Recording Acoustic Guitar 101 - Warren Huart: Produce Like A Pro

[Music] hello everybody hope you're doing marvelously well a couple of years ago one of my first videos was recording acoustic guitar and it was a fun one to do and I showed different mic placements and stuff ever since then I regularly get asked by email and comments Instagram posts you name it to talk in more detail about recording acoustic guitar so we're gonna try and be a little bit more thorough and we're also going to go through a lot of different mics as well as miking techniques so it's not so much about a mic shootout because the mics are very very different also we're going to record just using an audience ID for so it's going to be the most simplistic way of doing this we're going to use our trusty Yamaha ll 16 the strings are probably a couple weeks old so not overly bright they don't need to be changed quite yet this guitar is about a $600 guitar so it's not super cheap it's not super expensive to me it's pretty perfect I use it on every single record I do I first got it when we work with Aerosmith so it's actually on some of the Aerosmith stuff so it's been on big records it's been on independent records been on everything you can imagine it's a great guitar slowly top I believe quite affordable now there are cheaper guitars and there's definitely a lot more expensive guitars but I think this would be pretty real world experience for you next up we'll go through all the microphones all of the sound differences you're gonna hear are going to be a combination of the mic and of course the mic placement all just going to go into ID 4 into our da W with zero nada Nick nothing no compression no EQ so it's going to be a really good real world experience the microphones cost between 100 and 300 dollars the most expensive microphone is the mini k47 which is a wonderful microphone it's only 300 bucks and one of the most popular mid-priced condenser microphones out there we're gonna start with Aspen Pittman now some of you might remember Aspen Pittman from some videos we did with him a while ago incredibly talented he was grooved tubes really really smart guy and he has made this mic it is called ad t1 it comes with a changeable head so you can use it obviously with like a pop screen here for a live application it's a condenser you take it off and that will use it like this it is 109 dollars for a pencil condenser we're gonna try that out next up is a large diaphragm microphone which is a hundred and fifty dollars street price I think is about 149 the lct 240 Pro also I should say for about a hundred bucks of course it's a good old trusty shure sm57 I get asked about this every single day I've had so many questions of like can I use my 57 for vocals yes kinda use most 57 for acoustic guitars yes and if you followed me you'll know I actually talked about using a 57 on an acoustic guitar track that mark end up mixed many years ago and him specifically calling me to ask me how I recorded it because he loved the tone and when I told him was an sm57 I expected him to fall off his chair no he said to me oh that doesn't surprise me they sound great on acoustics so there you go mark endo one of the best mixers and producers and engineers in the world loves 57s on acoustic guitar that's going to be good after that we've got the looat lct 140 which is a $200 pencil condenser so we're really running the gamut between a hundred and two hundred dollars after that is a very very trusty very very famous microphone one of the home record lists most favorite microphones I should say and that's the rode nt1 so we'll try the NT one on the acoustic guitar as well so next up we have the Loughton la 220 now those of you that have been watching our channel will know that mr. Darrell Thorpe is a big fan of the louder microphones and we used a lot of their mics some of the most inexpensive - most expensive to record Steve Magura live Center and just you know it was just an amazing recording and this microphone is pretty darn good for the price it's two hundred and fifty dollars the LA 220 what I like about it in this price range is that it has a high and low-pass filter meaning a high cut and a low cut again this isn't so much of a review this is more about saying with any of these microphones we're going to prove that with this and with an inexpensive IO you can record acoustic guitar well and also with no compression or EQ it also has to be said that all of these microphones come with Clips I mean this one here is a really really nice clip the Roswell comes with a great clip they all come with Clips so that's another nice thing I know it seems really obvious but you'd be surprised when I was a kid you buy microphones and then you'd have to spend an extra X number of dollars to buy a proper clip that goes with the mic so that's a really nice touch last but no means least as I mentioned earlier the mini k47 very very affordable microphones now for a beginner obviously $100 is a lot more realistic those of you who remember the band of shins their first album was done on I believe a Roland vs 880 which was a hard disc digital recorder and they made the whole record with a 757 so we know it can be done we know you can do it with $100 dynamic but we also know you can go up to $300 and buy a large diaphragm condenser so there's a lot of options here we're going to talk about different mic positions all of this as I said before it's going to go through a little audience ID 4 with no compression and no EQ we'll just move the mic around and you'll get to hear the differences on our trusty Yamaha ll 16 so where do we start well we start with changing the chair because let's face this Here I am sitting here whatever I do I mean they can't move this way or that way now don't get me wrong all the time I record here I sit forward but it's just not ideal so if you can either sit on a chair that