the source to reflections ratio, to use the exaggerated attack to compliment/enhance the style/mood of the song, to enable an instrument to cut through a mix better, to increase the lows by utilizing the proximity effect, to 'spotlight' a certain frequency spectrum, enabling the instrument to sit better in the mix, and I'm sure there are more reasons that I can't think of right now. But almost none of those reasons apply to classical music.

The point I'm trying to make, is don't do things 'just because'! If you understand why you're advised to do certain things, you'll be much more versatile.

As an example of all of this, listen to an album John Williams did in 1978 entitled, John Williams Plays Manuel Ponce. It sounds terrible! The producer of the album (Roy Emmerson) obviously wanted to experiment with studio recordings, and close mic'd the guitar in a totally dead studio. Now John Williams was almost certainly the most accomplished classical guitarist in the world at that time - he is an exceptionally clean player, and technically flawless, so if anyone could pull it off, he was the one - and yet the recording reveals things which just shouldn't be there, and the listener feels very uncomfortable listening to it. Even though that sound is used every day in popular music, it just doesn't work for classical music. Why? I don't know, it's an interesting topic - is our perception of what classical music should sound like a social/cultural construct, or an acoustic imperative? PhD topic anyone?...

I'll end with a question for our technical gurus (are you out there bitflipper?!). Why does close mic'ing exponentially exaggerate 'noise' like nails clicking the closer you move the mic? Is it that those sounds disperse faster, are room reflections the key factor, 'spotlighting'? 

In your small room you could also try micing the guitar from as far away as practical to avoid the problems of being too close. It may work eg 6 to 8 feet away etc. But then you will be getting the sound of that room into your recording to a certain extent.

You could try using EQ subtly to get the sound better and still using the convolution reverb to create the larger space.

It just may be one of those situations where you cannot do such a recording in your small space and you really need to get out of there and do it somewhere else.

I can see the points re being too close with classical recordings and why space in a nice room is your friend in these types of situations. There will always be a space somewhere you can do it and get a great result. All you have to do is figure out a way of getting the Mics/Pres/computer etc into the location. One of those quality portable recorders with XLR inputs is another option so you can use external microphones.

Thanks for that, I'm always down for listening to new music.

http://grooveshark.com/#!/search/album?q=David+Russell

Thanks Mike! I thought I Was the only one using Grooveshark!