Recording Acoustic Guitar Duo/Vocals

[gerax]

I will be recording a folk guitar duo in the fashion of Simon&Garfunkel, as they also sing and harmonize vocals a lot. They asked me to keep the session as close to their live performances as possible, so everything should be recorded simultaneously (guitars, lead vocals, harmony vocals); I'm used to record guitars, but I never had to record both guitars and vocals together (even if it's quite usual among folk players); I will be setting them up in a fairly small (14X13)but good sounding room (it's wood paneled with a pitched ceiling). Since both players have pickups installed in their guitars I was thinking about using those sources as well together with the mic lines.

If any of you with similar recording experiences could share some usefull tips and techniques on how to best get this kind of performance recorded I would really appreciate it; my main concern is how to get separation between vocals/guitar and between the two players: do you use baffles or panels to separate the two? what kind of miking approach do you use?

Thanx everybody for your help

L.G. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[metaltim]

well i've never mic a situation like this but I would think:

If you had one mic at the hole, and maybe one on the neck, that shouldnt have any problem picking up anything else but the guitar.

I would then think, maybe just have them sit with an angle of about 60 degrees between them. This could help with separating there vocals.

Also, like you said, going direct using their pickups, in addition to mics, would make sure you have good separation of guitars...

I've personally done this situation:
My friend and I each have a mic, I'm on guitar, he's on bass, and we just hit record and start to play. Of course these are electric, but as far as vocal wise, we have no problems with our voices bleeding into each other's mic's, and thats listening through the monitors as we play, no headphones...
when we do this, we face each other.

hope any of that helps, as it's better than no response..
tim

[crs117]

Recording from a guitar's pickup will never give you the sound that you are going to want, but here is another way to have this done. If you have ever listened too a live CD and wondered how they got such a great live sound, most times you can look in the cover and see that overdubs where rerecorded over the live performance.

Here is one of 2 ways to try to record this, so that you have the flexibility you would want/need during mixdown. First of i am assuming that 2 guitars instead of one is being played (as simon and garfunkle only used one guitar). Also i would recommend puting the 2 not too far apart from each other. When trying to capture a good acoustic live sound, if both musicians arent close to each other they will really lose that dynamic connection.

Without wanting overdubs.
5-mics. One each right in front of the 12th fret of each guitar. A mic each in front of both vocalist. the final mic you should find a nice place somewhere in between the 2 musicians so that you have a nice ambient live sound you can increase or decrease in volume for taste. The final mic will really help keep it sounding real but i would mix it in as after mixing the other four.

with overdubs.
3 mics. Use the pickups from the guitars. Use 2 mics as vocal mics as before, and then use that 3rd mic as an ambient mic. Once everything is recorded, go back and record each guitar track seperate with a mic this time, but using the piezo pickup as a reference for what needs to played where. This will allow you much more freedom in mixing the guitars without bleedover or any weird phasing problems. The live ambient mic will really help in this situation to keep that live feel.

Depending on the confidence levels, and the abilities of each player i would do either of these 2 options.

Christian

[gerax]

Thanx for the reply guys.

I was thinking about a cross of the two approaches you suggested: I would use both mics and pickups on the guitars (trying to get the most sound from the mic and adding the pickup just for a little more definition, or to correct some passages where separation isn't so clear), two mics on the vocals but I'm not sure about the ambient mic, as I wouldn't want it to cause any phasing problems with the lead vocal track, which I would like to be te most clear possible. My problem is with the guitar bleeding into the vocals mic and vice versa, how do you deal with this? For guitar/vocals bleeding into the other player's mics I'm thinking about using some baffles just to cut out some of the unwanted bleeding: I suppose if they're not pleayng extermely loud there shouldn't be many troubles (but I may be wrong [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img] ).

What do you think?

L.G.