the arms can go down or be removed pushed back or something or get a stall and in this instance we are going to go and get a piano while our piano bench obviously a stall a piano bench if you've got a if you've got to seek with the back on it and you want to lean back a little bit great whatever works but basically here it is piano bench I'm completely free to do whatever I want if I want to move around here it is next up is a choice of a mic stand this is really obvious but we've all made the mistake make sure you have a boom stand here we have a trusty boom stand what's great about this particular boom stand it is a double boom I like double boom stands if you can afford to buy one why is that well it gives me the ability to still have some weight on the back so I can put most of the stand on the back haft here the boom stand part the boom part and then I can move this forward why is that well I've just got a short boom like this and I do that okay it's just say I'm sitting back here what will happen is this mic especially if it's a bigger mic might start pressing down and providing too much weight on it and the mic starts to droop which doesn't seem like that big of a deal if it's doing it really slowly however you're going to notice as we start recording acoustic guitars that anything can change especially when you close mic if I move too much the sound hole is going to get really boo me and vice-versa so you cut you want it to be in the same place every time so it's nice to put it back here a little bit get some weight behind to help balance it out I love double booms so this is going to help dramatically this is an old stand I think it's about either a by dynamic or Koenig and Mayor you know that km's both really really good stands I've found the the german-made stands are great however there's tons of really good stands out there these are just ones we like things to think about before you even start recording are really simple we've chosen a seat that it's not going to restrict us but is it Creek now I sound really obvious but yeah if it's like you're just going to move very slightly and it's going to creak that is not going to be good because you going to pick it up with a mic a lot of people use D eyes and acoustic this has a DI that is fine for a demo it's fine if you want to do something fun like print through pedals and stuff like that but even with the best acoustic emulations and there are quite a few around there it's still not personally and most people's opinion gonna sound as good as a mic even a cheap mic will probably at least in my opinion give you a better result than plugging in however for live and for fun things like you want to print a DI from an acoustic and running through a bunch of effects maybe ant emulations and stuff it is fun and when in doubt you could print both you could take a DI out and use a mic but frankly with a hundred dollar microphone you should get a better result okay so a couple of things obviously we sorted out the chair make sure it's not too creaky make sure you got some freedom to move obvious things that people neglect is this things like this my shirt the stuff behind me if it's I've had so many times I've recorded and a guy or a girls been wearing a necklace I mean the necklace is hitting this or they're moving around and you hear the shhh this sound these might sound like really obvious things but they're worth looking out for so make sure not getting this so in this instance I'm going to take my shirt and I'm just going to fold it one more time up so there's no buttons hitting it and now relatively speaking I've actually got a button here which is slightly hitting it so I'm going to get to a comfortable position that's fairly good okay so obvious things like that nothing banging into the guitar nothing on the guitar player rattling and you'll be in good shape alright this grab a mic let's start with the 57 okay so I D for ready to go stick on the blue headphones or another thing is the cable sometimes this cable can get in the way and bang around as well also it's annoying if the cable can get in the way I've had many times where I've had this happen and it might seem really obvious but just get into a comfortable position where it's out of the way it's not banging into things all seem like very obvious things but as soon as you stick a lot of compression on an acoustic guitar it's going to become a problem all of these little noises are going to get amplified and even in this situation I mean sitting in the middle of my control room I've got tons of instruments and things around the could vibrate but more importantly I've got gear that hums you know it's it's never ideal but it's all about like is this an acoustic guitar track that's totally solo so position wise this is one of my favorite favorite positions which is the microphone a small diaphragm pointed at the lower part of the body if you've watched any videos to be doing acoustic guitars you'll notice I've done that a lot it's becoming very popular now it's a it's a BBC way of doing things your points to get away from the sound hole on the body it's very percussive I really like it so I've got the sm57 pointing at the lower body there I can hear it being booming [Music] all of that's being picked up off the body [Music] but I like about Boyd Mike in the body here it's super percussive so if you've got little arpeggio ideas like or you want to do something super percussive [Music] it's really really nice let's play some chords bring the gain down just slightly it's not over driving so I'm being careful to point it away from the sound hole the boom eNOS is here look so much better days you don't want this just blowing it up had to enter total distortion a it was too much volume obviously with the game but most importantly it was just all no end so you're trying to angle it away here we go [Music] so that no