Being a performer, my music sounds best when recorded live--so that the interactions between my guitar and vocals are captured. The way the two flow together as they're simultaneously produced during a performance gives the music its heart, genuinely expressed. As an artist, it's the genuine expression of the music that concerns me most when recording.
Yet, in the past I've found myself focusing more on the quality of the recording--the perfect isolation and "mixability" of each sound, etc.--rather than the quality of the music. As a result, I recorded the guitar and vocals separately to a rigid tempo and never accomplished what I'd consider to be a heartfelt recording of self expression. But now my approach is different and things have gotten better.
With the heart of the music in mind, I've set up a home studio in which I can capture my live performance by recording the guitar and vocals simultaneously, but in such a way that they can still be adjusted separately afterwards. To accomplish this, I'm using two microphones; one captures vocals while the other captures guitar. However, to make sure each microphone only captures what it's meant to (no vocal sounds on the guitar track and vice versa), I've had to get a little creative. Check out the studio floor plan:
Basically, I record the guitar inside the closet and the vocals outside the closet. In the closet, a microphone captures the sound of the guitar as it comes through an amp. This effectively produces a guitar track free of vocal sounds.
Outside the closet, another microphone captures the vocals. To avoid capturing guitar noise from the amp in the closet, I placed a chair between the vocal mic and the closet. To avoid capturing acoustic noise from the guitar itself, I placed a sound barrier (a music stand, some foam padding, and a variety of blankets, pillows, and shirts) between the microphone and the sound hole of the guitar. With the addition of a rug-covered spare closet door and some more blankets, most of the acoustic guitar noise is absorbed and deadened. The resulting vocal track features only quiet, distant guitar sounds which can't be heard above the isolated guitar track once mixed.
As for the recording quality, it's good enough. I mean, I'm no audio technician--you can hear the click track from time to time, the vocal track isn't completely isolated from the guitar, and the guitar sounds less acoustic running through an amp. But, I'll work with what I've got and worry about polishing things up later during the mixing and mastering stages. It's been done before. Besides, it's the performance that matters most.
That said, new recordings are coming soon. So get stoked and stay tuned!
