The EM Poll

SIX-STRING STRATEGIES

Dec 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Michael Cooper

           

The acoustic guitar is arguably one of the most challenging instruments to record, due to the large number of variables that affect its sound. In a sense, the instrument carries its own room — the body — around with it. The size, shape, and internal bracing of the body, as well as the type of wood used in its construction, have a profound effect on its acoustic properties and thus the guitar's overall sound.

Other factors greatly influencing an acoustic guitar's timbre include the neck construction, choice of strings, and type of pick used. But above all, it's a player's unique techniques that shape the sound of the instrument: have two musicians play the same guitar, and it will likely sound different, sometimes drastically so.

All of these factors come into play before the recording studio's acoustics and the engineer's mic selection and placement are even considered. If that were all the variables involved, recording acoustic guitar would be challenging enough. But you also have to consider the signal path, which includes selecting the best mic preamp for the job, and deciding whether or not to equalize and compress the signal going to disk or tape.

For this article, I interviewed four of the music industry's most accomplished recording engineers — Brian Ahern, Richard Dodd, Jay Newland, and Dave Way — to glean their expert advice on recording acoustic guitar (see the sidebar “Acoustic Guitar Gurus”). We talked about mic choice and placement, polar pattern selection, and signal processing (including the use of DI boxes). I asked the engineers what their favorite pieces of gear were for recording the instrument, and what equipment they would recommend for recordists on a limited budget. We also occasionally touched on the subject of mixdown considerations to keep in mind while recording.

The responses to my questions were surprisingly varied and not always what I expected. No matter how deep your expertise in recording acoustic guitar, you're bound to find some fresh tips and perspectives in the discussion that follows.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Before you even consider mic choice and placement for recording acoustic guitar, you must decide whether to track using one or two — or more — microphones. The key here is to think ahead to what might be needed at mixdown. The decision of how many mics to use to record the instrument often comes down to balancing the need for clarity against how big the guitar track needs to sound. In most cases, clarity wins out and a mono recording is the best way to get there.

“I prefer to use one mic,” says Richard Dodd. “Unless the acoustic guitar is the only instrument in the song, it's very difficult and a waste of time in the mix to have two mics. If you've got one that sounds great, you don't need another one.”

Jay Newland is of the same mind. He records acoustic guitar “mostly in mono, occasionally stereo if it's the only thing there.”

Brian Ahern

Dave Way also concurs. “More often than not, it's going to be one [mono] microphone,” he remarks. “The times when I would use a stereo mic would be if the guitar is going to be either the only instrument in the track or a really big part of it to where one lone mic and maybe a vocal is not going to be as interesting as something that's slightly bigger and more open. But most of the time it's going to be one mic.

“I find, as a mixer, nothing gets more dense and complicated than everything miked in stereo,” Way continues. “Often in a mix, I'm either picking one channel out of the left and right or, more often than not, summing a stereo track to mono and panning it in one position because, in a dense mix, lots of things in stereo just sound like moosh. If I know going into a recording that it's gonna be in a dense track, one microphone is a good friend.”

It may sound counterintuitive, but the pinpoint imaging provided by mono acoustic guitar tracks can often make a mix sound wider — especially if the same part is performed twice and recorded to separate tracks. Dodd, Way, and Newland are all fans of double-tracking the same acoustic guitar part and hard-panning the resulting tracks opposite each other in the mix (when appropriate for the production). The result usually sounds much wider and bigger than what any stereo-miking technique could produce. But that doesn't mean that piling on even more guitar parts will add more size.

“Often in a pop or pop-rock record, you're gonna have a double-tracked acoustic guitar, sometimes maybe even triple tracked,” Way notes. “I've mixed tracks where there are six acoustic guitar parts all playing basically the same thing, but that gets to be overkill. You end up sacrificing clarity for the sake of trying to make something sound huge. Things can only sound huge in context to something that doesn't sound huge.”

Brian Ahern offers an interesting twist on the double-tracking technique. He remembers one production where he added a digital delay to each of the two hard-panned acoustic guitar tracks. He panned each delay toward the opposite side from its dry counterpart “so that they kind of danced with each other back and forth. I'd pan guitar A to the left and pan the effect from that guitar halfway to the right. That's the only time I've done that,” Ahern recalls. He goes on to note that he made sure the effect was “dull-sounding so it would not distract, it would just create a mood. I always roll the top off my echoes. I find them distracting otherwise.”

Put It There

When recording acoustic guitar with one mic, Way generalizes his approach to mic placement by saying, “More often than not, you're gonna be down by the sound hole. I usually like to place the mic about 10 inches, maybe 12 inches from the guitar, if it's the only instrument I'm recording at the time. You might not be able to get as far away if you're in a really live room.” He also notes that a guitar played with fingers instead of a pick usually calls for closer miking to compensate for the instrument's resulting quieter sound.

Richard Dodd

“If I'm looking for something that's brighter,” Way continues, “the mic will probably be pointed more towards the bridge than if you're trying to get something warm.” If the guitarist is playing mostly the higher-pitched strings, Way says he might point the mic more at those strings to avoid having to “carve out the low frequencies with an EQ.”

Way stresses that these are all generalizations. “I'm always trying to put it in context before I make any of these decisions. There's never any rule, because the music always dictates what you're going for. You want to know what you're trying to achieve before you just blindly put it up.” That said, he notes “there are times when you have no idea what they're going to play and you don't have the ability to find out ahead of time,” such as when recording a live event. He also emphasizes that initial mic placement should always serve as just a starting point. “It's pretty rare that you're just going to put a mic in front and not want to go out and move it even just half an inch,” he says.

Ahern generally likes to mic acoustic guitar “as close as I can to where the strings are plucked.” To avoid a boomy sound with such close mic placement, he will use an omnidirectional mic. In fact, he typically prefers omni mics because they don't have all the design “machinations” that directional mics must have in order to create their null points, such as ports that change the incoming signal's phase. “A bad omni mic sounds better than an expensive cardioid,” Ahern declares flatly.

Dodd takes a markedly different approach to miking acoustic guitar from Ahern and Way. He goes so far as to say that miking the wide part of the guitar's body is “mostly employed when the instrument sucks.” He maintains that a good starting point for mic placement is roughly four to six inches away from the instrument, angling the mic down from above the level defined by the top of the sound hole. He positions it slightly past the end of the fretboard and aims roughly at the low E string. But he ironically points out that “wherever you put a microphone, as soon as you turn your back and walk away, that's the last you hear of that sound, because the player is going to settle himself in, lean back, and it's all going to be different anyway.”