might be useful. I have a few methods of recording acoustic guitar that I’m happy to share. Figure 10a. So try and keep it simple and don’t expect professionally produced sound. There is a kind of magic when you go for it and do both at the same time. Many engineers feel that the 12th-fret position is the best option, and that’s probably the “go-to” spot for most recordists. If a direct input must be used from an acoustic guitar, the first line of defense would be EQ. Figure 6. With acoustic guitar, the opposite is true. Some Sound Engineers will move one Large Diaphragm up above the guitar to get closer to the soundhole by placing the mic above the guitar at the edge and pointing it down above the soundhole or the player’s hand. © 2020 Music Maker Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Figure 5a. You can still, and lots of artists do separate vocals and guitar or piano. A typical setup might combine a mic at the 12th-fret position with one pointing at the bridge area, as shown in Figure 3 on the previous page. Regular cardioids pick up primarily from the front, and reject sound from the rear (180°), hyper-and supercardioids move the rejection angle a bit more toward the sides. Since monitoring is usually done via headphones, these kinds of isolation techniques should not cause too many problems. Miking a Singer-Songwriter or a live player should not have sacrifice the genuine intimacy and power that comes from their performance. Traditionally, onboard acoustic guitar pickups have provided a fairly harsh, two-dimensional sound, compared with what even a mediocre microphone recording delivers. Consider buying a tuner that clips on the guitar and lights up with a big display that is easy to see recording or on stage playing live. If the mics can be angled to take advantage of those null spots, while still capturing high-quality sound, then a surprising degree of isolation can often be achieved, even with the sources as close together as in this scenario. It works like this: The Side Mic is turned 90 degrees from your source, perpendicular to your guitar and listening to the left and right sides. You could, of course, pan any two mics to separate sides of the mix, but that may result in a more diffuse sound, with a vague sense of stereo imaging, rather than the clear image with an enhanced sense of depth that a proper stereo recording can provide. Another placement is to point the mic between the bridge and the players right hand taking away from any finger noise that may come from picking strings. Any of these positions can provide a good balance—what works best in a particular situation will depend on the mic, the room, the overall tone of the guitar itself, and, of course, the player. Im working on a small (3/4 song) project of my own material at the mo. This is how most studios do it. ... placing a LDC, such as an applicable Neumann or Audio Technica, behind the players right (or left, if left handed) shoulder, pointing down towards where the sound is escaping the sound hole of the guitar. A cardioid polar pattern (shown here on the Lewitt LCT 640) has a broad, shallow null at 180º, which rejects sound from behind. Figure 3. The extended bandwidth—the presence of strong higher frequencies—from an acoustic guitar calls for mics with both a more extended high-end response, and greater clarity. This ruined the first track and I had to start again. The Player will have to be consistent enough and play well enough so that the choices you make on the microphone placement will give you a better sound. Keep in mind that the use of two mics as described above is not necessarily the best way to go about making a stereo guitar recording. Near-coincident mics on a guitar, 10” apart. Given that acoustic guitars radiate sound in a wider pattern than electric guitar amps, it makes more sense to consider recording the acoustic in stereo, for a greater sense of width and three-dimensionality. They can be done with inexpensive equipment and set-up by yourself. See Figure 10. The Condenser mic is powered by Phantom Power, switch means it needs juice to operate that normally comes from the mixer or pre-amp. Another possible solution, if available, is to use the onboard pickup system built into the acoustic guitar. If you decide to employ more than one mic, there are two ways you can approach this: two mics can be arrayed for stereo recording, or the mics can be combined in mono (as described in the electric guitar article), simply to bring a rich blend of different tonalities to the overall recorded sound. A mic could also be placed in an overhead position, a couple feet above and just to the front of the player’s head (AG video Part 1)—think of this as the equivalent of the overhead mics that provide air and depth when recording an acoustic drum kit. There is no shortage of good condenser mics available for acoustic guitar recording, at every price point from around a hundred to a few thousand dollars. Then tune up perfectly. Start with your guitar re-stringed and tune-up. It is easy to move around and good quality Condensers are inexpensive. The sound will reach the two mics at different times which creates a cancellation effect. Turning your body into and out from the mic area will EQ and set volume before touching any of the electronics. Ribbon mics can also offer good clarity for acoustic recordings, although with a warmer overall balance, and would be an alternative. At the 12th fret, you’ll get a nice crisp string sound, so it’s also common to angle the mic in toward the body to add more fullness. They need to be a little closer than the 12-inch distance placement otherwise the sound will be thin. Both cardioid and bidirectional (figure-8) mics offer this capability. Position/angle the player and mic so the front of the mic faces the guitar (at the desired distance and position), and the null spot (rear/side) directly faces the source of potential leakage, and you may achieve a surprising degree of isolation, even when the other sound source is fairly loud. Small moves of the mics make for big changes in the sound. One trick the Aura system uses is also another good approach, in general, to try to salvage a DI acoustic sound—mix a little bit of mic signal in with the DI signal. Most mics Condenser or Dynamic used in the studios are Cardioid directional meaning they pick up sound directly in front in the direction they are pointing to. Condenser mics are much better for acoustic guitar recording than the Dynamic models. These mics from Shure, Blue, DPA, and Lewitt are all suitable for acoustic guitar recording, and you can hear them demonstrated in our videos. Many fine guitars include an onboard pickup nowadays, recognizing that in live situations, it can sometimes be the only way to amplify the guitar without feedback and insurmountable leakage. Remember, what you’ve got going for you here is that the pickup is probably in use because of isolation issues, which means that that particular guitar part is likely to be somewhat buried in the mix later—if it was an isolated part, you’d be able to use mics more readily, right? These are Shure KSM141 mics. But the best results are likely to be achieved with bidirectional (figure-8) mics used for both voice and guitar. He has written many articles on Home Recording and Songwriting. Here’s where you should first try aiming your mics if you’re using more than one: the 12th fret and the bridge area of the guitar. The distance from the two mics and the sound source is the main variable that you work with. First off, you won’t really achieve as much separation as the visual might lead you to expect—remember, sound waves can easily get around barriers. When it comes to acoustic guitar, miking from a foot or so away still constitutes close-miking, but it’s possible to use more distant placements as well. You also can make some mistakes on the guitar or vocals and might have to live with it. Home Recording Studios are operated by Songwriters who need to get that song out of their head and on the Internet. Figure 11. The M/S or Mid Side mic technique gives you more control over the width of the stereo spread than other microphone recording techniques and allows you to make adjustments at any time after the recording is finished. When stereo miking is used, sometimes this rule is not observed strictly, but stereo mics will be panned apart, and classic stereo miking techniques are designed to control and make use of the phase interference to enhance the stereo quality of the recording—see below. You don’t need to be an expert just consistent enough so you can make a comparison. Probably the best approach to this situation is to try to take advantage of the polar patterns of cardioid and figure-8 microphones, which reject sound from certain angles as discussed above. Obviously, the easy trick of just sticking a mic an inch from the speaker, so often cited and employed by engineers after electric guitar tones, is not applicable when it comes to the acoustic flavor of the instrument. Here’s how. Then you can adjust the lower end frequencies by moving the mic in and out closer to the source of the sound. The results are surprisingly rich-sounding, and while the system is designed more for live than studio work, it could be used to provide a more-than-usable track even in recording.

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