3 replies to this topic

[roloke]

I've got a self thought guitarist who plays with his thumb and does this:

If he were to do something thought out that's not messing around, what would be the best setup to do a studio version of this style without having the microphone explode? What would be able to properly record "beating the shit out of a guitar with your thumb" articulately?

[Cheyne]

Well most likely some creative compression is my first thought. The mid stream guitar would be fine, its just the initial slaps that probably trip the level. You dont want to crunch it completely but just compress the slaps.

Maybe someone with more recording artist experience can comment.

[Jester_Fu]

I'm sure he's loud, but i doubt you're going to need to use a kick drum mic on him.

If you're looking to get a balance on the natural slap/pull and the actual guitar, i'd suggest using a less sensitive large diaphragm. Rode NT1, NT2... entry level AKG's... Beta58 Shure might do an OK job. I like acoustic guitar with 2 mics kind of staggered. One up closer as the primary mic and another to catch the room reverb and delay. Can create a really nice natural sound even in very basic rooms and give the instrument a sound of space without the artificial notes from an electronic device. If you got some experience with mic placement and use, don't be afraid of grabbing a better LD. Anything you can use to mic up brass is going to be very very robust. This guy doesn't look louder to brass to me, from the clip.

Compression will help with recording dynamics but, IMO, it's not necessary unless there's huge levels of dynamic variation. If he's really soft to really loud in a short space of time, you'll want compression to limit clipping... otherwise, just ride the fader and/or tweak channel gain as it'll give you more flexibility to capture a natural sound without compression artifacts.

2c's.

[mitchkenny]

I cut a guitarist recently who played and also spoke like this bloke. Record chain was U87-1073- CL1B plus a KM54 -1073- CL1B with very fast attack and release but compressing quite gently. Used the Waves C6 whilst mixing which allowed for almost forensic compression of the thumpy bits while keeping the rest of the sound intact. Also treated the 87 and the KM54 quite differently in the mix stage so that when the 87 channel was compressing hard the KM54 channel was barely working and vise versa. Ended up sounding like an acoustic guitar in a room