HOW TO RECORD
ACOUSTIC GUITAR AT
YOUR HOME?
A common complaint from I hear is that the tracks
recorded at home sound boomy, muddy and does not
sound like the tracks recorded in the studio. Many aspire
to set up their home studio and record acoustic guitar at
home. Here are basic guidelines to record Acoustic Guitar
at home.
1. Choose a condenser mic or a dynamic microphone and
place it slightly diagonal to the 13th fret position around
two feet away from the guitar. This should give you a
natural sounding guitar tone.
2. Record it on a MONO audio track on your DAW and not
in Stereo mode.
3. Never use the DI connection on acoustic guitar.
4. Set the condenser mic to the cardioid pattern as it will
reject all the unwanted noise in the room.
5. I suggest you have some portions of the room treated
with the Acoustic Panels to get good results. I know its
expensive to treat the whole room, but with minimal
treatment, you can get a good sound from your acoustic guitar.
EQ Tips on your Acoustic Guitar
1. First thing is to use is the High Pass Filter to remove
any rumble in your room noise about 80 Hz
2. Find the bad muddy sound above 350Hz to 1 KHz by
setting the Q value like a notch filter and dip it down
about -2db to -4db depending on how it sounds in your song.
3. Now increase the high frequency above 4Khz around
+3db to +4db depending on how it sounds in the song. This
should help you with the mix.
Compression on your Acoustic Guitar:
Remember a compressor will reduce the dynamic range
and make it sound equal. I would suggest you to not set to
heavy compression as you will lose its natural dynamics
of the instrument.
1. Set the Ratio around 2:1 or 3:1 so that we don't want any
heavy compression of the dynamics of your acoustic guitar.
2. Now set the threshold until you just hit a few dB of Gain
Reduction around -3dB to -5dB.
It depends on the type of song you have and how you
wanted the acoustic guitar to sound. But if you want an
acoustic guitar to be heard in a loud rock concert, then
I prefer my go to compressor like 1176 by UAD or Waves
CLA 76 which is very aggressive and heavy in the mix.
Picture Credits: RØDE Microphones
Author: Baba L. Prasad. He is the owner and chief Sound/Mix and Mastering Engineer and Digi Sound Studio. He also teaches Sound
The Score Magazine
Enginnering and Music Production courses. For more details, visit www.digisoundacademy.com
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