Recording acoustic guitar

recording acoustic guitar in the studio

The sound of acoustic guitar is so familiar, so well-known, so comfortable to our ears that many make the mistake of assuming that it’s an easy thing to record.  Sure, it can be easy, and it can be a devil of a job too.  Long ago I lost count of the terrible acoustic guitar tones I’ve heard which could have been vastly improved with so little effort.

And don’t even get me started on “bugs”.  No, not the man-eating, brain-sucking CGI horrors from “Starship Troopers”, great fun though they were, but those horrible little microphones you find stuck somewhere inside an acoustic guitar.  Or, for that matter, a banjo, a fiddle, a mandolin… you name it.  In general they are the cheapest possible mic routed through the cheapest possible preamp circuit and powered by nothing more exciting than a 9 volt battery.  I once had some opinionated old geezer trying to convince me that the bug would sound better than a mic.  Although I didn’t want to disrespect the old fella, I felt like asking him “which side of the instrument do you listen from?” and, regardless of his answer, I would have pointed out that he himself, with his human ears, listens from the OUTSIDE.  That’s the natural place to listen to the sound of the instrument; it wasn’t created for you to stick your head into!  The sound of a “bugged” acoustic guitar sometimes makes it through even to professional releases and, to my ears, it’s the most horrible thing there is.  However, they ARE handy for taking a feed to an amp and recording that on anther track if that’s the sort of thing which floats your boat.

Anyway, the first point really – and this applies to any instrument or song – is to decide what’s “driving” the track.  Once again, musical arrangement comes way ahead of sound issues.  If the song is acoustically based then you’ll need a “feature” guitar sound.  If something else is the main feature, the acoustic needs to be less prominent and have a sound which fits in nicely with everything else.  Not everything can be featured at the same time – that’s too much for the listener!  So think about the sonic landscape you’re trying to create.  There was a time when records were made holistically; they were designed for all the elements to work together both musically and sonically.  Nowadays records are made piecemeal; they take the absolute best kick sound, snare sound, bass tone, guitar tone, synth preset, etc. and try to meld them together in a way which is pleasing.  But real sound is NOT like that!  In the end you’ll make a far, far better record if you concentrate more on what’s happening musically and artistically than sonically.

But I am, as usual, digressing somewhat.  My point is that, like any other instrument, you have to decide what role your acoustic guitar plays in the track.  Do you want a sound that’s bold and in-your-face or do you want something more subtle which just lends support to the other instruments?

As to the big ‘n’ bold sound then, how do we create that?  Well, we can talk about microphones all day but to really get an acoustic guitar to stand out I suggest that a little careful compression will work wonders.  Don’t be tempted, though, to cram a massive squash on the thing and flatten the life out of it; you can always add more later.  Also, trying splitting the signal from your mic or mics, compressing that, then feeding it back in behind the original tone.  We call this technique “parallel compression”.  Whether your sound is mono or stereo, this can really lend “weight” to it.

Ah but we all want to talk mics, right?  Most people will immediately reach for your standard issue large-cap condenser, but is that really the way to go?  Maybe it is; you’ll just have to listen to find out.  In the time-honoured words of Joe Meek (an oft-quoted mantra by which I live), “if it sounds right, it is right”.  Personally speaking I find that the little Josephson C42 pencil condenser gives me a superbly detailed and rich acoustic guitar tone which is highly usable in many applications.  But not all.  One time I was at a studio trying to get an acoustic track down and we’d tried every bloomin’ condenser in the place; large-cap, small-cap, the whole darn shooting match.  Eventually I reached for a busted-ass old dynamic which had been rescued from a defunct radio station and which had been an on-air presenters’ mic.  Thankfully I had a pair of these things (actually I still own them).  Upon hearing the test take, the artist broke into a huge grin and said “there, that’s the sound!”

Years ago, so long ago that the dates are of no consequence, a friend of mine told me how he got his fantastic piano tones.  He would walk round the piano, placing his own ears in every possible position, until he found the two places that the instrument sounded best.  Then he would simply place a mic at each of them.  I decided at that moment to do the same thing the instant any acoustic player crossed the threshold of my studio and indeed I did.  It was a lesson which A) worked and B) stayed with me to this very day.  Now, I’m not going to give away all my secrets, but why don’t you just do the same thing?  Walk round the instrument and LISTEN.  Whether in mono or stereo, mic placement is everything.

And, if you decide to record in stereo, don’t necessarily assume you have to use the same mics.  A Work Education student took this advice to heart some years ago at my studio.  He decided which mics gave the most pleasing tones (I think he chose about seven possibilities) then methodically mixed and matched these until he created an absolutely stunning stereo guitar tone with disparate microphones.  One mic complimented one position and vice-versa.  As I recall he did the same with preamps too, but of course the differences can be much more subtle in that regard.

Talking of differences, you should consider the distance of your mic from the guitar and also your polar pattern.  Don’t just throw your mic down the throat of the sound hole.  Would you want to listen from there?  I don’t think so.  Consider how distance and placement affect the tone; I can’t emphasise enough how important these factors are.  Now, for a nice stereo image, your mics ought to be at the same distance from the playing position (that’s where the pick touches the strings, Sherlock).  However, there’s no harm in using different distances to create interesting stereo effects but a note of caution should be given at this point.  If you’re going to do this, don’t have your mics just a couple of inches different; their relative proximity will lead to a phase issue which might ruin your track.  If you’ve got one mic at, say, twenty inches, go for thirty on the other one.  If you decide to go for disparate mic distances, the difference between them should be more than the width of an average human bone-dome (that’s “head”, for those still listening in black and white).

Now how about differences in polar pattern?  You could use a cardioid close mic and an omnidirectional far mic; I’ve done this loads of times and it’s a great technique.  The close mic gets all the fullness and detail, the distant one gets all the air and space.  But on the other hand… you could do this the other way round, couldn’t you?  Use your imagination!

The aim of all this is a fantastic and, more importantly, APPROPRIATE acoustic guitar tone.  If it sounds like ass, keep trying!  If it works in the track, you’ve hit the nail on the head because, returning to good old Joe Meek, bless him, “if it sounds right, it IS right”.