I've gotten into the practice of recording acoustic guitar using two mics, one pointed at around the 12th fret and the other pointed at the body. Listening back during mixing, these have distinctly different sound and I generally emphasize one or the other. I tend to pan these away from each other. I'm starting to think that there is something that I'm doing here that is hurting the sound overall.
Does anyone have any general recommendations on how to get the two tracks back together? Should I be placing these on top of each other from a pan perspective? Isn't this causing me issues with some sound phasing and if so, how do you address it? Should I scratch the whole concept and just be using a single mic a bit further away?
Thanks,
Glen
I've used the 2-mic technique a few times where I need a wide acoustic guitar in the back of the mix to provide some rhythm support to the electric guitars. I guess it depends on what you are wanting to achieve. I used a C451 aimed at the 12th fret and a NT2 at the body, both a few feet away. The sounds are different and with some eq to remove any body resonances and adapt it back into the mix it sounds OK. in this situation
To try to join them together you could use subtractive eq to blend the frequencies, ie having the body mic have most of the LF and the other cater for the upper frequencies and string harmonics. To counter any phase issues in the mid frequencies you might need to shift one of the tracks relative to the other, depending on the distance between mics and the instrument. Alternatively you could just pick the best one and use it alone to have a mono instrument source, which is more common (and easier) for mixing.
- Geoff