Recording a live song in the studio with acoustic guitar or piano

One of the things I love to do is record an artist performing a song live in the studio. Whether the performer is playing an acoustic guitar or acoustic piano, the mike setup is similar, but very specific.

I use three condenser mikes, two set up specifically for the instrument to capture a stereo audio image, and one miking fairly close for vocals.

The most important factor is that both the instrument and the singer sound good before going anywhere near the studio. It is very difficult to get a good acoustic guitar or piano recorded sound if the instrument itself does not sound good.

On top of that, the playing and vocal technique of the artist must also be good for the recorded sound to be good.

Let us assume the artist's technique is good and the quality of the instrument is good.

Even though two mikes are being used primarily for guitar/piano and one primarily for vocals, there will be vocal bleed onto the instrument mikes and instrument bleed onto the vocal mike. It is therefore important to experiment with the position of the mikes to get an optimum overall sound.

I like to have the artist sit and play in the vocal booth or at the piano, and then put my ears where I think the mikes will pick up the best sound. By moving around it is possible to quickly get a pretty good idea of the optimum mike positions.

How close the vocal mike will be depends, to some extent, on the type of song being sung and how loud the vocal performance is going to be.

Once I have experimented using my ears, I set the mikes up in my chosen places and then request that the artist starts playing through the song. I like to get a really good signal from all the mikes, preferably with the same level coming from each one. Any final adjustments to the mike positions are made after recording some of the song and playing it back through both speakers and headphones.

I use the Steven Slate VSX headphone system, so I can get a pretty good idea of how the sound will be in a variety of the world's top studios, plus in various cars, a club and some of the world's top studio headphones.

Unless the artist is wishing to add other instruments later, when a using click track is preferable, I prefer him/her to not wear headphones. I find this tends to help the artist give a more natural performance.

Because I record in a vocal booth, I am usually able to get away without having to use very much eq. I like to use little or no compression on the guitar, and just a small amount on the vocals (this depends on the singing technique of the artist)

In mixing the sound, I like to push the stereo image of the guitar or piano out wide by careful use of the reverb settings. With the two instrument mikes panned out hard right and left it should be possible to get a nice bit of width on the guitar/piano.

Use of reverb on the vocal has to be carefully adjusted as it will also affect the overall guitar/piano sound because of instrument bleed onto the vocal mike track.

However, because the vocal mike is fairly close to the artist's mouth during recording, there should be a fair bit of control over the final vocal sound.

If a slightly more distant vocal is required, singing across the mike, rather than directly at it, can help achieve the desired effect.

Here is an example of a live piano/vocal recording by singer songwriter Christine Sparks. The harmonica was added later:

https://youtu.be/aAUOujMOk9w

Please feel free to get in touch if you would like to do some live recording in the studio - it is a great way to get a truly authentic sound.