Recording accoustic & vocals - same time or seperate?
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Posted on Dec 01, 2008 09:09 am
Indellable
Music Afficionado
Member Since: Aug 12, 2008
I record mainly vocals for hip hop and R&B music. On occasion I will record some accoustic stuff but mainly as favors for a curious begginner/novice. However, I have a new client who is interested in recording an accoustic guitar along with his vocals. So my basic questions are:
1.) Do I record them at the same time or seperately?
2.) If at the same time, do I use 2 mics or just 1?
3.) If I record seperately, what is the easiest way - a click track?
Thanks and hope you had a good Thanksgiving.
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Dec 01, 2008 10:31 am Do whatever they are comfortable with in order to get the best performance. If you do both at the same time, use two mics.
If you do them seperate, I'd say let them play both but only record one at a time if they are still more comfortable that way.
PMSTMember
Since: Nov 28, 2008
Dec 01, 2008 10:40 am the best way to do it is to record them separately.
this will keep the vocal mic from getting sounds off the guitar and vice versa.
and yeah, you definitely need to do it to a click if you want neat timing (and especially in R&B and hip hop where lots of samples are used, you definitely want neat timing).
however your client might be used to sing and play guitar at the same time, so he might find it more confortable to do it all in one take.
in that case you definitely want two mics, otherwise you won't be able to mix guitar and voice separately and this would be a huge limitation if you aim to semi-pro sound.
hope this was useful.
pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
Dec 01, 2008 10:50 am I agree with PMST: separate. But, I don't think 2 mics will keep the signals seperate. I've done this, and end up with 2 tracks that are almost the same, and both needing work.
In my experience, work real hard for getting the artist to sing / play separate.
And, get them to play to a click.
It'll make it easier to work with later.
The more I work with stuff like this, the more I think the pro engineers have set ways of doing things, and they don't cut corners. This, in my humble opinion, would be one (actually, two) of those.
TadpuiI am not a crook's headMember
Since: Mar 14, 2003
Dec 01, 2008 12:40 pm Just to add my own opinions to the mix:
If you have a good-sounding room, then I'd say just stick a single LDC (or one of the stereo micing setups like X/Y) 2 or 3 feet from the performer, find a position that picks up a balanced mix of the voice and the guitar, and record it at the same time.
If the performer can reproduce the same feel by doing it as 2 separate takes, then all the better for the engineer. When you do it like this, you'll have an isolated vocal on 1 track and an isolated guitar on another track. This gives you greater control when it comes to applying compression, EQ, gates, reverb, etc.
And about the click track, I say use one no matter what. Keeping in tempo from start to finish on every song is pretty important, and I find it nearly impossible unless I have a metronome of some sort. Some songs may actually benefit from variance in tempo, but for the most part its better to keep things going like clockwork all the way through a song. Just keep it at a quiet enough volume in the headphones so that it doesn't get picked up by the mics. I hate it when that happens!
IndellableMusic AfficionadoMember
Since: Aug 12, 2008
Dec 01, 2008 03:11 pm Excellent replies - thanks!
