Vocal Mic Bleed

[adam79]

How do you guys go about cutting out the guitar bleeding into the vocal mic? Whether I'm recording with an acoustic or electric, I always have to go back and re-record the vocals. That can get frustrating cuz my best performances come out when I'm playing along w the guitar.



Waves makes a plug called Primary Source Expander that seems like it's specifically made for this. I'm gonna demo it, but I'm guessing I already a plug for this that I've just overlooked.



Thanks.

[Darryl Ramm]

A plugin is not where I would be looking.

What vocal mic?

Electric guitar... iso cab, or amp in whole separate room, or cab emulator/direct out box, or just a load/attenuator box to quiet the amp, or guitar amp processor, or plugin... so many choices.

Accoustic guitar... what mics? You can look for more directional ones and/or just live with some level of bleed.

[albee1952]

This is very difficult to do. The best way is with both vocal and guitar being mic'd up with figure 8 pattern microphones and aiming the null of each at the "other" source. My solution is to let the performer do a pass where they sing and play, with a count of some kind. Then I have them do a pass of just playing guitar(while listening to the scratch track). Then I have them sing over the fresh(clean) guitar track.

[adam79]

Originally Posted by albee1952

This is very difficult to do. The best way is with both vocal and guitar being mic'd up with figure 8 pattern microphones and aiming the null of each at the "other" source. My solution is to let the performer do a pass where they sing and play, with a count of some kind. Then I have them do a pass of just playing guitar(while listening to the scratch track). Then I have them sing over the fresh(clean) guitar track.

Unfortunately I have a pathetic mic locker.. a pair of MCA SP1's and a sm57.


I also forgot to mention that the electric is going DI, so it's just the guitar itself that I'm contending with; no amp.


Like I mentioned earlier, I always thought a gate fixed this, but no matter how high I set the threshold the guitar remains.

[Ben Jenssen]

Another thing to consider is that compression on the vocal mic is going to make it worse. So don't over-compress the vocal mic.

[albee1952]

Well, it would be cumbersome, but some kind of microphone shield could be placed below the mic to block sound from the guitar. If you're recording yourself, you can probably find a way to make that work(I couldn't do that with a paying client)