Recording a passable acoustic guitar sound is fairly easy, but how do you get a great sound? We tried and tested tips and techniques from the world's most celebrated producers and sound engineers to show you how.
Acoustic guitar is so much a staple of modern music styles that it seems every other demo we receive at SOS Towers features at least one. It's hardly surprising, then, that several generations of the world's greatest recording engineers have poured their efforts into the quest for the perfect sound. This is great for the record‑buying public, but can be extremely frustrating if you're a home-studio musician struggling to compete with commercial productions.
In this article, I'm going to try to level the playing field a little, by looking in detail at a range of production techniques for acoustic guitar, many of them drawn directly from my research into the real‑world techniques of the world's most celebrated engineers and producers. I know we don't all have access to the top‑flight studios and recording equipment that they do, though, so I'm also going to suggest how you can adapt their techniques when you're strapped for cash and working in less ideal environments.
An Intro To Recording Acoustic Guitar
Every engineer has their own idea of what a great sound is, so there's no point trying to tell you which is the 'best' technique: it's far more important to know how different factors in the recording and mixing process can affect the final timbre, so that you can find what you personally are looking for.
To this end, I took a bunch of mics down to London's prestigious Livingston Studios and recorded an acoustic guitarist with several different mic models and techniques — so that you can evaluate by ear which ones give the results you need in your own productions. I've used the same recordings to demonstrate some common mixing and salvage techniques as well. For details of where you can listen to or download these files, check out the 'Essential Audio Examples' box elsewhere in this article.
Pierre Marchand. I once asked Daniel Lanois for advice on how to get a good acoustic guitar sound, ” recalled Pierre Marchand back in SOS March 2000. His answer was 'first get a good‑sounding acoustic guitar'.” Whatever you record in the studio, the minutes you spend choosing, adjusting, and properly tuning the instrument you're going to use will probably make the most difference to the quality of the recording. In recognition of this, producers often keep their own collection of different well‑maintained guitars (even if they don't actually play the instrument themselves!), and get to know which ones suit different roles. In country, the choice of the instrument is just as critical as the microphone, ” says Bob Bullock, for example. A big Gibson J200 gives you a very full, rich sound, which is great for padding the track. Taylor guitars offer a sharper, edgier sound, which is good for licks and solos.” Mike Clink adds that the pick determines quite a bit of the sound when someone's playing, so I'll experiment with a soft, medium and heavy pick, and make that choice. You can even tape two picks together around a dime or a nickel so you actually get two plucks on a string.”
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There are lots of other ways that guitarists can adjust their sound, but if you (like me) can scarcely tell one end of an acoustic guitar from the other, it's tricky to get a perspective on how much can be achieved in this way. My main bit of advice here is to give the player the time and space to work with you on refining the source sound, before you get too involved in pointing a mic anywhere. Recording acoustic instruments is a team sport, ” confirms Joe Zook. Nine times out of 10 a great acoustic sound happens when the player makes subtle adjustments, such as moving a couple of inches or changing picks. It's all in the hands of the player.”
One of the principal challenges when recording a given acoustic guitar is to capture a good balance of the different noises it produces. While there's a lot that you can do to modify the sound of the instrument itself, there's also much that can be achieved via careful mic positioning, so it pays to be aware of a few general principles governing the instrument's unique dispersion characteristics.
To state the obvious for a moment, it should be clear that the guitar's body resonates but, crucially, it does this in two main ways: not only do the wooden panels themselves vibrate, but also the body of air that's contained within them. While the panel resonances affect the character of the instrument's sound in extremely complex ways, the impact of the air resonance is a bit simpler, primarily just improving projection and sustain in the guitar's low registers.
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The air resonance is usually tuned during the guitar's manufacture to be somewhere around 100Hz, and its effects will be exaggerated if you stick a close mic on‑axis with the sound hole, producing an unattractive 'booming' quality, with uncontrolled low‑frequency level peaks on certain notes, depending on how their fundamental frequencies interact with the resonance. As you move a close mic horizontally away from the soundhole, and head up the fretboard, you'll get a fairly progressive reduction in low‑end power, as the air resonance and then the panel resonances colour the signal less, and the brighter, more direct sound of the strings themselves emerges more strongly.
The air resonance is usually tuned during the guitar's manufacture to be somewhere around 100Hz, and its effects will be exaggerated if you stick a close mic on‑axis with the sound hole, producing an unattractive 'booming' quality, with uncontrolled low‑frequency level peaks on certain notes...
Another basic principle which can help you home in on the right sound is that the body and air resonances will tend to carry further than either the sound produced directly by the strings themselves or the mechanical noises created by picking or fretting. If pick/fret noise is too prominent, pulling your mic further away from the guitar can help reduce it, albeit at the expense of some of the 'zing' that the strings can impart at close range. These same sounds also tend to be richer in high frequencies, and as such will be more easily shadowed by physical obstructions than the lower‑frequency panel or air resonances, so it stands to reason that any mic position that cannot 'see' the strings themselves will come across warmer and more subdued.
Lava Me 3 Smartguitar, 36
Sticking with the blindingly obvious for a moment longer, it should be apparent that the acoustic guitar isn't a 'point source'. In other words, it has significant physical dimensions, especially if you're close‑miking. Because different parts of any instrument will radiate different frequencies in different directions, it becomes very easy to achieve an unbalanced recorded sound if you close‑mic any particular single point on the instrument. However, if you move your microphone back a little way, to try to catch the instrument's tone more naturally, you may capture too much of your recording space's own reverberation — and may also sacrifice some of the appealing (though arguably unnatural) immediacy imparted by the sound of the strings.
