Recording Songs that feature Acoustic Guitars & Vocals

For songs that feature acoustic guitar and vocals, artists need to be prepared to let the recording engineer know if they can play them separately.  If they can play the guitar without singing at the same time, we set up the guitar microphones and the artist plays the guitar.  After that is accomplished they hear those guitar parts back through headphones and sing the song into the vocal microphone.

Some people find that they are not able to play their song on acoustic guitar without singing (they lose track of where they are or they don't have the same performance quality).  However if they have practiced playing separately before they come to the studio, they often can. Either way we use separate tracks (separate microphones) for each one.

• Recording them at the same time: the closeness of the guitar and the vocals causes "bleed through" into all the microphones.  The benefit is that the performance of the song may have a magical quality to it, particularly if this is the only way the artist has practiced the song.

• Recording them separately: the guitar sound is just in the guitar microphones and the singing is by itself in the vocal microphone.  The benefit is that for mixing we have more control over the volume and tone of each one.

It is up to the artist to decide which way they want to record to get their best sound.