Acoustic Guitar

This week we recorded 2 acoustic guitars, we decided to record them both at the same time for a better live feel,  we had one guitarist set up in the live room and one in the dead room. for one guitar we decided to use an SM57 for the close up and a condenser mic for the room mic, set to an omni directional polar pattern to pick up the rooms overall sound.

For the other guitar we decided to go with a DI signal, as the clean sound complimented the track and the other guitar well. the SM57 was placed closer to the neck and the soundhole on the acoustic because that way you can avoid heavy guitar pick noises while retaining some of the low endof the guitar,  we also placed the r oom mic at the other side of the room, but with the front face of the mic still pointing towards the guitarist, but set on the omni setting because then it pics up the reverberation of the whole room rather than using a cardioid pattern that would just pick up sound in the direction that it is facing. with the DI’d guitar we had a problem with a lot of humming, after a few minutes we realised that we needed to switch the earth lift switch on on the DI box, which gets rid of all of the background noises. when both guitars were sent into the desk and protools at the right levels we went for a take, everything went well except at one point where both guitars were meant to stop for a break one didn’t and we had to do another pre-roll recording to make sure that it ran smoothly. when everything was sorted to run smoothly we played it back and listened for any mistakes and for the general sound of the piece, and to check that we were all happy with everything.