With those basic considerations in mind, let's compare some potential mic positions. Assuming for the moment that you have only one mic, there's one position that seems to be much more commonly recommended by working engineers (and, indeed, in print) than any other. It's what I've taken to referring to as the 'vanilla' position. This points the mic roughly at the junction between the instrument's neck and body, where you can usually achieve a fairly good balance of the body and panel resonances while simultaneously catching a good dose of added liveliness from the strings themselves — which is ideal for the typical role of an acoustic guitar that will be worked into a busy mix. Some tweaking of the exact position and mic angle is sensible, but you can get results pretty rapidly.
Mike's 'vanilla position' is to place the mic pointing somewhere around the area where the neck joins the body. The precise angle of the mic and distance from the guitar will vary according to the guitar, the track and the desired sound. However, there are those who feel that this mic position takes the string emphasis a little too far — at the expense of some of the instrument's characteristic body resonance — so there's an argument that the acoustic guitar should be recorded more from the front, given that this is the way it's actually designed to project its sound. This has led to a second common setup, favoured by engineers such as Steve Albini, Al Schmitt and Jim Scott, which puts the mic out at the front of the guitar's body, horizontally in line with the soundhole, but steering clear of over‑prominent air‑resonance 'boom' by moving off‑axis to the sound‑hole vertically. I don't necessarily point the microphone straight at the sound hole, ” explains Albini. Sometimes you want to get it up in the air a little bit, looking down at the guitar so you can get more of the strumming and less projection of the hole. If the guitar is a little thin‑sounding, you want to have it more in front of the body.”
How To Mix Acoustic Guitar
Although it's
The air resonance is usually tuned during the guitar's manufacture to be somewhere around 100Hz, and its effects will be exaggerated if you stick a close mic on‑axis with the sound hole, producing an unattractive 'booming' quality, with uncontrolled low‑frequency level peaks on certain notes, depending on how their fundamental frequencies interact with the resonance. As you move a close mic horizontally away from the soundhole, and head up the fretboard, you'll get a fairly progressive reduction in low‑end power, as the air resonance and then the panel resonances colour the signal less, and the brighter, more direct sound of the strings themselves emerges more strongly.
The air resonance is usually tuned during the guitar's manufacture to be somewhere around 100Hz, and its effects will be exaggerated if you stick a close mic on‑axis with the sound hole, producing an unattractive 'booming' quality, with uncontrolled low‑frequency level peaks on certain notes...
Another basic principle which can help you home in on the right sound is that the body and air resonances will tend to carry further than either the sound produced directly by the strings themselves or the mechanical noises created by picking or fretting. If pick/fret noise is too prominent, pulling your mic further away from the guitar can help reduce it, albeit at the expense of some of the 'zing' that the strings can impart at close range. These same sounds also tend to be richer in high frequencies, and as such will be more easily shadowed by physical obstructions than the lower‑frequency panel or air resonances, so it stands to reason that any mic position that cannot 'see' the strings themselves will come across warmer and more subdued.
Lava Me 3 Smartguitar, 36
Sticking with the blindingly obvious for a moment longer, it should be apparent that the acoustic guitar isn't a 'point source'. In other words, it has significant physical dimensions, especially if you're close‑miking. Because different parts of any instrument will radiate different frequencies in different directions, it becomes very easy to achieve an unbalanced recorded sound if you close‑mic any particular single point on the instrument. However, if you move your microphone back a little way, to try to catch the instrument's tone more naturally, you may capture too much of your recording space's own reverberation — and may also sacrifice some of the appealing (though arguably unnatural) immediacy imparted by the sound of the strings.
With those basic considerations in mind, let's compare some potential mic positions. Assuming for the moment that you have only one mic, there's one position that seems to be much more commonly recommended by working engineers (and, indeed, in print) than any other. It's what I've taken to referring to as the 'vanilla' position. This points the mic roughly at the junction between the instrument's neck and body, where you can usually achieve a fairly good balance of the body and panel resonances while simultaneously catching a good dose of added liveliness from the strings themselves — which is ideal for the typical role of an acoustic guitar that will be worked into a busy mix. Some tweaking of the exact position and mic angle is sensible, but you can get results pretty rapidly.
Mike's 'vanilla position' is to place the mic pointing somewhere around the area where the neck joins the body. The precise angle of the mic and distance from the guitar will vary according to the guitar, the track and the desired sound. However, there are those who feel that this mic position takes the string emphasis a little too far — at the expense of some of the instrument's characteristic body resonance — so there's an argument that the acoustic guitar should be recorded more from the front, given that this is the way it's actually designed to project its sound. This has led to a second common setup, favoured by engineers such as Steve Albini, Al Schmitt and Jim Scott, which puts the mic out at the front of the guitar's body, horizontally in line with the soundhole, but steering clear of over‑prominent air‑resonance 'boom' by moving off‑axis to the sound‑hole vertically. I don't necessarily point the microphone straight at the sound hole, ” explains Albini. Sometimes you want to get it up in the air a little bit, looking down at the guitar so you can get more of the strumming and less projection of the hole. If the guitar is a little thin‑sounding, you want to have it more in front of the body.”
How To Mix Acoustic Guitar
Although it's
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