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While physical modelling preamps may take the hassle out of recording electric
guitars, you're still going to need to reach for a mic when recording acoustic
guitar. Paul White shows you how to get the best recorded sound, and offers a
few of his favourite tricks of the trade.

The advances in digital technology over the last few years

have brought a whole range of usable electric guitar sounds
within the reach of even the most cash-strapped home studio
owner. Preamps from manufacturers such as Digitech, Line
6, Roland and Yamaha have managed to physically model
the sounds of desirable amp and speaker combinations,
allowing many musicians to record their electric guitars
without having to plug in a single mic.

However, things haven't yet got so advanced that the same

can be said of acoustic guitar. A few people have tried
physically modelling the acoustic guitar, but with only limited
success -- these sounds are convenient to have when
playing live, but aren't really good enough to stand up to
scrutiny in the studio. In fact, better results could probably be
attained with a good MIDI sound module and some clever programming, though this
approach rarely produces truly natural results either. And using sampled phrases isn't ideal
either, given that the chords of acoustic parts usually need to change with the track.

It is for this reason that most home recordists still have to mike up an acoustic guitar when
they want one in a track, even when they do their best to generate most other parts
artificially. Recording an acoustic guitar is a complex task, however, and there are a
number of different miking and processing techniques available which can be brought to
bear. The aim of this article is to show you how to get the best
recorded sound, and also how to go about slotting it
successfully into your mix.

Preparing For Recording

This may sound rather obvious, but it really is important to

make sure that the guitar sounds as close as possible to how
you want it to sound, before you bother thinking about miking
anything up. Deal with the basic things first: is this the right
guitar for the job? If not, then consider borrowing another for

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the session, or even investing in another yourself. There are

engineers who buy guitars in order to get the sound they want, even though they're not
really guitarists themselves, so don't rule this option out if the right guitar sound is important
to you!

Choose an appropriate type and gauge of string for the instrument and for the kind of sound
you're after, and make sure that the guitar's action is set up correctly so that it plays without
buzzing. There are many different types of steel-cored wound string, all of which have
subtly different properties. The most commonly used types on acoustic guitars are bronze,
phosphor bronze and nickel wound. An instrument with lighter guage strings (perhaps an
11 to 50 set) will generally be easier to play, but the sound will be thinner. On the other
hand, very heavy strings (perhaps a set begining with a 15-guage top E) can sometimes
sound tubby and lacking in overtones on the wound strings. The best compromise is
usually the heaviest set of strings which are still comfortable enough for the guitarist to play.
Accurate tuning is paramount so check the tuning using an electronic tuner between every
take.

If the guitarist is using a pick, it is always worth trying one of a different thickness --
generally, thin ones work best for layering multiple tracks of 'acoustic guitar bed' parts.
Don't be afraid to spend half an hour or more getting the right sound at source, because
time spent at this point has the potential to make every subsequent stage of recording and
mixing much easier.

Another thing to bear in mind is that the sound of acoustic guitar recordings can depend a
great deal on the environment in which the instrument is played. Acoustic guitars thrive on
live acoustics, and insufficient natural reverb is a common problem when recording them in
small home studios. While artificial reverb can be used to liven up the sound of a dead
room, getting a sympathetic natural acoustic always produces better results, even if you are
wanting to add more artificial reverb later. Obviously you can have too much of a good thing
here, and too long a reverb time will sound muddy and confused, but this is usually less of
a problem in small studios.

To get a more live sound out of your room, try to position the guitarist so that the instrument
is played close to some reflective surfaces -- hard floors, doors and solid furniture can all
help here. If carpeting on the floor of your recording room is dampening the sound too
much, then a simple solution is to place a sheet of
Dress Code
hardboard, plywood or MDF on the floor beneath the
instrument. It may actually be worth the effort of Bear in mind that anything which has
the potential to tap the body of the
running long cables out to another, better-sounding guitar can ruin an otherwise perfect
room, if you have one, if the sound simply isn't take. Common offenders include belt
working in your normal recording room. buckles, jeans rivets, and buttons on
a shirt or jacket, but the guitarist's
watch can also sometimes cause
If you are willing to experiment with the instrument and
problems as well. Mike Senior
the room, listening carefully at each stage, then you
should be able to arrive at a situation where the guitar sounds good both to you and to the
performer. If you can do this, then the most important task has been accomplished -- you're
now ready to select your mic.

