Electric Guitar Recording Tips with Skidmore Fountain
Its been quite a while since i've done a tech post. This should be a good one. There are a million ways to record electric guitar, and so many variables that affect the overall sound, most important of which is who is playing the instrument. Having said that, the guitar, amp, strings, cables, microphones, speakers, plugins, EQ, compression, stomp boxes, etc.... all have an impact and alter the sound for better or worse. But i'm not gonna talk about all that stuff, I'm just gonna talk about a nice little trick i like to do to give the electric guitar some extra depth, sparkle, and attack.
Now i dont always do this, its difficult and time consuming to set up, and not always feesible or necessary for the song, but ok, I'll get on with it. First off, record the electric guitar how you normally would. If you are recording thru an amp, mic the amp, or if your going direct using Amp Farm or a plugin amp, record that on its own tracks like always. Then you must have a place where the guitar player can be in a relatively quiet room while he's recording. Put headphones on him for monitoring. Then place a mic in front of the guitarist facing the body of the guitar. I'm including a picture so you can get a better idea what i mean, as well as an audio example. The idea here is not to get a great sound off the body of the electric guitar, the guitar body doesnt put out much tone at all, but you do want to get whatever tone you can out of it. You will automatically get the crispness of the strings thru the mic, and you do not want to overemphasis that. The goal here is to get a balance between mostly the sound from the amp, belnded with just a bit of the sound from the mic on the guitar body. Record them to separate tracks so you can balance them in the mix. The blend of the 2 when recording a big loud distorted amp will add attack and definition to parts, and if done right when recording a clean guitar it can add more of a 3 dimensional depth and crispness to the guitar.
You'll notice from the picture that this guitar I'm recording is a Danelectro, which happens to be a very lightweight guitar and doesnt really have a solid body like a Stratocaster or Les Paul. Strangely enough, this gives the Danelectro more tone off the body of the guitar which blends really nicely on this clean guitar example i've included.
This Audio clip is from the beginning of a Skidmore Fountain song i'm currently producing. By the way, Skidmore Fountain is an indie rock band from New York City. They are about to embark on a national tour and major radio and promotional campaign this spring, and we're currently digging in and finishing up all the recording. I'll probably blog about them many more times. Check them out at MySpace.com/skidmorefountain. Now the clip you are going to hear is from the intro of a song, first half is with drums so you can hear how it changes the mood of the song. I'll play several seconds of the amp only, followed by several seconds of amp and guitar body mic, the of the guitar body mic only, then the full blend again,etc.... See what you think.
KLBlogElectricGtrXmpl.mp3
-Ken Lewis
Now i dont always do this, its difficult and time consuming to set up, and not always feesible or necessary for the song, but ok, I'll get on with it. First off, record the electric guitar how you normally would. If you are recording thru an amp, mic the amp, or if your going direct using Amp Farm or a plugin amp, record that on its own tracks like always. Then you must have a place where the guitar player can be in a relatively quiet room while he's recording. Put headphones on him for monitoring. Then place a mic in front of the guitarist facing the body of the guitar. I'm including a picture so you can get a better idea what i mean, as well as an audio example. The idea here is not to get a great sound off the body of the electric guitar, the guitar body doesnt put out much tone at all, but you do want to get whatever tone you can out of it. You will automatically get the crispness of the strings thru the mic, and you do not want to overemphasis that. The goal here is to get a balance between mostly the sound from the amp, belnded with just a bit of the sound from the mic on the guitar body. Record them to separate tracks so you can balance them in the mix. The blend of the 2 when recording a big loud distorted amp will add attack and definition to parts, and if done right when recording a clean guitar it can add more of a 3 dimensional depth and crispness to the guitar.
You'll notice from the picture that this guitar I'm recording is a Danelectro, which happens to be a very lightweight guitar and doesnt really have a solid body like a Stratocaster or Les Paul. Strangely enough, this gives the Danelectro more tone off the body of the guitar which blends really nicely on this clean guitar example i've included.
This Audio clip is from the beginning of a Skidmore Fountain song i'm currently producing. By the way, Skidmore Fountain is an indie rock band from New York City. They are about to embark on a national tour and major radio and promotional campaign this spring, and we're currently digging in and finishing up all the recording. I'll probably blog about them many more times. Check them out at MySpace.com/skidmorefountain. Now the clip you are going to hear is from the intro of a song, first half is with drums so you can hear how it changes the mood of the song. I'll play several seconds of the amp only, followed by several seconds of amp and guitar body mic, the of the guitar body mic only, then the full blend again,etc.... See what you think.
KLBlogElectricGtrXmpl.mp3
-Ken Lewis
posted by Protools Mixing at 10:23 PM
1 Comments:
Thanks Ken
-Kurayjus(Space Cadets)
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