Hi, fidelity!

My father has been playing guitar with a guy up in NY, and this guy has a few original songs which are reportedly really good. My father has been trying to get this guy to put them on tape and shop them around to some country music heavyweights that this guy knows somehow. But the guy is reluctant.

My father came to visit a few years back and saw my Boss BR600 digital recorder. It's a multitrack recorder, about the size of a couple National Geographics. He thought it was cool and bought one for himself, to record this guy. But, he's not quite as tech-savvy as this little device requires its users to be, so it has gone mostly unused.

This weekend, dad calls me and says "Hey, [this guy] wants to know if it's OK if he comes down to your place so you can record these songs for him?"

"Drive from NY to NC to have me record him? It's a 13 hour drive, and will cost hundreds in gas and tolls and food?"

"Yeah!"

"Why not just take a couple of hundred bucks and find a local guy with a garage studio to record it?"

"He doesn't want to do that."

OK. So I agreed that, if the guy drives down here (which is not a sure thing), I will do my best to record him. Problem is, I don't record other people. I really don't know know anything about sonic fidelity or what it takes to record vocals because neither of those has ever been important to me - I take a no-fidelity approach to my own stuff. I don't know why my father thinks I'm the right person for this.

So... anyone out there know anything about recording vocals and acoustic guitar?

I have a simple outboard compressor (an Alesis Nanocomp), a few mics, the BR600 (which can record two channels at a time), a big house, etc.. But no idea how I should approach this, should it happen.

11 thoughts on “Hi, fidelity!”

  1. Jewish Steel

    If the performances and songs are good then as long as your recording has a bare minimum of clarity, it will sound good!

    What kinda mics you got? 57s?

  2. derek

    I haven’t had experience recording vocals, but I have lots of experience recording acoustic guitar, mandolin and square neck resonator. I use a cheap Behringer SDC microphone – a C-2 model. I place the mic close to the instrument ie 3 to 4 inches away. This removes the shitty resonant room that I record in. I position the mic at an approx 45 degree angle and pointed somewhere between the 12th to14th frets. After I finish recording, I add a touch of reverb and a sprinkle of compression to sweeten the sound.

    There’s a lot of information on the web about how to record acoustic guitar (and mandolin). I read some of them, and with some trial and error, I ended up with the above method.

    1. cleek

      i will try this.

      i used to use an old cassette dictation mic for recording, and i would just drop it inside the guitar’s soundhole. gives a weird, boomy sound.

  3. Mark

    Hahahaha. If you were to drive up from NC to NY to record Steve in his own living room, there’d still be only a 20% chance you’d get him to do it. We can set the likelihood of this happening in NC at about…. oh I don’t know… zero?

    1. cleek

      We can set the likelihood of this happening in NC at about…. oh I don’t know… zero?
      that’s what i’m hoping for. i mean, it’s not that i’d say ‘no’, but the idea of having someone drive half-way down the east coast just for me feels like they’re expecting me to come up with something great.

      i did suggest that he let you handle the recording (if you can handle iTunes, you can probably figure out enough of the BR600 to get something recorded). i forget why that wasn’t going to work.

      i offered to walk them through it over the phone, too. also impossible, for some reason.

          1. cleek

            Strictly handheld is the style I go
            Never rock the mic with the pantyhose
            I strap on my ear goggles and I’m ready to go
            ‘Cause at the boards is the man they call the Mario

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