Miking Up

Large professional studios will have a broad range of different mics to choose from, but
many home recordists are faced with a much more limited choice, so the decision is usually
fairly straightforward. The first thing to realise is that there are few dynamic mics capable of
doing justice to the acousti c guitar, other than perhaps the Sennheiser 441, because of

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their inherently limited high-frequency response. High

frequencies are vital to acoustic guitar sounds, and therefore
you'll probably need a condenser mic to get the best results,
as these are more sensitive and pick up much more high-
frequency detail.

Whether you choose a true capacitor model or a cheaper,

back-electret design may well be determined by your budget,
though manufacturers such as Joemeek, Rode and Audio
Technica are now making capacitor designs available at
ridiculously low prices. This is not to say that back-electret
mics aren't capable of turning in a good performance, but be
aware that those models that are powered by batteries may
have lower sensitivity and headroom than those models
which will only run off phantom power -- some are little more sensitive than a good dynamic
mic!

Purists will often pick a small-diaphragm capacitor mic for its greater high-frequency
accuracy, and one with an omni polar pattern for a more transparent sound than can be
achieved using a cardioid. However, if you're one of the many people who have one or two
large-diaphragm cardioid mics only, that doesn't mean that you should have trouble getting
good results. For a start, omni-pattern mics usually require a recording room which sounds
significantly better than most home studios, so a cardioid pattern will usually suit smaller
rooms better.

Whichever mic you choose, the positioning of it is crucial. In a live situation its normal to
see mics placed very close to the sound hole of an acoustic guitar, because the important
considerations are level, separation, and the avoidance of feedback. In the studio, however,
you're after a more natural sound, and such miking is therefore less useful. It is true that a
lot of the sound energy of an acoustic guitar comes directly out of the sound hole, but much
of that is heavily coloured by the body resonances of the instrument. This boxy and boomy
sound usually needs heavy EQ'ing to render it usable even
when playing live, and this really isn't the way to go when
recording. If you've got your guitar sounding right at source,
you shouldn't have to be using drastic processing during
recording.

Natural guitar sounds balance the different vibrations from all

over the instrument with each other, and with sonic
reflections from the player's surroundings. If a mic is used too close to the guitar, the direct
sound from the part of the instrument it is nearest to will dominate the sound from other
parts of the instrument and from the room. You risk miking up only a part of the instrument
when what you're really after is the bigger picture.

On the other hand, if your mic is too far away from the guitar, you can end up with a lot of
room ambience, leaving the original sound distant and unfocused. You may also find that
your mic exhibits unacceptable levels of noise when you apply the level of preamp gain
which distant miking requires, especially if you're using a less sensitive model.

As for the specifics of mic positioning, a common approach is to set up the mic around
40cm from the guitar, with the capsule aimed at the point where the guitar's neck joins the
body. This will usually produce a well-integrated sound -- the levels of direct and reflected
sound will be about right, and the sound hole's contribution will be controlled because the
mic doesn't point directly at it. If you have a pair of enclosed headphones, then you can

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easily experiment with tweaking this mic placement while listening for the best sound. If you
find a promising sound in this way, remember to check it out on your monitors before
committing yourself -- headphones can sometimes be rather misleading. As a general rule,
moving the mic further towards the neck will brighten an excessively bassy sound, while
moving closer to the sound hole will bring more warmth and fullness to the sound. Moving
the mic further away from the guitar will increase the proportion of room ambience overall,
while moving in further will dry the sound up. Alternatively, if you like a closer-miked sound,
but would prefer more room ambience with it, try using an omni-pattern mic instead of a
cardioid, if you have one.

