Acoustic Guitar players, How do you record your acoustic?

[BluesKing777]

I am in two minds about methods for recording solo acoustic guitar playing - 'highest quality stereo close mike recording' or 'turn on the mono video cam and let it it happen' approaches.

 

It can be hard to beat the sound of a top of the line condenser like a Neumann mini or even two for stereo, run into a top of the line pre-amp. A lot of the top recordings would be done like this. I don't have any of this equipment, but I have a Rode condenser and a fairly good pre-amp (Sebatron).

 

Years ago a friend was learning recording and sound at Uni, and I was his guinea pig a number of times. I sat in a chair and played solo country blues on a dobro to a wall of microphones - a large condenser in my face, a large condenser near the soundhole, a sm57 in the lower right, an ambient back a few feet, etc, etc. My friend then edited and cleaned and compressed and echoed for weeks and weeks and while it was all very, very clear and clean sounding, well .......I just didn't like it. Partly because I could hear myself breathing hard (probably in mild terror of the recording process) and partly because I had achieved a fairly 'organic' sound recording at my home with a Tascam portable 4-track tape recorder and a Shure sm57 which I liked.

 

The low tech sound I get when I record with my Sony Bloggie video recorder (mono I think) placed about 5 feet away reminds me of this 'organic' sound I used to get with the Tascam.

 

 

BluesKing777.

[drathbun]

I just posted a thread over at the recording room forum that might be of interest to some here. I discovered an excellent, three year thread on recording and mixing over at the Reaper forum. The thread at Reaper was called "Why Do Your Home Recordings Sound Like A**?" The resulting compilation of a three year lecture from a professional, in the know, engineer and producer is extremely valuable.

 

Go take a look if you are interested:

 

Home Recording 101