aa - week 6 - accoustic guitar recording

I went into the studio with Sanad (Khaled Sanadzadeh) and Alfred Essemyr to try out a few different microphone techniques on this weeks assignment, recording some accoustic guitar. [1]

We recorded everything with two microphones at once. Generally attempting a stereo sound, but some techniques were more about layering of the mics to give a more interesting sound.

We recorded 6 different sounds, myself playing the guitar (attempting to play similiar for comparison - but I did get distracted once).

Above is a picture of the mixing section after I went through and mixed each sound. Each take has been grouped to help differentiate (different colour buttons on each channel).

I used no EQ in production but think that it would have helped each sound to be more useable.

Unfortunately we have no photo's of the microphone arrangements so I'll explain each one.


The first technique was an X-Y stereo technique using two Neumann KM84's (track 1+2). One pointing at the top 3 strings, the other at the bottom 3 strings, about 15cm from the end of the fretboard near sound hole. Each hard panned opposite.
01_neumann_km84_xy_stereo.mp3



Second we used an AKG c414 (omnidirectional)(track 3) and a Neumann U87 (figure 8)(track 4) to create an M-S stereo pattern. Both placed again at the end of the fretboard about 30cm out. The U87 was copied onto another track (track 5), the copy phase inverted and then each hard panned.
02_akg_neumann_ms_stereo.mp3



Third was the Rode NT4 stereo microphone (track 6+7), postioned similiar to the first technique.
03_rode_nt4_stereo.mp3



Fourth was a technique sugged by Sanad, using the two KM84's (track 8+9) pointed at the front near the bridge (about 15cm out) and behind the guitar (didn't notice how far out this one was because i was looking the other way) pointed at roughly the same point (but through the body). I inverted one of the signals, softpanned each and just gave a bit of the rear signal, still very warm.
04_km84_front_and_back.mp3

The rear microphone picked up a surprising amount of attack.
http://www.hddweb.com/90573/04_back.mp3



Fifth using the two KM84's (track 10+11), one at the bridge and one at the end of the fretboard near the soundhole, both about 15cm out. Hard panned.
05_km84_end_of_neck_and_bridge.mp3



Sixth was similiar to the fifth (track 12+13) but one of the mics was shifted up to the nut. This one I used much more signal from the nut microphone.
06_km84_bridge_and_nut.mp3




[1] Fieldhouse, Steve. Recording an accoustic guitar. University of Adelaide, 3 april 2007.