Even though the basic mic placement described above is by far the most commonly used, it
doesn't always produce the best results. For example, if you're after the sound that the
guitarist hears, then a single mic or a pair of mics set up to look over the player's shoulder
at about head height can often capture a convincing tonal balance, particularly when using
a large bodied guitar that is excessively boomy miked from the front. It can also be
educational to point the mic in even less obvious directions, such as at a nearby reflective
surface, or even at the underside of the guitar. Such alternative placements are often quick
to try if you're wearing headphones, and can sometimes turn up a brilliant sound that no
amount of theory would have predicted.

Using More Than One Mic

So far I've described mainly mono miking, and in a lot of cases that's as far as you need go,
even when the guitar is a major part of the mix. However, there are a number of multi-mic
techniques which can be of use. Because much of the art of recording acoustic guitar is
concerned with blending the tonalities o f the guitar's body, strings, sound hole and neck
into one cohesive sound, one approach is to use
Nashville Tuning
different mics to capture individual elements of the
sound. These individual elements can be mixed to One way to get a bright, jangly
acoustic guitar sound, which can cut
create the overall tonal balanced you're after -- almost through cluttered pop mixes, is to
like a sort of natural EQ. A mic at the sound hole could take advantage of a technique
provide warmth, where one on the neck could provide referred to as 'Nashville' tuning. This
extra brightness, for example. is where the bottom three strings of a
conventional steel-strung guitar are
replaced with strings designed for
The main challenge when using such a technique is to the upper three positions. The new
make sure that all the different signals are in time with strings can then be tuned to pitches
each other when mixed -- if there are delays between one octave higher than the strings
signals, this could cause phasing problems. Some that they replaced. Mike Senior
engineers get around this problem by placing all the
different mics at exactly the same distance from the guitar's sound hole, and this can be
successful. However, others record each of the mics on a separate track and then attempt
to match their phases when mixing down -- this is a very similar technique to that described
in detail last month by Craig Anderton in his article on aligning mic and DI signals.

Many acoustic guitars now incorporate a piezo tranducer under the bridge saddle and can
therefore also produce a DI feed. While it might be tempting to simplify the recording task
by recording only this DI signal, the result is usually disappointing when compared to the
same instrument miked up properly. An under-saddle transducer, however, effectively only
picks up vibrations from the strings, albeit that their vibration is influenced by the rest of the
instrument, whereas a microphone, suitably placed, will pick up vibrations from every part
of the instrument, combined with audio reflections from the immediate environment, making
for a much more natural sound. Having said that, pop records don't always demand
accuracy and sometimes you can get a sound that works well within a mix by combining the
harsher DI'ed sound with miked sounds, in which case the techniques in Craig's article will

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be even more relevant to you.

Multi-miking is also used for recording guitars in stereo, or for creating pseudo-stereo
effects. For solo guitar recitals and small ensemble work, stereo miking can be an
interesting alternative, though itcan make the location of the guitar in the stereo image less
solid, and more difficult to pan precisely when mixing. It is possible to use any of the range
of stereo mic recording techniques -- I covered these in detail in SOS March 1996.
However, a number of engineers favour pseudo-stereo effects, such as panning mics
pointed at the body and neck of the guitar to opposite
Motion Sickness?
channels. Alternatively, you could use one mic over
the guitarist's shoulder and another 20-30cm from the The way some guitarists move as
they play can be vital to the sound
middle of the guitar neck. The advantage of this they produce. However, any
approach is that the neck mic produces a bright, movement of the guitar in a studio
detailed sound with very little bass end, and will cause environment can play havoc with
less low-frequency phase cancellation if the track is carefully tweaked mic placements. If
ever played in mono. Having different tonalities at you find that you are often
encountering this problem, then you
either side of the stereo image can provide a wider, might consider investing in a
more interesting stereo image, though you'll probably miniature microphone which can be
want to avoid extreme panning unless you're after the fixed to the guitar itself. A number of
illusion of a guitar three metres wide! companies manufacture miniature
mics for this use, though a cheap
lavalier mic might do the trick if
As with any studio recording, the composition of the you're on a budget. Mike Senior
cue mix you feed to the guitarist will be extremely
important, so be prepared to take a little time over it -- the article on basic overdubbing in
SOS March 2001 goes into this in detail if you need a few pointers. One thing to particularly
bear in mind is that, given the sensitivity of the mics traditionally used in acoustic guitar
recording, it's easy to pick up obtrusive spill from the cans. Solo the recorded track to check
for this, and if there's a lot of spill coming through (from a click track, in particular) then
consider turning down the overall cue mix level or using a different pair of headphones --
closed-back models are obviously best in this application.

