Record Guitar Like A PRO (& revealing my BIG secret!)

hi I asked can you set do it and here it is in this video I show you my approach to recording and mixing acoustic guitars to make them sound big and lush this usually works best for a solo guitar or a vocal and guitar where like the guitar 3 the main thing everyone has their own ways and methods but this is a video about how I like to do it I'm not saying this is the best ways is the best way there is no right or wrong don't do it like this I'll also show you some interesting tricks to make your guitar sound big and maybe even larger than life and of course some things you must avoid when recording guitar so with that out of the way let's jump in the basis of recording a great sounding acoustic guitars that you've started with a sound you like you don't need expensive guitars or mics but make sure you like what you hear when you play so experiment with strings with pigs with different playing techniques before tracking your part a lot of my recordings in these videos are done in stereo especially when you hear just the guitar as a solo instrument you can get that nice ambience in there so for that we need two microphones or one mic and the output of the acoustic guitar if you have any I'm going for two mics because I always prefer the sound of a mic above the output of a pickup which I basically only use in a live situation I'm using two small diaphragm condenser mics annoyin km 184 and an earthworks sr-25 if you need a step-by-step guide to help you record guitar look up my video titled how to record guitar it's a goldmine to newest apparently I'm putting the mics in a so called spaced pair I usually point one microphone at the bridge of my guitar and the other one is aimed roughly at fret 12 of the guitar a typical rule is to take the distance from the guitar to the mic and then put the mics three times that distance apart from each other we have to make sure we have the mics at the same distance from the sound source to avoid face that sound like this [Music] you hated waveforms from both mics are fighting each other they cancel each other out so we afford that by carefully adjusting where we put the lines and make sure they are at the same distance from the guitar and I press record this little device when I'm tracking my guitars anywhere else but in my studio I'm using this portable recorder the sound devices mix pre-six it works on batteries or a USBC power in this case so very easy to just plug in plug the mics in and go so you see three cables coming in three mics yes that is because this little baby over here is also plugged in is it our frame I have no idea so these are the two mics coming into the mix pre-six I press record and I'm doing the final take before recording I always check my sound with the headphones to make sure there are no face issues when I'm happy press record [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right welcome in my little studio and as you can see I just slap the tracks in the doll I use the audio tracks from the first video so you can see exactly what I did over there so there's two mics so they need to be two tracks and you can use any DAW you like it doesn't matter it all do the same and all the plugins I'm using you can use any stock plug-in found in any da so don't worry about the exact model or whatever I'm using do everything you want let's first listen to the neck mic [Music] the microphone positions at fret 12 right now the bridge mic [Music] wow that sounds super different yes and that's exactly what we want we use those two different sounds to create one massive sound but let's continue um so the first thing I do is I'm slapping an EQ on the tracks and for this one I'm using the one from ozone 9 but you can use any EQ they all are the same it doesn't matter at all so how does the EQ work we see the low frequencies over here the high frequencies over here and the middle frequencies you guessed it exactly in the middle what I like to do is to cut out some of the low end because somewhere if you like the mic in your living room and there's a car driving by you hear that low Rumble and we need to eliminate that from the sound so what I do I have a high-pass filter in there and let's put it somewhere like between 40 or 60 Hertz I'm taking 50 right now that's okay so when I press hold you can hear exactly what's filtering out so if you listen to this on a smartphone you can hear anything on a laptop and don't think you can hear anything either but with good monitors or like a headphone or subwoofer you can hear that low Rumble sweep it up until you can hear it there it is right so anything below 50 let's get rid of it and the next thing I like is to add some brilliance or some clarity to that sound so an EQ can bring up the things you like in the guitar the good qualities and it can eliminate some of the bad qualities so the frequencies we like let's find some and I usually bring up somewhere between two and a half and four K so thousand [Music] so this looks very extreme but this EQ is pretty moderate the top is just six decibels so right now I'm boosting 3.7 decibels at three point three kilohertz all right so it looks quite extreme but it's just and I sweep the spectrum so I just sweep from left to right and find exactly the part I like so let's just listen to what I boosted [Music] okay usually a high shelf in there like from like 11 or 10k and up that extreme high sound you were adding and sometimes it can be very annoying sometimes it can be very nice just listen because your ear can tell you okay this sounds actually pretty nice it can be very spiky sometimes but this sounds good so from 11 K and up I'm boosting it with 2.4 decibels right now and sometimes an acoustic guitar can be a bit boxy and usually you'll find those frequencies between three and five or two and five and it hurts and you can get some of those out so when you bring up frequencies you should keep the bell curve a little bit wider and when you take out frequencies you should keep it a little bit more narrow this way the guitar will sound natural and not weird so I'm taking out something so I'm keeping it a little bit narrower you can see less frequencies are being damaged then over here [Music] okay I like the sound so with [Music] and without that's a pretty massive difference for me it's just it sounds more lively and more fun and more open and more just it sounds good okay so we do the same with the bridge pickup alright great I like the sound so with so just first you have to get our