Thread: Mic Questions
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Mike Rivers
 
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Default Mic Questions


In article sUCvb.509$Yt4.246@lakeread05 writes:

the amps and the mics are coming in on separate tracks. Getting rid of
one just means not using that track in the mix down... Unless having it
there to begin with somehow causes problems?


I think that the suggestion here is about eliminating cancellation (one
subtracts things from the other) due to a phase difference between the
two sources. But sometimes some cancellation is good because it
reduces frequencies that are getting in the way of your 'big' sound.

Perhaps what Paul and Justin were thinking is that the sound of a
pickup is often thin and doesn't have the wood and resonance that
makes a guitar sound big. If you're getting more of the sound that you
want from a microphone on the amplifier cabinet, then start with that,
and see what happens when you mix in some of the direct pickup sound,
as well as the acoustic sound from a mic or two on the guitar.

One thing that's very helpful when experimenting with a mix of
different paths from the same source is to keep things well isolated -
make sure that the mic that's picking up the sound of the guitar body
picks up negilgable sound from the amplifier. That will make mixing
the two much more controllable. A good way to do this is to get some
cables that are long enough so that you can put the amplifier in
another room. You can hear the sound of the amplifier while you're
recording by adding it to the headphone mix.

If hearing the amplifier sound isn't essential to your playing, you
might try the "re-amp" technique, where you record (among other
things) the direct sound from the pickup, and then when you're mixing,
feed this to an amplifier and record a new track with a mic on the
amplifier. This will help you in two ways. First, it will assure that
the amplifier track is completely isolated from any other track.
Second, it will allow you to play with different settings on the
amplifier and experiment with how those contribute to your total
guitar mix. You can even use different effects between the playback of
the pickup track and the amplifier so you can record tracks each with
different reverb settings, one that's clean, one that's distorted, one
with a chorus, a few different delays.

While it might not be the sound that you're after, few people have as
"big" an acoustic sound as Leo Kottke. I read an article about his rig
(similar for live and recording) and he mixes about nine sources. You
just have to play around and listen at every turn.



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