Record a clean acoustic guitar track at home

Recording a clean acoustic guitar sound at home isn't always easy. But there are things you can do to put the 'wow' into your recordings...

By David Mellor, Course Director of Audio Masterclass

Recording a clean acoustic guitar sound at home isn't always easy. But there are things you can do to put the 'wow' into your recordings...
An Audio Masterclass visitor asks how he can record a clean acoustic guitar track at home. Well, getting an absolutely first-rate recording could be the study of a lifetime, but there are some simple things you can do to get better results than you are already.

Firstly, get a good guitar - that means one that sounds good acoustically, which rules out many purpose-built electro-acoustic guitars. Secondly, change the strings and play them in. Thirdly, be a great guitar player.
When all that is in place, it's time to look at recording technique.
Notice the word 'clean' in the title. If you're recording at home the one thing that is going to make your recording less than clean is reverberation. You can't get away from it in the home - the rooms are too small and the reflective surfaces too close.

Recording engineers fear small spaces. They always sound bad, and making a recording in a small space is a game of making things good and continually trying to cover up problems.

So there are two approaches to working around the problem of a small space. The first is to try and make the walls go away. Surround your sound source and microphone with as much absorbent material as you can. Clothes, bedding and even mattresses are good. There is no such thing as overkill here as if you under-do the absorption, you will end up with high and mid-frequency absorption, but the low frequency reflections will still get through. It could sound worse than before.

The other approach is to work with your surroundings. If you take your guitar and microphone around the house or apartment, you will find some places sound better than others. Perhaps you will find the magical sweet spot where your guitar sounds really great.

Microphone technique in itself is less relevant than 'experts' often suggest. Use a decent mike, avoid the direct sound from the sound hole, don't get too far away. An experienced engineer might have a great technique and can just listen to the guitar and know where to place the mic straight away. You can experiment. It might take longer but you can get just as good a result in the end.

But you will get a vastly different sound if you record the guitar in stereo. This can make an immense difference. Suddenly the problems go away and the 'wow' appears.
You can position two microphones together in space, pointing outwards from the center of the guitar. This will localize the sound in the stereo image. Or space the mics apart - this will give the sound almost of two guitars - one in one speaker and one in the other.

Lastly, don't panic if your acoustic guitar recording doesn't sound perfect. Listen to commercial CDs - you will often find that the acoustic guitar sound is wanting. But in the context of the whole mix, this often doesn't matter as long as the song comes across effectively.

Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1 / Berezovsky · Sokhiev · Berliner Philharmoniker

Mouth noises in speech - should they be edited out

You are recording some speech but your voice artist makes lip smacks, clicks and other unwanted mouth noises. Should you edit them out?

By David Mellor, Course Director of Audio Masterclass

 

Mouth noises are a fact of life, but they don't seem to trouble us in everyday real-life interactions. When someone talks, we hear speech, and ignore the smacks, clicks and other rather sloppy sounds that the human mouth can produce.

Put a microphone in front of someone speaking and it's a different story. Sometimes the mouth noises are so bad it's hard to concentrate on what the person is saying.

The problem is that in natural speech, or when the microphone is at a reasonable distance from the mouth (more than 60 cm or so), then mouth noises tend not to be noticeable.

But if you move the mic closer for a warmer sound, or simply to combat any unwanted background noise lurking in the studio, then mouth noises can become obvious, distracting, or even repellent.

Other than moving the mic away a little, there are three ways to reduce mouth noises...

1. Use a voice artist who naturally, or through training and practice, doesn't produce them.
2. Suggest tactfully to your voice talent that they might take care not to produce such noises.
3. Edit them out.

Considering the third option, if you have recorded a 500-page audio book you potentially have an incredibly tedious and time-consuming task on your hands. The chances are that it will not be economically feasible to edit out all of the mouth noises.

What you might do is edit out the worst noises (which you might with foresight have marked during the recording sessions) and declare yourself satisfied with that.

If you were a little sneaky then you could do your best editing in the first five minutes or so, then let the mouth noises creep in. A listener would then have time to become accustomed to them.
But here is a passage of speech from which any mouth noises would definitely have to be edited out, to perfection...

"Space, the final frontier..."

Thank you to StarTrek.com for that.

If you have a passage of speech that is short, and as important as this, then definitely you should edit out the mouth noises. In other audio, you might just have to accept that mouth noises are part of being human.

 

Publication date: Thursday May 03, 2012

Author: David Mellor, Course Director of Audio Masterclass

Handel: Water Music / Haïm · Berliner Philharmonike

Better theatre sound through proper loudspeaker placement

Sound for theatre drama productions can be made much better through simple loudspeaker placement techniques.

By David Mellor, Course Director of Audio Masterclass

Sound for the theatre? Simple - put loudspeakers at the sides of the stage and play everything through them like a big hi-fi.

