Two Instrument Project
For this project, I decided to record an acoustic cover of "Never Too Late" by Three Days Grace. I planned to use an acoustic guitar and vocalist only for this song only. My talent was Brianne Burton, and myself playing guitar.
Tracking Phase
For vocals I went with a bluebird microphone into the Audient preamp. We set up to record in the vocal booth for an isolated recording.
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The acoustic guitar was recorded with two MXL condenser microphones. I used the large diaphragm condenser (990) near the body of the guitar and the pencil mic (991) on the fret board. I recorded this in a walk in closet because it had more open space and was still very isolated. The microphones were plugged directly into my Presonus 1818vsl interface.
Editing/Post Production
In this phase I time corrected all guitar parts that were recorded with the scratch track while also giving each part their own track so I could later mix levels. I went through and chose my best takes while cleaning up cuts and fades so that everything combined well and there were no pops or clicks in the mix. I also took my vocal tracks and corrected some pitches that may have been off using Melodyne. I then bounced each vocal track so that I could work with it in studio one.
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I then went ahead and began my mixing phase. Since I used two condenser microphones on the guitar, I panned them hard left and right to create a wide stereo image as the original song sounds. I could not be more pleased with the results. I sent all guitar tracks to a guitar bus where I added a multiband compressor and eq to take a little bit of the top end out so it wouldn't be piercing if played through a higher volume. All vocals were individually compressed and eq was added to take off any unwanted low end and add a tiny bit of "air". The vocals were then sent through a vocal bus which included a reverb fx send. My sub mix consisted of a compressor with a mix setting and free limiter plug-in I often like to use called "Limiter6".
Conclusion
Overall I had a lot of fun with this project and continue to learn every time! I think I had a great mic and preamp choice with my vocalist and I'm happy with the results. One thing I would change however is my microphone choice with the acoustic guitar. I used a microphone with a capsule replacement and there was a subtle hiss in the mix from that microphone. Overall, I think my edits were clean and the vocals were spot on. I'm very happy with the outcome in this project.