StickMan
February 9th, 2007, 12:07 PM
Hi Everyone, I am pretty new here, but I have already noticed that many of you are pretty young and have been having some difficulties getting your recorded guitar to sound like you want it. I figure I would post this as a basic guidline on how to record the electric guitar using a microphone.
First of all I am an design engineer with my bachelor of science in electronics engineering. I Have 15 years of experience in concert sound and 8 years in studio recording. I have also been playing guitar for 21 years. So I will try to keep this at a "non-technical" level.
Amplifier micing 101:
The most important part of micing your amplifier is to find the right spot to put the microphone. In general: The closer you are to the speaker the more bass you will record. Like wise the farther away the less bass you will record. The center of the speaker is usually the brightest/harshest/clearest and as you move away from center to the outside rim of the speaker you will get a warmer/darker/muddier sound. Also the microphone can be placed "on axis" or directly pointed at the speaker or "off axis" point at an angle to the speaker. Depending on the mic you are using this will have varying effect on the bass/treble response of the recording. Typically mics are placed slightly of axis to the speaker.
So now that we know this we can modify the tone that you are recording by moving the mic in each of these 3 ways. Lets says for instance that you tone is bright and harsh when recording with the mic in some position. By moving the mic closer to the speaker, away from the center and slightly off axis, the sound will change to a darker/less bright sound. Experiment with this until you are getting better results. Micing a speaker using these techniques is very simple to learn but hard to master, so take you time and do lots of checking in between each movement.
Once you have found the sweet spot, the next step is to make sure the signal strength is strong enough but not distoring. Find the volume you wish to record at, find the sweet spot for your mic, and then set your levels. If you are using an external preamp it will most likely have some monitoring features on it like a signal meter or at least a clip light. Adjust the gain of the preamp until the red light just barely starts to come on at the louded parts of the signal. Now back it off just a hair so that the clip light almost never comes on. Next go the track you are going to use in your recording software, (this would be the first level step if you have no pre, like a USB driven mic.) Set is to record and again get the level of the guitar signal until it is just hitting the red. Now back it off a hair and you should be ready to record.
Amplifier recording techniques and tricks:
Once you have your microphone in place and your signal levels set its time for the fun part. Many modern guitar tracks are recorded with a single dynamic microphone (such as a Shure Sm-57 or other similar mic) However that is often not the case. Studios often use a nember of microphones blended together to give them more options for changing the sound after the recording is tracked. For instance to get George Lynch's tone for Under Lock and Key Michael Wagener used ~30 microphones on multiple speaker cabinets in different rooms! So if you have access to more than one mic, by all means give it a try using the same techniques described above. Sometimes using one mic to capture the bright sound and another to capture the warm sound can give a really nice result when blended together.
Note: If you are using more than 1 microphone be sure to pay attention to the distance they are from the speakers. Using multiple mics at different distances from the source can cause phase problems an wreck your sound. If you have a phase revers switch on your preamp than experiment with different distance and then flip the phase on one of the mics and see what happens (for better or worse).
Another method used (maybe overused) to record guitar is double tracking. To double track a guitar part, carefully and cleanly play and record the part once. The play it back while recording a second guitar play the EXACT same part over the top. Now pan one hard left and one hard right nad watch you gi stereo image come to life.
As a final note: the use of effect while recording can be a help to getting a great sound. Just be careful not to overdo it or you can end up with muddy, mushy tones that can't be fixed. If you are going to use fx to record with try to record them seperately onto a different track so you can adjust the mix later.
I have included some sound samples of these last 4 techniques in MP3 format.
The file is pretty big (~5mB).
There are 4 samples of a basic guitar riff played by itself with no other instrument backing.
Sample 1) Single microphone (Shure Sm57) place 25 degrees off axis about 2 inches from the center off the speaker.
Sample 2) 2 microphones (Shure Sm57 and Ev RE-38) 57 placed as before, RE-38 placed 4 inches from center and on axis.
Sample 3) Same mic placement as sample 2 but double tracked.
Sample 4) SAme as sample 3 but with delay and reverb added
http://home.comcast.net/~donjgraham/Guitar_Recording_Ideas.mp3
As you can hear there is no one technique that is perfect for every situation. The single 57 might work best for certain mixes where that double tracked version may muck things up.
