First Pass: In the recording studio
My intention when I started was to go to a good recording studio to
record. Although I had done some home recording before, I figured I
should focus on the music, and let a pro handle the technical details.
Also, I wanted the best quality I could from this project, and my home
recordings certainly haven't been pro quality. I don't have the
equipment, the room, or the ears.
On a recommendation, I went to
Highland Studios, run by Joe Weed.
Highland was created specifically for acoustic music, and has a great
sounding room. Joe was terrific to work with as well. We recorded three tunes
in the first session. The sound was wonderful, Joe took care of all
the details, and it was all pretty easy. Perhaps too easy. I thought
I'd played well, and went home happy. But when I got home to listen to
the tracks, I was less than thrilled. The recording sounded great, Joe
had done a terrific job. But my playing was far from what I wanted. I
hadn't made blatant mistakes, but tempos were all over the map,
phrasing was not as good as I'd like, and so on.
I did learn a lot from the time in the studio. Joe used 4 mics, a
pair of Neumann U89s, about 2 feet away from the guitar and maybe 3
feet apart, and 2 KM184s, in an X/Y setup, right in front of me, also
about 2 feet away. He gave me some tips on using Pro Tools, editing,
organizing my files, using reverb, and more, and sent me home with
complete Pro Tools sessions for everything, even the sound checks and
my warm up doodling. And of course, I learned that I perhaps needed
some more work before I was ready to record.
Restart
At first, I considered just practicing for a few more years before
I went back to Highland to try again. But then I began to think that
part of the value of making the CD was focusing on getting my playing
to the level I wanted, and that I could probably do that best at home,
where I could record, listen, practice, then record again. At the
least, until I got a demo recording on which I played the way I wanted to
play, I probably wasn't ready to tackle the studio again. But I also
suspected I should be able to get a decent recording at home. I
decided it was a reasonable compromise if I could get an acceptable
(maybe not great) sound, but with a better performance.
I spent a fair amount of time rummaging around on the internet,
reading rec.audio.pro, and so on. That's dangerous, because a lot of
the people that post there are audio pros, and a little reading will
quickly convince you that you need microphones that cost more than
your
guitars (and that's just the start). But I also learned a lot about
microphone placement, room acoustics, and so on, as well as learning
more about equipment. My experience with Joe Weed was also very
helpful, in that I saw what he had done (although the micing technique
he used worked best in a great sounding room - something I didn't
have.) With that background, I started putting together my recording
setup.
Equipment
I decided on a couple of pieces of equipment, to raise the level of
what I had. Since I was only recording an acoustic solo guitar, I
opted for a setup that recorded only two tracks, but at high quality.
I already had a pair of Neumann KM184s. I added a Great River preamp,
and an Alesis Masterlink recorder. The Masterlink is meant to be a
mastering deck. It only records two tracks, at the same time. But it
can record at up to 96Khz and 24 bits, is dead quiet (important if I
was to be sitting beside it recording), and was relatively inexpensive
(I got mine for $800). I put the equipment in a small rack case, so I
could take it anywhere I needed to go to record.
Finding a Room
The next issue was identifying a place to record. I considered
finding a building, maybe a church, that had a good sound. But
going somewhere else was pretty much like going to a studio. I wanted
the convenience of being at home, able to record anytime, even for a
few minutes, then listening to the results.
I have a room that I use for practice, where I have my guitars, and
so on. It seemed the most convenient, but it's a small room (spare
bedroom) and on my first try recording, I found that the other guitars
tended to resonate and be picked up on the recording. If I had to move
my guitars every time I recorded, things wouldn't be so convenient. I
tried most of the rooms in my house, even the bathroom. The bathroom
sounds great when I play in there, like singing in the shower. When
recorded, however, the sound was decidedly "tubby". The living room
was not bad sounding, tho it was a bit lively. Of course, my wife said
no to the idea of adding Aurelex to the living room walls! Also, it
was sort of in the middle of traffic, and therefore less than ideal
for focusing on recording.
