As my main instrument, it’s exciting to be putting down some six string noise, starting with acoustic guitars. Acoustic guitars give a wholesome earthiness to a track – it ties a piece of music to its most simple form.
Acoustic guitars: rig run down
- ASUS Chromebook Flip C100PA
- Samson Studio GT monitors
- Beyerdynamic DT-100 headphones
- SE Electronics 2200a
- Epiphone Hummingbird
- Taylor TSBT-e
- Acoustic guitar strings: Ernie Ball Earthwood Medium Light
- Jim Dunlop Gator Grip 1.14mm picks
- Unbranded XLR cable
After such an easy set up in recording bass, things get a little bit more interesting this time around. I’m micing things up, rather than just plugging things directly in.
Recording
I’m not going to dwell on mic placement techniques here, because there are plenty of far more credible resources on the matter.
Of course, it’s a super-subjective matter, and there isn’t going to be one “right” technique. Any recording that involves a microphone will depend on the mic, the room, the instrument, the positioning of the microphone, what’s being used to process things between the mic and your DAW, and an actual sound engineer could probably double this list.
Obviously, the first resource I consulted on the matter was Google. I opted for suggestion number two on this list, for no other reason than it involves one microphone of a type that I own.
You might notice the plural form of ‘guitar’ from the post title, and two acoustic guitars listed in the rig run down.
That’s because my favorite thing to do when recording acoustic guitars is to play the same thing on each of these babies. Later on, when I’m mixing the track, I’ll pan one wide left, the other wide right, and it’ll sound mega.
I did it when I was recording bass, and if you’ve followed the development of this track, you probably noticed that the volume of the vocals recorded in the scratch track are a lot quieter now.
That’s simply for my own benefit when recording. It helps me focus on the drums and playing in time to them, rather than vocals. Patchy and all as the drumming is, it’s still the foundation of the track. This means everything else needs to be in time with them!
Conclusion
| Pros | Cons |
| Setup: thanks to CakeWalk for their article on mic placement – I’m satisfied with the results; I think they sound fine | Recording in my apartment: It’s a small apartment with living stuff – not exactly optimized for acoustics |
| My guitars: obviously I have some bias, but I think they sound perfect | Time: although we focus on doing things quickly, it’d be nice to have a bit more time to experiment |
| Time: this was all done in about 20 minutes |
In the next recording session, we’ll make a racket with electric guitars. Here’s what we’ll be building on.
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