Processing Acoustic Guitars

Even if you set up the guitar and the mics with the utmost care, recorded acoustic guitar
sounds will usually still benefit from a little processing. This should be kept to a minimum
while recording, so that you leave your options open for the mix. As a rule, it's always safer
to leave EQ until the mixing stag e, especially as you ought already to be pretty close to the
final tonal balance. Compression can be used when
recording, but err on the side of caution, as it's difficult to
undo the effects of too much compression later on. A
compressor which sets its time constants automatically
works well here, but if you don't have that option, try a
release time of around 300mS and an attack of around
10mS. Use a ratio of between 2:1 and 4:1 and adjust the
threshold for no more than about 6dB of gain reduction
during the loudest peaks.

Once recorded, the sound may benefit from equalisation to

adapt it to the other sound sources in your mix. The first thing
to try is just rolling off some bass using a shelving equaliser
at 80 or 100Hz, as this can help the sound sit better in many
types of track. It can make a big difference, for example, if
other sounds in the mix have strong low mid-range
components, and if you listen carefully to rock or pop mixes

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that include acoustic guitar, you'll notice that the low end is quite often played down in this
way. Any obvious resonance can be tackled using your equaliser's peaking filters.
Boominess can be countered by searching the 100Hz to 250Hz frequency range and then
applying just enough cut to tame it, while zing and air can be added by using a wide-band
boost at between 12 and 16kHz. Gain of a couple of decibels ought to be enough in these
cases if you've taken care while recording.

Additional reverb may be needed if the recording was made in a small room or studio, or
close-miked or DI signals dominate the recorded sound. Mono recording can also be given
a sense of space and width by adding a little stereo reverb. Ambience settings with
pronounced early reflections are particularly effective in adding life and sparkle to acoustic
guitar, though plate and room settings can be used as an alternative where you want a
more obviously spacious sound. The main objective is
Adding Extra Attack To
to get a well-balanced tone with enough ambience or
Rhythm Guitars
reverb to match up the guitar sound with the rest of
the mix. Where a DI signal has also been recorded, a The attack phase of each strum in a
rhythm guitar part is often more
pseudo-stereo sound can be produced by panning the important to a track than the sustain
miked sound to one side and the DI'ed sound to the portion. In such cases, use a gate or
other, and here a little added reverb or ambience can expander to duck the level of the
help 'glue' the two sounds together. less important element of the sound
when it comes to mixdown. You'll
need to use short attack and release
Golden Rules times, if you're going to catch each
individual strum, but the amount of
I've recorded and mixed more acoustic guitars than I gain reduction between peaks need
care to remember, the most challenging of which was only be small to make a significant
change in punchiness. Mike Senior
a memorable album featuring Gordon Giltrap, Bert
Jansch and Vikki Clayton, among others. In my
experience, it doesn't matter what type of instrument you're using -- a steel-strung or nylon-
strung guitar, even a 12-string -- the same basic principles apply. The best results are
always achieved by working with the natural sound of the instrument rather than trying to
make it something it isn't. Mic choice and placement always work better than EQ. And
unless you're after something unusual you should only need to add the bare minimum of
EQ and compression to add the final polish -- this really is a case for applying the old
maxim, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'.

Glossary
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