Finally, I tried the garage. Our garage is a bit unusual. It has
been soundproofed and is used by my son's punk rock band,
The Muckruckers, as a
practice space. The soundproofing wasn't done in the interest of
sounding good, of course, it was to keep the neighbors from kicking us
out of the neighborhood. The room is very dead, all carpeted and
padded, floors, walls, ceiling. I wasn't too optimistic, my guitars
sounded rather lifeless out there. Also, there was the furnace and
water heater. Even when not running, the pilot flames could be faintly
heard. However, a few test recordings convinced me that this room was
my best bet. At the advice of John Stone, who was gracious enough to
listen to a few early takes and give me some feedback, I added some
reflective surfaces (sheets of plastic) around my recording area,
which helped a bit with the deadness of the room. In fact, John had
suggested this, but I hadn't acted on the idea, until I tried to
record a tune that I needed some music for. I placed a music stand in
front of me, right behind the mics. When I listened back, I
immediately noticed a much more lively sound than I had been getting.
Mics and Mic Placement
With the room selected, I moved onto mic positioning. Since the
room itself was not going to add much to the recording, I focused
primarily on close micing. I started by recording lots of sample
sounds, using different guitars and all sorts of mic positions. I
tried spaced pairs, X/Y, ORTF, NOS, a mic in front and one by my ear,
one above the guitar and one below, and so on. I also tried different distances from the guitar, from
almost touching to 3 or 4 feet away. Combined with trying different
guitars, this made for huge number of sample recordings. I kept these
short, usually only playing a few bars. One resource on the web that
was very helpful for learning about my options in micing the guitar was
Harvey's Gerst's "Big
Thread" document, originally found at
www.homerecording.com
I also spent a lot of time listening to all my favorite CDs, but
focusing on the sound. I heard a lot of things I'd never really
noticed when listening for the music. I'd notice the reverb, or
finger squeaks, and so on, as well as just the tone. I found that a lot
of CDs I like, based on the music, didn't necessarily have a tone
that I wanted to emulate. (Probably a good lesson - the music matters
more than the sound, but at this moment I was focused on tone).
In my previous efforts at recording guitar I had tended toward
using spaced pairs, hoping for a bigger stereo sound, and so I
initially focused this type of mic setup. (My favorite sound from the
Highland session was also the U89s as spaced pairs) But in the very dead room
and with close micing, I started to notice some issues. The
slightest motion of the guitar resulted in an image shift on the
recording. The sound wasn't stable; sometimes it moved back and forth
between the speakers. There also seemed to be a subtle "hole in
the middle" effect. It wasn't like I was listening to one guitar with
a big stereo spread, it was more like sound was coming from two
different speakers.
Also, I noticed that one of the CDs I picked as
having a sound I wanted to aspire to, Laurence Juber's Altered Reality,
was apparently recorded with an X/Y setup. Once I tuned into this sound, I found it to have many
very nice characteristics, very focused, yet with a definite stereo
effect.
Ultimately, after a week or so of experimenting and listening, I
converged on the ORTF arrangement, basically a slightly wider version
of X/Y. X/Y is an example of "coincident pairs", while ORTF is referred
to as "near coincident". The mics are about 7 inches apart facing away
from each other at a 110 degree angle. Here's a more
detailed
explanation and diagrams of this technique. I also settled on a distance of
about 8" from the guitar as having the sound I was looking for.
So I set myself up, as far away from the furnace as I could, amidst
the Marshalls, electric guitars and other band paraphernalia of my
son's band. I had to move out periodically when they would want to
practice, so I marked off the spots on the floor for the mic stands and my chair
with tape, so I could return to the right setup quickly.
The photo to the right shows my recording environment, with the band
mascot perched overhead. Not exactly what I expected a recording
environment
for an acoustic fingerstyle project to look like, but it was home.
You can see
the Masterlink in a rack on the stool, my Guitar Chair, and the mics at
the right edge of the photo. I
quickly found I needed a wind screen over one of the mics because I kept
breathing on it, causing a very loud crashing sound that would
completely ruin the recording.
