Recording Vox and Acoustic simultaneously

Beagle,

This is a little different from what you asked......

But here's what I (and many) do in this situation 99% of the time and have had good success.

Record your Singer/Player onto 2 mono scratch tracks......(what mics you use here will not matter as long as they capture the performance cleanly.)

That being said a mic with a cardiod pattern will lower your bleed levels

Vocals Track #1

Guitar track #2

Yes you will get a significant amount of bleed.............thats OK.

Have him or her focus on timing................




Now set up these scratch tracks for a headphone feed/monitor........

(The reason we recorded the scratch onto to 2 seperate tracks

was to give us monitoring flexibilty in our headhone cues.....

by flexibilty I mean volumes, Fx and panning etc.)


Now come back and have him re-record his parts seperately........with the scratch track.... the hope here is that the scratch track will be enough of a reference point musically that he can have the confidence to do it 1 part at a time.

You will probably want to feed him a bit of the metronome as well.


All the while you are working on this you may nicely try to point out that a certain amount of the recording quality is all about the performer and their studio technique's. This would be a good oppurtunity for him or her to work some of them out.

Good Luck.

Good Luck.

I've used three mics for that application before (2 SD's on the acoustic, 1 LD on the vox) and it worked pretty well. The only thing is to make sure you're getting the tone you want from the micing, because there's going to be a LOT of bleed. It's just going to be a matter of experimentation.

larry, thanks a lot for the suggestions. that's really what I was expecting, but where would you start with the SDC to look for a good sound? near the sound hole or near the fret board?

hey, Rod! thanks for piping in! that's a surpriser, i wouldn't have thought that 3 mics would work very well. but one problem I have with your suggestion is that I only have 1 SDC, not 2. I have a dynamic instrument mic, but only 1 SDC. I'll experiment and see what happens.

j boy - thanks for the tips, but unfortunately, I don't have the equipment to work with that you're talking about. I don't have any mics with a figure 8 pattern, nor do I have ribbom mics, so thanks, but that won't really work for me.

beagle, i've never done acoustic and vocals as a final cut (do it all the time for rough tracks though) but what you might want to try is one mic pointed up toward the singer and one further away to capture the guitar. you will get significant bleed no matter what you do but if the guy can pull it off the second mic further away will give you a good sense of depth (provided you have a good room sound). also unless he's a belter the guitar will probably be louder than him so close mic'ing the vocals will help offset that.

another thing i've done is an x-y with one SD condenser and one dynamic, typically with the condenser for vocals and the mic setup at head level. still not something i'd cut a final take with but might be worth a shot.

if you've got the mics for it (LD figure 8, SD) you could also try a mid-side setup and adjust the position for balance between vocals and guitar. you might not get enough meat on the guitar that way but if it's a dense mix you might not need it...

the final mix will really dictate what you can get away with. if it's a guitar/vocal solo, the near/far setup would probably work fine with a warm mic as the far mic and you'd get a more authentic sound. if it's a dense mix you can get away with concentrating on the vocals more. a sparser mix would be tougher.

ORIGINAL: Beagle
Jack - no belter, just a low tenor, older gentleman who strums everything as he sings. I might try the 2nd mic further away, but my room is not great, so that may or may not work. the x-y with an SD and a dynamic sounds interesting - i probably would never have thought to try that.

depending on his vocal tone the dynamic might work better on his vocals than the condenser - sometimes the less detail the better. if you can swing it, try getting a portable mic booth like those made by real traps (and i think there are others that are smaller and less expensive). this would cut down on the room sound and give you more to work with. i'm still saving up for mine but if you've got $250 burning a hole in your pocket...