Recording - July 2014 - 17

EQ after the fact
I've gotten more brave over the years
about EQing on the way in. I now know a
lot more about what I'll want in the end, and
I can take some frequencies out or turn them
up a bit to help get closer to the sound I will
ultimately want. But I'm always careful not to
do too much, for fear I might find myself
married to something that isn't as satisfying
when we get to the mix.
It never hurts to take lots of raw "sonic
information" when recording, and worry
about shaping it more later on. If you don't
have a ton of experience recording acoustic
guitar, always err on the side of doing less
to the signal as you capture it. It's very hard
to completely undo processing on a signal
that was done as it was recorded.
The song will tell you what's needed...
listen to it! Some detailing of a recorded
acoustic guitar can be a great thing. If the
guitar is by itself, with only a vocal or perhaps a few soft instruments, you may want
a more full and unprocessed sound. If the
guitar is sitting in a big mix, more shaping
may be necessary.
In a band situation, lots of instruments have
low-end information in them. Vocals, basses,
drums, almost all instruments recorded
through microphones have low and/or low
mid information that can build up in a mix
and make it sound muddy. I find that pulling
out some of this in a guitar can help it pop out

in a mix in just the right way. I'll often set a
low shelf, or roll off everything below a certain frequency (like 80-100 Hz), because
there's information down there that conflicts
with other instruments. Besides, in many
songs, most of that boomy stuff doesn't really
make a guitar sound its best anyway.
However, if it's a solo guitar, I often leave this
in (or move my shelf or rolloff lower, taking
out less of these frequencies), so that the entire
frequency range is represented.
A bit of really high end can help make a
guitar sound detailed and beautiful. I'll usually try to add some highs, particularly
above 10 kHz. This can make picked guitars sound more percussive, and fingerstyle
guitars sound sweeter. Just be careful not to
add frequencies that bring out too much
string buzz or fret noise.
In almost any guitar and player combo,
there will be frequencies that aren't particularly beautiful sounding, or that interfere
with other sounds in the mix. I can usually
hear that there's something not right, so I'll
put up an EQ band with a very narrow Q,
turn it up loud and sweep it back and forth
in the area I think needs attention. Usually
this will show me exactly where the problem is. Once I find it, I can take that frequency out to the degree that's needed (a
little can go a long way!) and adjust the Q
wider if it sounds better. Again, experimentation is good thing here-setting EQ to

extremes, then backing off once you've
found problems to solve or nice-sounding
areas to accentuate, can be very effective.
Recording yourself
For those of us who are both recordists
and players, it can be very satisfying to set
up a few mics close to your computer keyboard, so you can start and stop recording
as you need to for that perfect comped-asyou-go take. This is only good for those of
us who have a quiet control room environment, as there's nothing worse than realizing at mix time that there's computer fan
noise in the background that gets really
obvious at quieter spots in the music.
There are fancier solutions, like a silent
workstation out in the tracking room (see
"Room With A View" by Sean Shannon in
our June 2014 issue), but sometimes all you
need is a microphone isolator like the sE
Electronics Reflexion Filter, Primacoustic
VoxGuard, or Auralex MudGuard. They can
be really effective in places where there
might be other noise happening. I've built
these myself at times by shaping foam using
a clothes hanger and some duct tape!
I hope some of this is helpful! Now go
make some cool guitar tracks!
John McVey (mcvey@recordingmag.com)
is an engineer/producer working at Coupe
Studios in Boulder, CO.

http://www.radialeng.com http://www.radialeng.com

Recording - July 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - July 2014