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I have a guy who's coming by the house tomorrow and wants to record himself singing and playing his guitar. I have a SB Audigy sound card and it doesn't have multiple inputs like in a recording studio. He's going to be singing and picking his guitar and I have to capture both simultaenously, obviously.
How's that going to work when I go to adding effects and such? If I had reverb to his vocal it's going to get added to the guitar playing too, right? It's all on ONE TRACK..
Should I have him record his guitar playing only on track 1 and then come back and dub his voice in on track 2 and then if he wants to add BASS guitar, add that to track 3?
I have a Behringer Mixer 802. If that helps any...................
ha ha....... and I know he's a toe-tapper when's playing so I'm gonna have to give him a piece of thick carpet under his foot or a big pillow... otherwise my SM57 shure mic will pick up the toe-tapping.
thanks in advance for any suggestions............ and no, I ain't going out and buying a M-Audio multi channel sound card. Ha ha ha ha- Wish I could afford one.
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Same setup as above. Plug the mic into one channel the guitar the other. Turn up the aux on the guitar only. He can sing along but only the guitar will record. dub in the vocal after.
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John
THIS I understand, and thank you for the recommendation.
I did NOT understand your instructions for the other post about hearing what I record........ My head is still spinning from that one........... LOL
Sorry, man............ my fault............. I'm DENSE.
THANKS, JOHN!
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Ray,
If you had another mic, you could actually simultaneously record both sources. Close mic the vocals with the SM 57 into channel 1, (You'll probably have to dial down the lows due to proximity effect). Hard pan channel 1 left.
If you have another mic, plug into channel 2, for the guitar - hard pan this right.
In RB, do not record as a stereo pair, but record the L/R into two different tracks - potentially using the control room L/R outputs into the inputs on the Audigy.
There will be some bleed but if your friend has a need to play the guitar to give a good vocal performance, this is one way to skin the cat.
Does the guitar have a pickup in it? If so, then you're nearly there - record the pickup instead of the mic'ed guitar.
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While Scott's method will work, and has been done many times successfully-
if you plan to do more with the tracks, it may be better to let him play it and then sing to it after; cleaner tracks (no bleedover) and only one performance at a time needs to be 'good'... not a perfect guitar track and vocal track at same time. Sometimes it helps to focus on one at a time.
However, some people want to play/sing it all at once and are capable of pulling it off, so you'll have to select from your options there. Most times I try to record both at the same time the guitar player is moving a lot while singing and the guitar track does not get a consistent signal.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Ray,
Record each part separately, then mix them down together. Otherwise, you are limited on FX to add post recording. It will definitely add whatever effect you are using to both parts and that usually muddies everything up quickly.
Trax
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If the person I am going to record turns in a Strong Performance, I usually don't even want to add separate effects, edit, punchin and all that jazz.
Nor is it needed in most cases.
Also - that performer very likely has not spent a lot of time recording in the multitrack process and you can easily throw them off enough that their Strong Performance is lost.
So -- If they are very used to playing their guitar and singing their song at the same time, I don't attempt to change that by suddenly inserting a brand new process on them, just so I can use some fancy plugins.
Instead, I use my single stereo channel input soundcard with two mics, one in each channel, simultaneously, placing one mic close to the guitar (but NOT in front of the soundhole where it will pick up the air rushing in and out) and the other mic in front of the performer's cakehole.
When tracking like this, I just want to capture their performance from beginning to end.
I might do three or more passes like that, though, looking for the best performace at mixing time. I usually don't attempt to even edit parts from one pass into another in an attempt to try to derive a "perfect performance" either. Most of these artists are adept at "telling their story" and you may just find that each pass is a different retelling, different enough that attempts to match pass number 1 with the second verse from pass number 2 can be heard.
Instead, I listen for the full beginning-to-end performance that has the most sonic and emotional impact. Sometimes that is the performance that does indeed have a slight mistake in it somewhere. If the performance outweighs the little mistake, I just leave well enough alone. Of course, this is the REAL job we face when "wearing the many hats" of the home recordist - that of MAKING DECISIONS like these.