compression no EQ 57 cable into an id4 okay so there's other things that are more important that even this and one of those is the pictures what I'm using here is quite a hard pic you know really really good for lead parts if I want to play those very articulate I'd be able to do really fast all that kind of stuff and for strumming it's good I'm gonna play a little lighter to get the best impact out of it [Music] but being heavy it means I could go and then that's the great thing about a heavy pick it allows a lot of dynamics okay but let's move on so that's a pretty heavy pick there we can go to the other extreme and the other extreme would be this this is one of those gym deluxe ultra-thin picks now it's just play acoustic now [Music] see how percussive that becomes it's like so when people ask me about acoustic guitar tones there's obvious things like what strings you using what acoustic guitar you using are using super light strings when they try to get specific tones but also just a simple thing like changing your pick makes a huge difference for just play juicy indie [Music] go to a heavy pick same velocity of my right hand I'm not hitting it harder it's the pic and not only is it louder it also doesn't have that Sister Sister kind of little percussiveness that the super light pick gives us so if you're trying to get a very percussive acoustic guitar sound it's many many other things yes the guitar can make a big difference yes the strings lighter strings will give you a lighter sound but the pic as you can see is making a huge difference [Music] it's not only louder it's sort of a little darker nice with the heavy pick but a completely different sound we're here and acoustic guitars are really really good for adding a percussive element to a song so if you double so an electric guitar part in the chorus even if it's just like you're getting all that it becomes almost like a shaker as well as another instrument playing harmony so pick huge difference now most of the time I'll go with something like a 60 mil now this is obviously a lot of preference for do you know each guitar player but a 60 mil Jim Dunlop is pretty standard a lot of great guitar players play with this kind of level of pick but being armed with two or three different picks is going to make a session move really quickly you know if you've got your one favorite pick for shredding it might not be good for acoustics this to me is like a happy medium and again just a 57 ID for no compression no EQ [Music] [Applause] [Music] on the lead part maybe doesn't have the solidity because these are a lot heavier strings than let's see okay so I'm going to stick with this pick though because this is kind of a good all-rounder now I'm going to move the microphone away from the body on this 57 up to between the 12th and 14th fret so it's here 12 to 14th fret now listen to it [Music] that's a pretty even sense a little bit more pop I wouldn't necessarily use a smaller diaphragm for that but this is just a 57 again 57 84 very very inexpensive set up great alright let's try some different mics in the same position okay so we're in a similar position so it's turn on the phantom here okay is the phantom on but try and get this little bit positioned something's comparable to where the 57 was [Music] at least to me in the blue headphones it's a little bit more balanced I like the way the 57 sounds because it's got like kind of a nice mid-range because it's got a lift in the presence area but this is sweet I suppose the mid-range is kind of more pronounced that mid mid not the higher me [Music] never boo me like that so we'll move it away from the sound town a bit more [Music] like it [Music] okay so let's move it up to the 12th and 14th hopefully by the end of this video you'll see be doing everything so many times you'll get used to all the techniques so here we are in the middle of the strings on the 12th or 14th [Music] give it a little bit more gain I like that [Music] I want to go for the light pick [Music] [Applause] [Music] nice what's important to note with the lct 140 is it has different high passes on it so with the boom eNOS it's just that extra 50 bucks that it has over its Big Brother over here gives you like high passing so with bhumi acoustics and other instruments like that you can get rid of that low-end so that does make it a little bit more valuable in that respect so this mic was given to me by Aspen for my birthday it was a new microphone that he had come up with then it's 100 whopping dollars its turn on the fan turn turn up [Music] Wow it's got a lot of output for I'm having this output lot lower those of you know who Aspen Pittman is he's pretty he's pretty smart guy [Music] this is great this is great microphone [Music] make music of $100 condenser okay let's move it up to 12th and 14th fret in the middle somewhat here [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] this is nice Mike it's definitely got a big mid-range punch excellent okay so now we're on the 150 possibly the cheapest large diaphragm Mike we have one hundred and fifty dollars it's a pretty impressive piece of kit it's very heavy I don't mean like overly heavy I just mean well made but inexpensive so let's try this out [Music] wow that's a good Santa Mike one hundred and fifty dollars that's a really good sounding Mike super-dynamic but even keep bringing it down good output fix polar pattern no Roelofs just put it up and go great love it sits on the body most worn out you know this is something that can never be underestimated when you have an instrument a great guitar or a good microphone or a chain and something is sounding good you get inspired and it sounds great having said that we love this and this was $100 the Aspen Pittman one so I think the point is and you're getting it is like inexpensive equipment knowing mic placement you know inexpensive guitar okay it's a $600 guitar