Hot answers tagged acoustic-guitar
6
Try to find the sweet spot in each and give it a little EQ boost, while cutting that from the other tracks. Also, cut areas where the tracks have no contribution, e.g. below 100hz for vox/guitar, and above 10khz for the guitar (e.g., you'll have to play with it).
A more advanced trick is to use side-chaining compression between the vocals and one or both ...
5
Put it in a different room!
Professional studios do this by having a control room with all of the more noisy equipment, so in a home studio you're going to have to try to approximate that environment as best you can.
On a MacBook, you may be able to limit CPU usage in the Energy Saver preference pane. I can't tell you specifically since I'm on an iMac, but ...
5
The standard configuration is 2 mics, one pointed at the sound hole (but from an angle, not directly out from the sound hole) and one up on the neck around the 12th fret. The first mic will give you the tone of the guitar (mids and lows), and the 2nd one adds the highs as well as some strumming and fret noise.
As always, this is just a starting point. ...
5
If your recording levels peak at around -3dB to -6dB then there is nothing wrong at all with the recording level you are setting on the Zoom H2. The reason your recording sounds quiet compared to commercial recordings is that they have been compressed, often heavily, in order for them to sound as loud as possible, but usually sacrificing a lot in terms of ...
4
what are my options as far as hardware is concerned for connecting it to my Mac Pro?
There are actually a large number of products out there for interfacing instruments with your Mac. I'm a big fan of Apogee gear and the Apogee One is an excellent solution for a high quality audio interface for a Mac that's super stable and sounds great. The advantage ...
4
In my opinion: Nothing. That's an effect of the open tuning, and you also often have longer sustains on the open strings. The chords themselves sound different, with different emphasis on different strings.
It's neither better nor worse, just different.
In each case the guitar, mic and amp (if any) will have a big impact as well, so the only thing you need ...
4
That is a pretty straight forward acoustic sound. As with any recording you should start with the best instrument/musician you can afford (unless you're going for special sounds) so you're right with the decent guitar.
It sounds like (to me) that this recording used a piezo pickup rather than miking or using a magnetic pickup. What method you use to ...
3
for reference and to build upon Ian's answer (I don't have the comment perk yet), I was using direct-in (mic) on a homebuilt PC with a realtek onboard chipset. As far as I know, mac pro also uses the realtek chipset.
Once you are hooked up, you will want to look into amp simulators. There are lots of free options which will work in garage band. They are ...
3
The H4 comes with an XY-style stereo microphone system, which can be quite a thrill to record an acoustic guitar with, provided that the device is placed at the correct angle and distance.
As a start, try pointing the device to the guitar just above the hole, at the end of the fingerboard. Depending on acoustics and the amount of stereo separation, vary the ...
3
The SM81 is a classic "small-diaphragm condensor" microphone. Search for this term on Sweetwater or other pro-audio store site and you will find that it is a densely populated space.
The SM81 is a popular mic that has been around a long time, so you can probably find one used for a bit cheaper.
To stay with new mics, you can find something like the ...
2
I respectfully disagree with mic-ing the neck of the guitar in classical music, the fret sounds of a guitar are most likely considered disturbing. My personal favorite: create an XY-looking stereo pair (XY = make the capsules touch each other, and have them in a relative angle of 90º) with omnidirectional SDCs, and pan them 100% L and 100% R This sounds ...
2
I have a pair of rode nt5s which are good for acoustics. Maybe you'll want to look for a supercardioid condenser since you want a tight pattern - shure beta 98? I don't have any supercardioid, and can't say how well they reject, but you can see the polar patterns online - looks like good rear rejection for 6k plus.
A good preamp can make a sm57 sound much ...
2
I have a b3 (studio projects). It's a 1st generation, so the sound may differ. However, I've found it very nice for recording guitar because it's very bright. You'll hear the fingering details. I'm not sure if that's the sound you want, but found it very easy to mix and eq to get the sound I wanted from both classical (nylon string) and folk (steel string) ...
2
A magnetic pickup, like a dynamic microphone, doesn't require phantom power and can therefore be connected to any microphone preamplifier that can amplify the signal enough. Magnetic pickups tend to have high impedance, which not all preamps like, which can result in that the higher frequencies get dampened.
Your noise can be caused either by your ...
2
To have lower fan speeds while also not having a cooked laptop, you need to have less heat to remove (i.e. reduce CPU or GPU load) or more efficient passive heat transfer. Luckily, modern MacBooks have metal cases which are quite thermally conductive, which allows many possibilities for improving cooling.
Chill the air around the laptop as much as you can ...
2
The good thing is that style of music is not necessarily that important. Generally (and this is a generalisation) you want your PA to provide amplification without affecting the sound, with EQ to carry out tweaks to compensate for the frequency response of the venue. Any effects on instruments or vocals should be carried out using processors separate to ...
1
The one thing Garageband gives you in your use case is:
Ease of use!
It is very user friendly for all your basic tasks, and offers you some nice additional features, like backing and drums.
Audacity is cross-platform and for the basics is not too difficult to use, but for anything more than the basics can be tricky to configure, and it sounds like you ...
1
Although Garageband is definitely good value for it's price if you just want to record something you can just as well use audacity.
Garageband has a large library with sound effects and good sounding instruments like drums, strings,trumpets etc. so it's a good (and cheap) place to start with if you want to compose something more than just your voice and ...
1
Acoustic guitar
There's no getting away from the fact that a good microphone costs a reasonable amount of money. For acoustic guitar and voice, a reasonable quality condenser microphone is what people recommend. $50 or so gets you a Behringer that'll do the job.
Professional mics have XLR connectors, and condenser mics need power - either from a battery or ...
1
The key item you need is a sound card - M-Audio do a very cost effective range that is good enough for gigging or studio recording. Their kit provides buffered inputs, low-latency ADAC and decent quality outputs.
This will give you inputs suitable for electric guitar, microphone etc. You won't need separate preamps etc if you have a suitable soundcard.
You ...
1
Short answer: get a Korg Sound on Sound.
There are two main routes to recording your guitars:
Acoustic recording
Direct input recording
Assuming your acoustic guitar doesn't have a built in pickup, you will need a microphone and some way to record that microphone. There are many different paths, but ultimately you are building a signal path that goes ...
1
I had the same problem. I found a simple and easy solution. I took out the bridge piece (which was very tight) and cleaned it, then gently rubbed the sides on some floor tiles (I had no sand paper). This was to remove any goop accumulated from playing (sweat gunk etc). I slipped it back in (a lot easier). I then tested, without strings, applying pressure to ...
1
The problem turned out to be either the pickup or the wire to the preamp. I didn't have time to shield the wire - I can't get my hand all the way into the cavity of the guitar, and I don't have tools to work inside a guitar (outside of some skinny pliers and a small inspection mirror), so I elected to simply replace the pickup. It worked; the hum is gone.
...
1
Since it goes away when you touch the metal of the cable jack, it's almost certainly a shielding issue. It could be the preamp, the pickup, or – most likely – the interior cable from the pickup to the preamp: this connection is extremely susceptible to capacitive coupling because both the preamp input and the pickup (assuming a piëzo, which it likely is) in ...
1
As a computer programmer, one of the first rules you learn is "Garbage In, Garbage Out". Once the correctness of the data - or in this case the quality of the sound - is gone, there's very little that can be done to bring it back into a usable state. Keep this in mind when deciding how best to spend your money which can easily disappear on a whole myriad of ...
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