 In this video we're going to take your acoustic guitar recording from this to this. I focus on Mike and I hope you will. I want to record this acoustic guitar but unfortunately I'm about to make an absolute beginner's mistake by using the built-in pickup. I've got it plugged in on the end here. Now these built-in pickups are really designed for live performances but they don't really capture the natural sound of an acoustic guitar. For that we're going to need a microphone. So I have my microphone pointed directly at the sound hole of my guitar and unfortunately that's my second beginner's mistake. That's going to create a really muddy sound with way too much low-end information but before we talk about where I should be pointing my microphone let's talk about which microphone I've decided to use. Whilst you can use dynamic mics, large diaphragm condensers and ribbon mics to record acoustic guitar my preference is to use a small diaphragm condenser and in this case I'm going to be using the Austrian Audio CC8. This mic is perfect for detailed and natural sound great for fast transients and also rejects sounds from the side and rear very well. It has a pad in case you ever need to record really loud sources and a low-cut filter to reduce low-end rumble. In fact I'll later be combining two of these to take this recording to the next level but first let's start off with one. So rather than point the microphone towards the sound hole I've got it pointed towards the 12th fret of the guitar or around about where the neck meets the body. I generally find this gives a nice balanced tone. Now in terms of distance I like to place it between six to nine inches away from the guitar but you need to adjust that to taste. Remember every guitar sounds different and every producer is looking for a different sound from their guitar so this is just a starting point but do feel free to experiment and move the position slightly. So how does this sound? Well let's compare this setup to the beginner's mistake I mentioned at the beginning where I had the guitar plugged directly in. So I hope you'll agree that using a microphone gives a much more natural sound for the acoustic guitar but how does that compare to the other beginner's mistake we made when we had it pointed directly at the sound hole? So let's level up by going from a mono to a stereo recording and for that I'm going to use two Austrian audio CC8 microphones. Now whenever we use more than one microphone we run the risk of introducing what are called phase issues. This is where the sound from the instrument reaches the microphones at a different time and when we play that back it can sound rather strange and weak. Now there are ways around that with the various stereo configurations but I'm going to recommend to you this configuration as a beginner because this kind of avoids the phase issues all together. This is called the XY configuration and as you can see the microphones are at a 90 degree angle to each other but the most important part of this setup is the fact that the capsules of the microphones are as close as they can be without actually touching. That's how we avoid the phase issues. Now we are still centered towards the 12th fret roughly but as you can see one of the microphones actually points up here towards the neck of the guitar and the other one points down here towards the body of the guitar so they both have quite different sounds and when we pan these in our door you get a really nice stereo spread. Let's see how this configuration sounds compared to our previous mono recording. So that's the recording stage but what do I do in my recording software to make it sound like the intro. So every song is different and every producer is going for a different sound for that particular song so you shouldn't follow everything I'm doing here exactly. This is just to give you a rough idea of how I approach actually processing acoustic guitar. So in this case I've recorded the left and right microphones on two separate channels. You can see them over here on the left. Why have I done it on two separate channels rather than one stereo channel? That's because I like to leave myself the option of being able to process them separately. So for example I may use a different EQ setting for the left channel than the right channel. In this case I haven't but I like to give myself that option. I then run those two guitars through to a bus which you can see over here on the right and this is a stereo bus and this is where I do most of my processing. The first thing I've got here at the top of the chain is just an EQ and all it's doing is doing a low cut here. In this case around about 42 hertz. This is just to get rid of any very low end rumble I may have from the guitar or indeed from the room as well. I don't want that to be going through affecting compressors and things so that just tidies up that part of the signal. The next thing I've done here is to actually use a tape emulator the T-Rax tape machine 80. Why have I done this? Well it's nice to add in a little bit of saturation but the reason I like using this tape machine is because I rather like the way I can boost higher frequencies in here. It's just a sound thing. I like the sound of the higher frequencies being boosted in here and I know I'm going to want to do that so I've done that here. So I get saturation a nice high frequency boost all in the same deal. You can see I've done it on that control there. The next thing I then do is some corrective EQ so or some subtractive EQ I should say as well. What I'm trying to do here is not so much craft the sound of the guitar but to get rid of any frequencies which I really don't like very much. And there's a couple of sort of honky frequencies in the middle of this recording which I could do without. Let's have a listen to this one here at around about 370 Hertz. You can hear that sort of honky sound there. So I've just done a little reduction there of that and then some other honky type sounds a little higher up here. Have a listen. Up there kind of thing so that's just getting rid of those and then I actually I mean this is mostly subtractive EQ but I've just done a little boost to the high frequencies here with a little shelf here. Not very much but I felt it still needed a bit more and it does it a little bit different in here to the way it does on the tape machine. I'm in two minds about this one. If I listen to this track long enough I may take this one out but it's there for the moment. I kind of like it at the moment. The next thing I went for was some compression. I've used this LA2A emulator another T-Rex one again from IK Multimedia. I like to use an LA2A or an acoustic guitar especially a picked one like this because it's very sort of transparent. You won't necessarily notice there's compression unless you really push it very very hard. In this case I haven't there's just sort of around about one one and a bit decibels of reduction compression just controls those peaks just a little bit for me and you can see it in action now. Okay so just a little bit there. Now the other thing which I've actually got switched on at the moment I didn't mean to but it is anyway is the delay okay. So I like to now add a little bit delay. I've put it on a bus here and that's because I'm going to add some reverb later. I want to have them on separate buses so they're independent of each other not affecting each other okay. So first of all with the delay the purpose here is not to have a delay effect that anyone would notice but to kind of put the guitar in a room a little bit to give it a bit of space so it doesn't sound so much like a dead studio sound. Now what I do here is put the feedback right down low so that it's only giving one repeat and then I do very very short delays on the left and right channels. On the left channel in this case 16 millisecond delay on the right 16 again actually I should probably just change that a bit which I will now. So 16 20 or so I like to have them just a little bit different okay and then this is just blended in ever so gently okay. You can see over here with the fader it's actually down pretty low so it's only just in there. Let's just have a listen to how this delay sounds without the original guitar. Yeah okay so it's hardly anything but it's just a little bit of difference between the left and the right channels which I think really helps to give some space. So with the main guitar back in so that makes sure we give it some space without making it sound too sort of distant which is what can happen with reverb. However I have still used reverb I'll switch it on now bring it up. I'm using this one from Arturia Rev Intensity I rather like this one. Now the main thing I want to point out with this is that as well as adding this reverb I've made sure with this and the delay in fact that I've done a low cut or a high pass whichever way you want to say it. Now the idea here is I don't want lots of low end information going through to the delay or the reverb at all it's going to make it sound really really muddy if I do that okay. So I've done that down here with this pre-filter. In terms of the type of reverb it doesn't really there's no hard and fast rules with this it depends on your song what you want. Now with this one I've just picked something that I like the sound of let's just have a listen but I have to say under normal circumstances when this is a part of a whole song and there's going to be vocals and things like that there my choice of reverb may change depending on what's happening with those other elements in the song but that's a basic overview of how I've treated this particular acoustic guitar. Now of course you're going to have to plug these microphones into an audio interface which will be connected to your computer and for this video I use the ID 14 mark 2. I recently reviewed that audio interface and you can watch that video right here.