but it's not a million sort of ten thousand dollar guitar it's not a Marten or you know or a handmade guitar it makes records [Music] I'm gonna go and use the super light pick and well let's try it that's that's the perfect combination because the little this is mid-range II this super light pick listen to cause I was deliberate it's great [Music] it's really really super dynamic okay so let's move it up 12 to 14 fret adjust the angle somewhat okay trial to 14th here we go and I'm moving I'm also sitting and making it quicker I always find this a little less dynamic in this area but more pop and more even see it flattens out a little bit doesn't quite have that that bounced at the app that down on the body does but four chords and you want like a pop song you know you're doing like it's very very even remember no compression no EQ that's just the sound of the mic definitely the winners so far for a sort of all roundness the 57 definitely does the job the Aspen's condenser is unbelievable but loving this what is super interesting is this is cheaper than the lct 140 next up is an old favorite an NT one this is obviously the latest incarnation rode a revolutionaries this be honest I mean they probably yeah there was an AKG C 1000 and there was the AKG C 3000 I remember those mics coming out and they made a 2-14 they've made these cheaper mics that definitely has the AKG name but I don't believe until the road was there really something that was very inexpensive that could do a lot of different jobs I mean this is a game-changing mic and anybody that knows there's a home recordist the road really did set the set that the bar very high with inexpensive mics and you know our good friend Matt McGlinn at Roswell is very complementary to them and realizes that that was part of a revolution you know before Road it was all just big-name companies only okay so Fanta back on let's get it a little higher on the body it's pointing away from the sound hole I'm gonna move myself to help as well a lot of output probably a little bit more than the the 240 which had a lot of output very very nice tone so again on the body here the road is 230 the 240 is 150 on the superlight pick so I'm going to go back to the the 60 mil I mean no compression no EQ I know I keep saying it inexpensive I oh that's a good acoustic guitar sound yeah I like it go back to the superlight pick play some percussive chords [Music] [Applause] [Music] a little bit of a boom there I don't have a roll off on it the same thing with the the 240 there's no roll off no high pass so it's all just about positioning the mic so we're going to go for the 12 to 14th fret and go for a more pop sound immediately it more even less boom eNOS just proving that mic placement picks etc and making a huge difference is not all necessarily an issue with the guitar when people write to me and say oh my guitars really boo me I asked them when they placed a mic and they're making a sound hole you know so these are the things that we're sort of picking up [Music] [Music] great Mike I mean really really good Mike two hundred and thirty dollars you know not the most inexpensive one but still in a very reasonable price range okay so this is the Latin la 220 it's about 250 bucks so it's what is good about it and what maybe sets it apart is this a large diaphragm condenser but it also has a high-pass and low-pass filter on it which could be kind of nifty obviously we have that in the LC t 140 the small diaphragm condenser but this is the only large diaphragm condenser in our 300 or less price range I might cheat and use that see if it helps because it is the only thing available in that price range that we're trying now there isn't to say there aren't other ones around but these are all microphones that we've used in various situations and we've proven to be really good and you know we want to test things that we know we can recommend so Loughton la 220 as you know Laos is a favorite of Daryl Thorpe there's a heck of an engineer again a lot of output [Music] so definitely in this sort of to $300 price range we're getting a lot more output now what I want to do let's have a listen it's flat at the moment the low ends actually very controlled but it's high pass it anyway meaning low roll-off for those of you that don't fully understand it which is quite understandable gonna get a little further here [Music] see the click of my buttons hitting there it's what we're talking about so that's nice with a light pick let's go to our medium 0.6 T so that's nice having the high pass on it for acoustic guitars at the 250 dollar price range is a nice okay let's go up to our pop position so twirl a little higher on the 12 to 14 threat I'm gonna go to our like pick cinnamon square on here we go I want to take off this High Pass do I need it on anymore you know now that I'm in this better position here without the blue meanness not remember this is a favorite of mine but for the poppy sound [Music] [Applause] [Music] now I want to get the heavy pick it's for a bit of lead great fantastic this is our most you know kwang-ho expensive but bear in mind it's $300 and you know for something which you know has a characteristic similar not exactly the same obviously it's a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a cost a simmer similar characteristic to a forty seven and if you know when we've interviewed him he's always talking about how you know he's not a big fan of like comparing them to old microphones especially when they're made you know at a fraction of the cost but it's easy to describe what it's going to sound close to anyway so here we go headphones on [Music] very even nice output I'm actually gonna bring it down so it's definitely one of the louder ones maybe even come down a bit so it's obviously pulling out a good amount of output that's what you'd hope from the most expensive but still inexpensive