TO ALL: Thoughts on capturing vocal and acoustic

[zarembo]

Hey guys thanks for offering your vast wealth of knowledge.

This thread appears elsewhere on GS currently, but would any of you care to offer

more insight on simultaneous recording of vocal and acoustic guitar?

Mic selection, patterns, pickup with DI? Live, or with fixes? Headphones? Phasing?

Also any psychological/production ideas to obtain the best performance and sound.

Thank you all very much!

[Chuck Ainlay]

The records I do with Mark Knopfler often go down with Mark playing Acoustic and singing at the same time. He's so great at both that it's not unusual to get a lot of the record performance from the tracking vocal and guitar. It's never the same when you go back and redo so I've tried lots of different micing ideas to get the most seperation possibe. Bidirectional patterns offer the most rejection but I usually end up with the vocal in cardioid for the proximity effect. I also put a small lavalier inside the acoustic. We then take, multiple takes of vocal and guitar to comp later. I also get him to give me a guitar only pass that is useful if he hooks the vocal but not the guitar. I'd love to know what others are doing.

[zarembo]

Chuck, I must say Mark Knopfler's Shangri-La is a pretty fantastic sounding record, plus the making-of DVD is perfect for any gear slut.

After seeing how you worked with the band, I was very inspired.

Recently I got to record a group covering "Postcards from Paraguay" live in the same space and the results were very encouraging.

Helped me turn over a new sonic leaf--

Thanks again!!
thumbsup

[music]

Where can I get the video? Is it on the actual record? The last video I tried to watch from the record was a PC only thingy. If on the record can I watch it on my mac?

Thanks,

Keith

[Al Schmitt]

Originally Posted by Chuck Ainlay

The records I do with Mark Knopfler often go down with Mark playing Acoustic and singing at the same time. He's so great at both that it's not unusual to get a lot of the record performance from the tracking vocal and guitar. It's never the same when you go back and redo so I've tried lots of different micing ideas to get the most seperation possibe. Bidirectional patterns offer the most rejection but I usually end up with the vocal in cardioid for the proximity effect. I also put a small lavalier inside the acoustic. We then take, multiple takes of vocal and guitar to comp later. I also get him to give me a guitar only pass that is useful if he hooks the vocal but not the guitar. I'd love to know what others are doing.

With Diana Krall it's 95% live, I use a special U67 on the vocal and two M149s on the piano, We also isolate the piano as much as posible with packing blankets or when at Capitol I had a sleeve made that fits over the piano and it gives me pretty good iso. I use a Summit compressor on her but I just pull about 1db and no eq. Al

[PRuthenburg]

Al,
When you isolate the piano with blankets or whatever are the performers then wearing headphones?
Just curious as some people prefer to go without phones during a jazz session if possible.Whenever I do the blanket thing over my C7 most the time phones are then required.

Thanks much for all the info,
Pete Ruthenburg

[5down1up]

thanks to AL + all the diana krall members ...

the records are playing almost every day