sounds a little bit like this and then it just opens up and it sounds crystal clear so now it's time to add some compression to this and I like to use the virtual mix rack by slate digital but you can use any compressor as I told you a million times for just use the stock compressor it will sound pretty much the same and it will do the same as this one it's just my workflow don't have to copy it okay so the threshold determines when the compressor kicks in and I usually aim for minus five minus seven when I play loud so just let's go to a little bit a louder section okay so the threshold the same four minus five over here right you already hear that just it keeps everything a bit tighter it holds everything a little bit more together and it sounds more a little bit more out there and that's what I want the rate show keep it between two and four not too much the text should be slow and the release should be fast that's my rule of thumb do your own thing but I like that sound because if you keep the attack slow it gives the initial punch of the guitar and attack the sound of your pick or when your finger picking and release fast so it doesn't get to breathe the pumping of the compressor don't want that [Music] so that's great I'm just let's say with the same settings but now to a little bit more quiet see it's hovering between one and two with slide takes to three but that's all you need you could do more if you like that sound it is a sound and you can use it of course but it takes some of the life out it may be alright I'm just copying the same compressor to the bridge let's see if it sounds larger than life [Music] it sounds ok but not not as big as I promised not not larger than life right it sounds just good yeah so let's start to make it sound large what I'm doing the neck track I'm panning it all the way to the left we call that heart left so all the sound is coming out of one speaker and the bridge depending at heart right so all the sound is coming to the other speaker so now if I play it [Music] nice I'm sitting right in the middle of those tracks so this is the neck in solo and a bridge in Selma so you're sitting in the middle of both microphones just like when you're playing guitar the low-end may be coming from the right a little bit you're surrounded by the guitar and this sound I really like so and now you can add a reverb to taste so I've got here a return track or a bus it allows different names and I slept a Valhalla of vintage syrup on there with a reverb of 2.19 seconds so it's moderately long it's not super long just so now I'm sending minus 15 to the reverb track so the audio gets split gets sent for minus 15 decibels and gets into the in the end of the track and then mix back into the signal now you hear that nice atmosphere coming in there [Music] beautiful maybe a little bit too bright so you can just you know use settings you like on your reverb it's all pretty straightforward what should reverb tutorial on YouTube whatever so but there is one special trick that I like to use a lot which makes it sound like really larger-than-life so we add one return track and we call it reverb right we add one more track and we call it reverb left and we smack two reverbs on there again I have two wahala vintage four and let do a little bit shorter 1.8 and let's add a little bit of pre delay so that means the reverb is coming later it waits in this case 40 milliseconds before the reverb starts so there's a little bit delay between the audio when I'm playing and the reverb that's coming back to us and the cool thing is now the guitar that's coming from the left speaker get sent to the reverb that's only coming out of the right speaker so the reverb right I'm panning that all the way to the right and I'm sending my neck to that reverb so let's have a listen let's do it very extreme [Music] oh so you hate the dry signal coming out of the left speaker in this case that's your left right I know and you were hitting a wet signal coming out of the other speaker so it sounds like and we do the same for the bridge channel or the bridge guitar I'm setting that one to the reverb left that spans all the way left and a guitar spent all the way right so let's say listen so this is very extreme so that's turning down a little bit - 15 maybe it's all a bit trial and error - 15 and now let's see how it sounds [Music] this sounds like otherworldly great but one more thing I like to do for this is to make a little bit more like come together and have a compressor I'm for this I like the CLA to a by waves and put it on the bus of both tracks now it's affecting both neck and the bridge together they both impact yet comparison just have a very slight amount [Music] [Applause] [Music] and sometimes I even throw an EQ over here [Music] there we are that's the sound and it depends on the kind of part you're playing if you're playing a rhythmic strong pattern it doesn't make sense to do this because it just gets in the way [Music] [Applause] [Music] see now I think there's too much compression for this part because you just hear when he's diving in well in this case me because I'm the player when I'm diving in you don't get rewired if I allow the sound and that sounds weird if you're playing loud this should be louder because you just you know it sounds weird if it's not happening so you should always be careful you're not over compressing that's something dangerous avoid that so this was my Torrio of my approach to these kind of recordings and again if you're recording guitars for in a mix for a band it doesn't make sense to do it like this this is my you want one guitar sound like as big and massive as possible without like doing overdubs or doing crazy stuff and then a band setting this would just sit in the way of everything else you don't want to do this kind of stuff anyway if you liked this video you can always support me and my patreon page links are down below below that like button we all want to click gently right have a wonderful day thanks for watching Cheers

Channel: Paul Davids

Views: 1,051,033

Keywords: paul davids, record guitar, mix guitar, mixing, recording, acoustic, furch, tutorial, tricks, tips, secret, my secret, how to record guitar, larger than life, massive, stereo, spaced pair, neumann, earthworks, mixpre, audio, reverb, compression, eq, equalizer, big lush, ableton, ableton live, plugins, effects, reveal all, secrets, huge, acoustic guitar, microphone, mics

Id: ww-cH29IGeM

Length: 16min 35sec (995 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 12 2019