Wrong! But let's explore the issue...

Here, I am talking about a theatre drama production that uses sound effects and incidental music, but the actors do not have microphones. As an example, I have chosen The Ghost Train by Arnold Ridley - a play that allows both sound and lighting designers to show off their skills to the full.

As you might guess from the title of the play, a train is involved. Since the play was written in 1923, the train will be pulled by a steam engine. In a conventional production, the scene will be the waiting room of a provincial railway station, with windows in the rear wall of the set looking out onto the station platform. It is through these windows that the train will be glimpsed, but not clearly seen.



The challenge for the lighting designer is to make it look as though a train is passing by outside - without having to build one! We'll leave that to the lampies and move on swiftly to the sound.

In the original production, the sound of the train was created mechanically. Today, it makes sense to use a recording of a steam train. Ideally this will be created specifically for the production.
It is also likely that there will be incidental music, at least to open and close the acts of the play. Some productions of other plays might use incidental music more frequently.

Why not play everything through the same speakers?
At this point, we have the sound of the train and some incidental music. You could place two loudspeakers at the sides of the stage and play all of the sound through them.
But this is not the right thing to do. So why?

The answer is to be found by considering what the characters of the play can hear. They can hear the train, but clearly the characters do not hear the incidental music. There is no orchestra or band in the station waiting room! Only the audience hears the incidental music. (Clearly the actors hear it too, but the characters of the play do not. That is an important distinction.)

Following this logic to a sensible conclusion, the sound of the train should come from where the train is meant to be - outside of the waiting room. So that is where the loudspeakers should be.
It may be thought that putting the loudspeakers behind the set, a long way from the audience, isn't quite the right thing to do. But it absolutely is. The amplifiers should be powerful enough, and the loudspeakers beefy enough, to create a sound that is believably, in the context of theatre, a train. And the sound of the train should be coming from the tracks, not speakers at the front of the stage.

Where should the incidental music come from?
So now, the finesse... The incidental music should come from loudspeakers at the front of the stage. This is outside of the acting area and is therefore separated from the drama. The incidental music is for the benefit of the audience and the characters should not appear to be able to hear it.

In summary therefore, sounds that are heard by the characters should come from loudspeakers positioned within the acting area, where those sounds would be heard by the characters (remembering the distinction between the characters and the actors). Incidental music should come from separate loudspeakers closer to the audience than the acting area. These speakers should not be used for any sounds that would be audible to the characters. This principle applies to almost every non-musical theatre production.

Which leaves just one question...

Whodunnit?

 Publication date: Wednesday May 02, 2012
Author: David Mellor, Course Director of Audio Masterclass

How to connect an outboard equalizer to a mixing console

A Record-Producer.com reader has an analog mixing console and an outboard equalizer, but he doesn't know how to connect them...

By David Mellor, Course Director of Audio Masterclass
 

A Record-Producer.com reader asks...
"I have a ALESIS PEQ-450 parametric equalizer, and am not sure how it fits in the studio OR how its hooked up to the mixer. and my external
effect units. I believe there through effect sends and outs, correct? THIS mix Board is a EURODESK SL3242FX PRO mixing board, thank you. Andre Eastman"

Bearing in mind that Record-Producer.com is read worldwide and many of our visitors do not have English as their first language, here is my response...
Firstly, we need to familiarize ourselves with the equipment. Here is the mixing console...



And here is the equalizer...



You can click on the images to view them full size.
How you connect the equalizer depends on what you want to do. Do you want to EQ a single channel (or pair of channels)? Or do you want to EQ the entire mix.

EQ a single channel
To EQ a single channel, then look for the 'Insert I/O' socket near the top of the channel just above the 'Level Set' control, which of course is the gain control. This is a three-contact jack socket, which acts both as insert send and insert return. You should check the manual to find out whether the tip contact is the send and the ring contact the return, or vice-versa. There is no universal standard for this.

You will need a special insert cable for this that has a three-contact jack (often called a stereo jack, but it is not being used for stereo in this instance) at one end from which sprout two cables, each going to an individual jack. The send goes to the EQ input, the EQ output goes to the return.

Connected in this way, you can equalize a single channel, or two channels if you wish with an additional insert cable connected to the other channel of the equalizer.

EQ the whole mix
To equalize the whole mix, everything is exactly the same as above, except you should use the 'Main Insert' sockets that are just to the left of the main outputs. The equalizer will now affect everything that comes out the console.
One point to notice is that this mixing console has a built-in graphic EQ. If you are using an outboard equalizer, then the built-in EQ should normally be switched out. It would only cause confusion to use both at the same time.

Publication date: Tuesday May 01, 2012
Author: David Mellor, Course Director of Audio Masterclass

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 / Abbado · Berliner Philharmoniker