Once it is time for mixdown, I don't try to create a wild stereo field by leaving the guitar on the hard left and the vocal on the hard right, either. That's dumb. Instead, I pan them both more towards the center if not dead center, such that the playback emulates what you might hear if that performer were sitting on a stool directly in front of you, playing their guitar and singing, telling their story.
As for reverb, I find no need to establish a separate instance of reverb for the voice than the guitar on a recording such as this. Matter of fact, that can easily be *detrimental* to the performance for applying a different ambience to the vocal than that on the guitar can create an artificial situation in which the voice and the instrument can sound like they are in two different spaces. Yuck.
When recording like this I find that the EQ is important, as well as the Compressor plugin. Reverb can be applied on the AUX bus so that you are using the same reverb on both tracks, using the Mixer to adjust the amount on each - just don't end up with way more on one than the other, that "two different rooms" aspect.
Applying reverb separately also has another undesirable aspect -- one can make a great sounding acoustic guitar track start to sound like it was played through an electric guitar amplifier that has its reverb turned on... (another Yuck in most instances like this, save that stuff for the larger Rock Band's album where this kind of thing may work as "artsy").
If the performer is good, that is all that you need capture.
--Mac
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Tell him to get some hardware to go with your mixer. Any guitarist/singer should invest in some great accompanying tools: Digitech Volcalist Jam Man Chorus, Delays, etc., and mic types can be dialed in before attaching to your mixer...and, I'd also sugest some sort of a compressor/finalizer, like the Behringer Ultramizer 9024 for final mixdown. It's all "just money", but makes life gigging or recording much more satisfactory and enjoyable. http://www.thegigbaby.com 
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I agree Mac.
I have a lot of Acoustic songs which I've never been able to overdub my vocals well.
When I sing and play at the same time, I get my best performance.
Each time I sing one of my songs the vocal inflections and timing always have small changes.
In my old analog days I would just leave one or two mics setup and let the tape roll for as long as an hour, pausing for a drink of water or an adjustment.
Also, a good point was made about the Toe Tapping.
I played with a guy who always stomped his foot. Boom, boom, boom. In the end, we sat down on a futon on the floor and played together. lol
I still only use one Mic when I record myself. Maybe I'm just not that picky, but I prefer the better performance to perfect sound.
When I'm done, just a touch of reverb and compression.
I'm working on getting my acoustic playing back now. My next recordings will be Acoustic Guitar and Vocals. We'll see how my voice is now after over 10 years.
Wayne,
Last edited by redguitars; 07/04/10 10:21 AM.
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Everyone, thank you for your tips and suggestions...........
I appreciate ALL of them.
The recording went well. We went through the session with a KISS goal... Keep It Simple Stupid!
He's pleased with the final product; I'm pleased with it. I even burned him about 10 CDs and did him a cover. His grandma cried when she saw the cover ---- that was her 23 y/o grandboy!!! She's so proud of him --- and good reason too.
THANKS, GUYS! YOU ARE THE BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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So Ray, how did you do the recording?
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Hey Scott. The recording went well. A song from the recording appears on my webpage: Casey just slide down the webpage and you'll bump into CASEY and the recording I posted. He played the piano part first. It was my keyboard directly wired into the PC... and he kinda sang along with it, which he could do as all we were recording was the piano LINE IN 1. Then we went back and he dubbed his voice in on top of that. He wanted the piano panned left and vocal panned right. I wasn't too impressed with that... but, when I tinker with the original file again, I'm going to pull both more center and i'm going to reduce the volume on that keyboard... When the dude heard his voice with compression, EQ and reverb added, you should have seen the look on his face ------------ "DEER IN HEADLIGHTS"........ he about tripped. His grandma stopped by during the recording and when she heard him singing after all effects had been added, she stood there and the tears poured from her eyes. That was one happy granny.
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