If you’re going for a mono recording, we advise that you set up a large-diaphragm condenser microphone in front of the 12th fret of the guitar, about six to 12 inches from the strings. It helps to mark the spot with gaffer tape to ensure the guitarist is always in roughly the same position. If you’re capturing acoustic guitar, the best preparation (aside from completing the above steps) is to have the guitarist sit or stand where they’ll be during recording.
This should minimise tuning issues during recording and reduce the risk of long-term damage and fretbuzz. The same is true if the guitar has been in the sweltering heat and the cooler studio has air conditioning. If it’s 1☌ outside and the guitar has been sitting in a car for a while, let it gradually warm up to the temperature of the recording environment before trying to capture it. Guitars are susceptible to expansions and contractions when their construction materials are exposed to varying temperatures. You should also give your guitar a chance to adapt to the recording room’s temperature. No amount of post-production tweaking will fix an out-of-tune guitar. This may sound like a no-brainer but you’d be surprised how many budding recording engineers – especially non-guitarists – record guitars without making sure the instrument has been properly tuned to an accurate source and not just to itself. Spend some time warming up the new strings with some repetitive playing.Īfter the strings are set, it’s vital to confirm that the guitar is properly in tune using a chromatic tuner. You may want to bed the new strings in for a few hours before recording, though, to avoid that tinny new-string sound. It may seem like an inconvenience but, trust us, changing strings now takes up a lot less time than trying to fix issues in the mix later on. Either way, there are a few basic guidelines that should help you achieve the best possible results regardless of the guitar you’re recording: use new strings, tune the guitar before recording, and allow the guitar’s temperature to level.Īvoiding worn strings should help you sidestep dull and lifeless sounds that can ruin otherwise excellent performances, so it’s smart to swap strings prior to recording. Whatever its construction, when it comes to recording the instrument, we’re either capturing sound coming from its sound hole or from its pickups.
The guitar comes in electric, acoustic and even hybrid varieties.
So grab a plectrum, plug into your amp and get ready to strum – unless you want to play picked parts, fingerstyle, with an acoustic guitar. There are many types of guitar and many more to capture it. We’re speaking, of course, about the humble guitar. Here, we move onto an instrument that, though easier to capture, brings with it many options and requires perhaps more thought and experimentation to get it just right for your track. In our last Studio One tutorial, we examined the trials and tribulations involved in recording one of the world’s most notoriously slippery instruments: the human voice.
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