fingerstyle guitar

[surrenderband]

yesterday i recorded a gentleman playing 9 song that were fingerstyle, classical guitar. Therefore there at the same time there was picking, a melody line, and a bass line. How can you edit this with out having to go back and punch in perfectly? and he would have to play the exact same arpeggio with the picking too! almost impossible. what do you guys do in this situation.

[kofasetic]

Why?
Either have the guitarist play each voice separately and loose the continuity of the piece or just be happy with a recording that the guitarist nailed.

The recordings of world class classical guitarist are a treat to hear. The way one can separate each voice from the attack of the right hand to the hammer-ons and pull-offs of the left is one of beauty.

[donreynolds]

I play a lot of classical and other finger picking style on guitar. Punching in is the way to go if the guitarist makes a mistake. the main thing is to do it while you are still set up (levels and tone etc ). I do it a lot because I rarely can play a whole complicated piece with out a mistake.
Of course let him play up to the punch a into the part immediately after the puch as not to hear any stops. It may take a couple of tries, but it is doable. If you try to do it later, it is almost impossible to set the recording up the same way and you will hear the difference. Option two: You could also record the part on another track and fade the original edit the fade down the audio in the original track during the section that you want to overdub. It takes a keen ear and a little practice.
I am sure someone out there is good enough at waveform editing to "fix" the tack with out punching or overdubs, but I am sure it is hard and timeconsuming.

[seekir]

I have the same problem playing a guitar part through an entire song to my own satisfaction. When I've punched in solo guitar parts (in DP 3 anyway) the original track mutes at the punch in point during playback. Maybe I'm missing something in the manual? This makes it a bit iffy in terms of alignment and seamless start/finish of the phrase on the crossfades. As Don says you can set up a new track to record the punch in - this way you can still hear the original guitar part. After doing this, I've been dragging the edit out of the new track on top of the original and then placing the crossfades. This does require an ability to accurately "accompany" the original phrase with confidence, and as Don suggests, a little practice helps. The player should attempt to be conscious of the quality of his attack and phrasing and match it as closely as he can. Of course it's simpler to place the seams at quiet, or at least quieter junctures of the music. It may be easier to play through acceptable passages beyond the glitch to find good spots for the crossfades. The engineer/recordist should attempt to convey his patience and willingness to pursue the best take and prepare to make several passes. I concur with Don's advice on doing the edit the same day with everything - including the exact position of the guitar relative to the mikes - as near to the original setup as possible.

[jackorhythm]

classical gtr can be problematic because there is so much tone variation coming from the performer. if you come back to that section much later you may find that the timbres don't match because of slightly different hand position or angle to the mic. i think that it's best to stop the performance(not the recording) at the point of the mistake, back up a few measures and replay through the part that had the mistake, continuing on to(hopefully) the end of the piece. that way the tone will stand the best chance of matching up when you edit later. this may be a lot easier with musicians who are used to recording than those who are strictly live performers.

another good way to do this is to do multiple recordings of the same piece and "comp" them together; i.e., take the best bits from each pass.

btw, as long as we're on the subject i'm curious as to mics and micing positions that you guys use for classical gtr. the best i've found so far is a groove tube model 2 about 2 feet in front of the bridge, angled slightly inwards toward the soundhole and a neuman tlm103 about 6 inches over the right shoulder of the guitar pointing down towards the guitar(to get he guitarist's "view"). i go into a manley dual mono mic pre, no compression. i favor the gt2 and pan it at about 10n o'clock and then ad a bit of the tlm103 panned pretty hard right. this gives warmth and depth and a nice stereo spread. be careful of phasing though.

[surrenderband]

i was wondering sir, well first of all, i am brand new to recording and have no fancy mics, so i was just using a line in and a sm57 pointed just above the soundhole. what exactly is phasing?

[sdemott]

As far as mic'ing goes 90% of the time I use a pair of DPAs. If the room sounds real good I'll pull back and set up the DPAs in an ORTF pair to get a very natural ambience and tone. I never use 'verb on a clasical recording - and almost no signal processing. Some people I know prefer the Schoeps to the DPAs...they're so close it's really a question of preference. I feel the DPAs are slightly more open in the mids. I simply walk around the room while the player warms up and find the spot where it sounds best to my ears and then set the mics right there at my head level.

If the room is just okay I may pull in a bit and use 2 omnis (spaced pair) - and use some gobos to tune the room behind the mics (in the players line of sight). As far as omnis go - I prefer mics that are omni only.

Of course, I'll use whatever it takes to get the sound the client wants - XY, MS, Decca, Blumlein...those 2 I mentioned are my personal favorites for a natural "audiophile classical" recording.

Anyone else?

[jackorhythm]

hmmm-i've never seen them(to my knowledge). thanks though. one key of course is having a good sounding space to reproduce. i'm using closer micing and i'm thankful for altiverb.

hey, have you tried their lavaliers? i'm still looking for the right clip on mic for my gtr to play live with(small stuff like cafes).

also, please explain ORTF for me and maybe you could also help out "young" mike with his phasing question.......i get creeped and distrustful when people call me "sir".

[sdemott]

Originally posted by mike:
i was wondering sir, well first of all, i am brand new to recording and have no fancy mics, so i was just using a line in and a sm57 pointed just above the soundhole. what exactly is phasing?

Phasing is when 2 signals representing the same sound source arrive at different times. It causes cuts & boosts in different parts of the frequency spectrum yeilding a very unnatural and undesirable sound.

With a setup of 1 mic and a direct input, the wired sound (the line in) will arrive at the recorder/DAW first - causing phasing. To remedy this you will need to move the waveform of the lin ein later in time so that it matches the mic signal.

HTH

[sdemott]

Originally posted by jackorhythm:
hmmm-i've never seen them(to my knowledge). thanks though. one key of course is having a good sounding space to reproduce. i'm using closer micing and i'm thankful for altiverb.

hey, have you tried their lavaliers? i'm still looking for the right clip on mic for my gtr to play live with(small stuff like cafes).

also, please explain ORTF for me and maybe you could also help out "young" mike with his phasing question.......i get creeped and distrustful when people call me "sir".

The DPAs are small enough to use as a lavalier - but they're pretty $$$ (like $2k per mic), so it may not be a viable option.

ORTF is a setup developed by the French Office of Radio & Television. 2 cardiods, spaced 7" (17cm) apart each 55 degress off axis (for a total of 110 degree included angle).

HTH

[jackorhythm]

ah, well i went to their web site and i think the lavaliers are in the 2-500 range unless i'm mistaken.

tell me about this ORTF thing-what is accomplished by positioning mics such?

[sdemott]

Originally posted by jackorhythm:
ah, well i went to their web site and i think the lavaliers are in the 2-500 range unless i'm mistaken.

tell me about this ORTF thing-what is accomplished by positioning mics such?

I actually mean the DPA 3521 set (you can get a clip for them to act as lavaliers, though they are considered "compact" mics).

ORTF is used on some of the best audiophile classical recordings. It imitates the way human ears perceive sound. They differentiate within the stereo field not only by arrival pressure (like X/Y or M/S), but also with arrival time - as they are near-coincident.

The idea is something like this:

\-----/

where the \ & / are both the mics showing the general angle and the ----- represents the spacing of 7" (17cm).

Give it a listen sometime and you'll be amazed at how richly nuanced it can sound - in a good sounding room, that is.

[jackorhythm]

thanks-i'll try it sometime