Anyway happy recording, I hope this helps out some beginning recorders and maybe gives some different ideas to the more experienced.
Stick
First of all I am an design engineer with my bachelor of science in electronics engineering. I Have 15 years of experience in concert sound and 8 years in studio recording. I have also been playing guitar for 21 years. So I will try to keep this at a "non-technical" level.
Amplifier micing 101:
The most important part of micing your amplifier is to find the right spot to put the microphone. In general: The closer you are to the speaker the more bass you will record. Like wise the farther away the less bass you will record. The center of the speaker is usually the brightest/harshest/clearest and as you move away from center to the outside rim of the speaker you will get a warmer/darker/muddier sound. Also the microphone can be placed "on axis" or directly pointed at the speaker or "off axis" point at an angle to the speaker. Depending on the mic you are using this will have varying effect on the bass/treble response of the recording. Typically mics are placed slightly of axis to the speaker.
So now that we know this we can modify the tone that you are recording by moving the mic in each of these 3 ways. Lets says for instance that you tone is bright and harsh when recording with the mic in some position. By moving the mic closer to the speaker, away from the center and slightly off axis, the sound will change to a darker/less bright sound. Experiment with this until you are getting better results. Micing a speaker using these techniques is very simple to learn but hard to master, so take you time and do lots of checking in between each movement.
Once you have found the sweet spot, the next step is to make sure the signal strength is strong enough but not distoring. Find the volume you wish to record at, find the sweet spot for your mic, and then set your levels. If you are using an external preamp it will most likely have some monitoring features on it like a signal meter or at least a clip light. Adjust the gain of the preamp until the red light just barely starts to come on at the louded parts of the signal. Now back it off just a hair so that the clip light almost never comes on. Next go the track you are going to use in your recording software, (this would be the first level step if you have no pre, like a USB driven mic.) Set is to record and again get the level of the guitar signal until it is just hitting the red. Now back it off a hair and you should be ready to record.
Amplifier recording techniques and tricks:
Once you have your microphone in place and your signal levels set its time for the fun part. Many modern guitar tracks are recorded with a single dynamic microphone (such as a Shure Sm-57 or other similar mic) However that is often not the case. Studios often use a nember of microphones blended together to give them more options for changing the sound after the recording is tracked. For instance to get George Lynch's tone for Under Lock and Key Michael Wagener used ~30 microphones on multiple speaker cabinets in different rooms! So if you have access to more than one mic, by all means give it a try using the same techniques described above. Sometimes using one mic to capture the bright sound and another to capture the warm sound can give a really nice result when blended together.
Note: If you are using more than 1 microphone be sure to pay attention to the distance they are from the speakers. Using multiple mics at different distances from the source can cause phase problems an wreck your sound. If you have a phase revers switch on your preamp than experiment with different distance and then flip the phase on one of the mics and see what happens (for better or worse).
Another method used (maybe overused) to record guitar is double tracking. To double track a guitar part, carefully and cleanly play and record the part once. The play it back while recording a second guitar play the EXACT same part over the top. Now pan one hard left and one hard right nad watch you gi stereo image come to life.
As a final note: the use of effect while recording can be a help to getting a great sound. Just be careful not to overdo it or you can end up with muddy, mushy tones that can't be fixed. If you are going to use fx to record with try to record them seperately onto a different track so you can adjust the mix later.
I have included some sound samples of these last 4 techniques in MP3 format.
The file is pretty big (~5mB).
There are 4 samples of a basic guitar riff played by itself with no other instrument backing.
Sample 1) Single microphone (Shure Sm57) place 25 degrees off axis about 2 inches from the center off the speaker.
Sample 2) 2 microphones (Shure Sm57 and Ev RE-38) 57 placed as before, RE-38 placed 4 inches from center and on axis.
Sample 3) Same mic placement as sample 2 but double tracked.
Sample 4) SAme as sample 3 but with delay and reverb added
http://home.comcast.net/~donjgraham/Guitar_Recording_Ideas.mp3
As you can hear there is no one technique that is perfect for every situation. The single 57 might work best for certain mixes where that double tracked version may muck things up.
Anyway happy recording, I hope this helps out some beginning recorders and maybe gives some different ideas to the more experienced.
Stick