Acoustic singer songwriter mix

snowy12

Hi guys,
Hoping to get some feedback on my mix. It's a simple song- vocals, acoustic guitar and piano. Still trying to get to grips with the compression on the acoustic guitar. Any feedback on the mix/overall recording would be greatly appreciated! It's called Seven Lessons and it's on my Breaking Tunes site. http://www.breakingtunes.com/declansnowden
Thanks a lot!
Declan

GTE

I see what you're doing with the guitar reverb, but I am not a fan of the sound of the verb but do keep at that. It is so difficult to get sparsely populated songs like this to work.

A wee bit of panning of the piano and guitar away from each other, but not so much that there is an off balance between the two would be nice.

Are you using more than one reverb unit? Try a single one being fed by anything you need reverb on.

Is there a kind of percussion thing going on with the guitar? I am getting a DIed impression from it at times. Could be the mic too far up the neck and close or in fact it being DIed

Id love up Sound on Sound for some acoustic recording tips, I am sure there is a rich tone to come out of that guitar somewhere. Would help to really fill the image.

If you are using a software piano, the slightest tweak to the sample settings to give you just a hint of panning from lower register to higher register notes could work very well. Just subtle like.

Nice.

snowy12

Hi bkk, thanks for the feedback! Yes, I'm using Scarlett Reverb on the guitar track and on the master. I suppose one or the other would be more effective?

With the acoustic guitar I'm using a mix of DI and a small diaphragm mic. Found the mic alone was getting a bit "roomy" and I've been trying to find a good mix. I think you might be right with recording the guitar too far up the neck.

Thanks again for your feedback. I recorded another song after that called "Perfume" that's on the breaking tunes site, same idea although a bit more upbeat, I'm sure the same recording mistakes!

Declan

GTE

snowy12 wrote: »

I'm sure the same recording mistakes!

Declan

Don't get too hooked up about it, practice makes bleedin deadly after all!

halfmoon

What about pointing the two mics at the sound hole and if ye had one about 4 feet in front of you. Just to try to get the full tone out of that guitar. Keep an ear out for Snowbird Simon Raymondes new adventure, the ex Cocteau Twin member. He has a great label Bella Union, worth sending him a link to listen to your stuff, he'll give ye good feed back.

snowy12

Thanks halfmoon for the tip! So you don't think DI-ing the acoustic guitar is a good idea at all? I have a large and a small condenser mic (rode and behringer respectively) - I'll try getting a nice mix with the two of them. Cheers!

GTE

snowy12 wrote: »

Thanks halfmoon for the tip! So you don't think DI-ing the acoustic guitar is a good idea at all? I have a large and a small condenser mic (rode and behringer respectively) - I'll try getting a nice mix with the two of them. Cheers!

I am a huge fan of DIs for electric guitar as there are some quite reasonable amp sims out there these days.

Less so of DIed acoustic. Looking back on some very early projects which were all DIed acoustic, I very much wish I could go back and change it.

The way you are using it is a very good one though, if I was to record acoustic DIed it would be in case I needed it as a last resort and applied in the same way you are doing it in case I needed some extra clarity.

snowy12

Yeah it always feels like a trade-off between clarity and richness when DI-ing the acoustic. I had the problem before when I was just mixing it that I got a tonne of low end, but that's probably just an issue with mic placement more than anything else. Reverb levels are always something I struggle with. And then it's whether I'm putting the vocals too upfront. It's a minefield out there!