by Apogee’s Chris Lawson
Over the last year I have been filming musicians making some really amazing recordings with Apogee’s ONE, a Mac Laptop, and either GarageBand or Logic. We have received great feedback, and we have also had some people ask the question, “How do I get my vocals (or guitars, drums, cello, violin, and everything else that has been recorded with ONE’s internal mic) to sound like that?”
So for this post, I thought I would talk a little bit about the basics of mic’ing and how it applied to the recording process of the latest project I worked on “Southern.” Southern is band from Belfast Ireland consisting of Thom Southern on guitar and vocals, Lucy Southern (Thom’s sister) on Vocals and Jonny Lee on drums.
List of audio gear used:
Apogee ONE
Apogee GiO
Apple MacBookPro
Logic Studio Pro
Microphone Position
We started by recording Thom’s acoustic guitar. I placed ONE about 6 to 8 inches away, pointing between the 12th fret and the sound hole of the guitar. Keep in mind (as with all mic positions that will be discussed) this is only a starting point suggestion. Different guitars, players, and rooms will all sound different and you may need to adjust to your situation. The best way to get the sound best suited for your environment is to plug in a pair of headphones and move the mic around until you hear the sound you’re looking for.
Appropriate Level
You don’t have to record at the hottest level possible. This is a common mistake I have noticed many people who are new to the recording process often do, and is not necessary. For a point of reference, the level on Thom’s guitar averaged about – 10 or so, peaking occasionally at about -2 or -3. This is a pretty decent amount of level, and could have even been a bit less and still been a great recording.
Room sound
So let’s say you adjusted the level, moved the mic everywhere possible, but you’re still not getting a good sound. It may be your room. Try recording in different rooms; you will be surprised at the difference a room makes. Just play guitar or sing in different rooms and listen to how each one sounds. If it sounds better to your ear, it’s a good chance your recording will sound better as well.
How good is your instrument?
The last thing requires you to be brutally honest with yourself: How good does your guitar sound? Not saying that your Roy Rogers “King of the Cowboys” guitar that you bought at a garage sale isn’t cool… It just may not be what you will achieve the ultimate acoustic guitar sound with.
Maybe you have a great guitar, maybe you just need new strings or to have it set up properly by a professional. It’s amazing what a professional guitar luthier can do for your guitar.
The best microphone in the world can’t compensate for a bad sounding room, bad sounding guitar, or bad performance. In fact, in many cases it will only further highlight how truly bad it is. This goes for all instruments and vocals.
Thom had a great sounding guitar and is quite a competent player, so getting a good sound was pretty quick and easy with him. Next step was to record a second acoustic guitar track, doubling his first track to get a nice stereo guitar sound.
Hands free control
Since I am also filming the whole process, it sometimes makes it a bit difficult to be the audio engineer as well. So on this session, I decided to use Apogee’s GiO, allowing the band to punch themselves in and out of record so I could just focus on video and they could focus on getting the best performance.
Recording Vocals
Now it was time to record vocals. Thom sings lead on this song, so we recorded his vocal first.
Adjust the microphone (ONE) so that it’s about mouth level or slightly higher.
Adjust the gain level and distance between the vocalist and the microphone until you get the sound you are looking for, just like we did with the guitar. You will want to try moving closer or further away to get the sound you want. Again, keep the levels fairly modest. When you record too hot you risk the chance of digital overs, causing ugly and unwanted digital distortion.
The meter on ONE was green (first LED lit) while singing, just hitting yellow (second LED) on peaks (when you sing at your loudest). In Logic, the meters were hitting about -12 and occasionally peak at about – 3.
Leave the effects for mixing
If you are not getting the sound you want, try the mic (ONE) in different positions, different rooms, and try different gain settings. One of the mistakes I see people do is rely too heavily on EQ or effects to hide the bad mic’ing technique or bad performance.
Once you get a good sound (without effects), you can add a little reverb, compression, or EQ if it makes the performer a bit more comfortable.
Next, we recorded Lucy’s vocals. This was pretty much identical to recording Thom’s vocals. We re-adjusted and re-positioned the mic (ONE) to where it sounded good with Lucy’s voice. The meters were approximately the same in Logic, about -12 occasionally peaking at about -3.
Recording Percussion
Jonny’s snare drum was pretty easy as he is a pretty solid player and Thom had recorded it before, so he had a general idea where the mic (ONE) should go. We placed it and tweaked it slightly to get the sound we wanted. Since he was playing with brushes, the level on this was a little bit hotter than the other instruments. I find it easiest to have the drummer play through the song so you can get a feel for how he plays and the dynamics of the song. If the drummer is pretty consistent you can track with the gain a bit hotter. If not, you may want to keep the gain of ONE’s mic pre a bit more modest so as to avoid peaks.
Recording Electric Guitar
Thom wanted to add some electric guitar, and having both ONE and GiO we had many choices to do so. We could have recorded a live amp by using ONE’s microphone, or plugging a different mic into ONE’s XLR input. We could have also used the instrument input on ONE or on GiO and used the Amp Designer in Logic. Since we didn’t have a lot of time left to mic a guitar amp, Thom just plugged a Gibson Les Paul Gold Top into GiO and used Amp Designer in Logic.
Thom dialed up an amp sound pretty quick. Since it’s easy enough to change the amp and effects later to fit better in the mix of the song, we just pulled up a good sound and went with it.
Now that we had all of the tracks recorded, it was time to mix. Mixing is very subjective and going to be different for every song that you will ever mix. So me describing exactly what I used for compression, EQ, reverb, etc.. may or may not work for your song. With that said, I will go into detail about the plug ins and settings I used for the mix in part 2 of this blog.
To check out Southern, please visit: http://www.myspace.com/thomsouthern.