mic at 300 dollars [Music] very smooth top and that's what we want with the more expensive condensers we want to smooth a high end why you might think well I'm on the high end the point is is I want to be able to boost it without it getting harsh typically some inexpensive microphones which I don't think any of these have this problem but some inexpensive microphones have a really harsh high end and as soon as I try to control it it's it's just horrible so I want to start off with something that's just more responsive and smoother on the top smooth just meaning not frequencies jumping out randomly you know talking about audio so did you know warm smooth all those words really confuses people what I mean is it's just not overly bright or brittle how about that I'm having fun playing lead parts when I started doing that you know I'm enjoying the sound still a lot more output than anybody else so I'm bringing it down [Music] okay let's move it up to 12th or 14th fret for a little bit more of a pop sound also I'm going to grab yes you guessed it super light pick and let's do some little chord work [Music] [Applause] [Music] still very smooth [Music] this is a favorite mic of a lot of people I know and I think if you're going to spend about $300 I think the Roswell mini k47 the equivalent LeWitt's in that price range really we found over the last couple of years of recording and stuff but you know there's a lot of good stuff so thank you ever so much for watching important things are first of all the guitar and the player to be quite frank obviously if the players super uneven that's going to be difficult to deal with however you do know you can move the mic around to get rid of some of that blue Venus you can use a microfiber on it or you can high-pass which is a low cut by the way high pass / low cut those of you that are beginners you can think about high pass means all of the high frequencies are passing through so when people talk about high pass filters they mean low cut so the microphones the two of them that we reviewed there are the LA 220 the Loughton la 220 and the LC t 140 both of them had high pass filters low cut so those would be useful in situations where you couldn't control the boom or frankly the guitar players moving around a lot you know a lot of guitar players they're into it they're moving around and so you that low-end comes and goes you know maybe they're leaning slightly into it and there's a lot of like the sound dolls suddenly going into your mic and then it's moving away a bit you know during performances especially if you're tracking multiple instrumentalists at the same time these things can be problems so a low cut can be your friend so that's a nice little attribute of those two microphones but the point that I really feel between a hundred and three hundred dollars we tried seven different mics and not one of them gave us a bad result all seven mics used an 84 with no compression and no EQ it really goes to show that the mics can all do the job if you are dealing with an acoustic guitar player who's very uneven maybe try a lighter pick if they're digging in too hard and it's like overly dynamic they're playing really super hard give them a light pick because no matter how hard they hit it might not get that loud experiment if you want a more percussive sound and you're the player trust me a light pick changes everything it gives you more as you could tell that shows you sir it's definitely more pop it allows the acoustic tile to become a little bit more percussive so these are good tools three different picks here a heavy and medium and a super light make a lot of difference and obviously there's even more choice than that and all of the pick can be really important holding it an angle will give you a little bit more string coverage because it's going up and down it's interesting how different an angle play to pick and a flat pick can be so experiment with all these things remember with no compression and no EQ a mic in different places with different picks makes a huge difference then of course throw in different acoustic guitars and different players if you've got two or three different guitars laying around and two different guys or girls to play guitar as well you really have an infinite amount of possibilities so it makes life very very interesting so thanks ever so much for watching thank you all of these companies we haven't told them we're doing this we just wanted to do this to show you know the variety of microphones available in that price range and just to reassure you most importantly that you can record acoustic guitar you can record acoustic guitar it's not that complicated I know it can be really really overwhelming at times and so many people ask me about recording acoustic guitars but most of it is common sense just moving the mic to a good position making sure that you're not tapping it with buttons and bells and necklaces and all kinds of stuff that you're sitting on a seat isn't creaking that you don't have arms in a way you're banging into it that you're comfortable these are the most important things they can ruin acoustic guitar performance if they're not looked out for so just knowing all that stuff upfront can really really help and it will make you a better producer and you're working with an artist to be aware of all these things so have a marvelous time recording a mixing thank you ever so much for watching I really appreciate it and I'll see you again very soon [Music]

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 168,957

Keywords: Warren Huart, Produce Like A Pro, Home studio, Home recording, Recording Audio, Music Production, Record Producer, Recording Studio, Acoustic Guitar, Recording Acoustic Guitar, Acoustic Guitar on a Budget, Acoustic Guitar Mic

Id: 0ko6ceHqLbA

Length: 41min 52sec (2512 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 27 2018