Audio Recording

This tutorial is all about achieving great and strong acoustic guitar sound in your recording and mixing session. In fact, I received some inquiries relating to this, such as below:

Hi, For several years I make music for myself and the band. Sometimes I record my own songs at home and try to make the best out of it with audition, to put it on a CD for my friends I spend hours / days on your website, wonderful, I do learn a lot from it, thanks for that. I also listened to your songs and like the way the guitar sounds in ‘Can I know your name?’, strong, open, in the foreground, nice! I’ve tried to approach that with my own sample but can’t get so far…Would you give it a try and tell me how to make that sound. I send you the original and the mixed one I tried, as far as I can get it. I hope you can help and inform me, even if it’s just a little bit. Thanks,
Bye,
Harry

My reply:

OK, thanks for appreciating the way I produce the guitar tracks of the song “Can I know your name”. First thing that you should know is how I record the guitar as the overall result of the guitar sound does not only depend on the mixing and mastering techniques implemented but mainly also on the recording methods as well. My recording method of that song is surprisingly simple. First, I use a direct method of recording. This means that I do not record the guitar tracks using microphones and guitar amplifiers as most engineers often do. So the result is that no room space has been captured during recording. The result is that guitar sounds tight, strong and open. What I did is to plug the guitar cable to a little mixer (I am using the inexpensive Behringer Xenyx502 mixer); I did not apply any effects on the mixer for the guitar just some tweaking on the volume to make sure the signal sent to the sound card is strong.. Then I connect the output of the guitar to the computer sound card. Of course, my guitar recording method for that track are a bit outdated but still sound nice and works for me. Today, you do not even need a mixer and a sound card. You will just need to buy an audio interface which can be USB based that you can connect easily to your computer.

I use Adobe Audition for tracking/recording and mixing session. I did not use any external guitar effects. So this means no chorus pedals, overdrive pedals, etc. Just a raw guitar sound of my classical nylon guitar using D’Addario strings. Of course, before recording I listen to the guitar sound in my monitoring systems to make sure it sounds nice and ready for recording. This is very important because I do not like fixing recording problems in a mixing session using EQ, compressor, etc. The guitar was recorded at 24-bit 44.1 KHz stereo. I then maximize the volume of the recorded guitar wave by going to Edit View, then go to Effects ==> Amplitude ==> Amplify/Fade ==> then click “Calculate now” under “Calculate Normalization values” so that Adobe Audition will automatically compute the number of dB to be boosted on the guitar wave to attain maximum volume without distorting it. Below is the resulting screen shot of the wave:

After recording, the mixing session starts:

1.) First, the guitar occupies two tracks in the mix (left and right channels). It is panned at 50, -50. The primary reason is that I would like the guitar sound closer to the center to simulate an “unplugged” environment where session players are positioned closer to the vocals/performer.

2.) I apply the following EQ setting for all the guitar tracks (left and right).

Bear in mind that it’s cutting at 200Hz below to avoid conflicting with bass, then cutting at 3000Hz to avoid conflicting with vocals and finally cutting at 800Hz to make the guitar sound fuller and clear.

3.) The ONLY effect I use in the effect racks is a compressor. I did not apply reverb, etc because I need to sound the guitar as strong as possible. Reverb can make the sound of the guitar weak. This is the screen shot of my guitar effects rack:

As what you have observed, I use the Sony wave hammer as the compressor using “guitar” presets:

4.) I apply a slight guitar delay on the second guitar track (left channel). Basically there is only one guitar recording session in this song, I just duplicate that one single guitar track and implement “double tracking technique in mixing guitars” then place it on another channel (left channel). I panned it at -50, 50 instead of 75,-75 and also implement a different EQ settings just for this song. Below are the delay settings I implement using the Adobe Audition Delay effect:

Take note that I place the delay effect on the effects rack after the wave hammer/compressor. Finally this song was mastered by Frank Harley. This the final song with the guitar track produced using the above techniques: