Danny Boy/Londonderry Air - Arr by Steven Faile

[GuitNGood]

Hi all - this is my arrangement of Danny Boy/Londonderry Air played on my 514CE recorded with a Bluebird Blue microphone. Elixir Strings (12's). It's a modified "C tuning" I suppose from lowest to high the strings are tuned C-G-D-G-B-E.

This is the best recording I've gotten to date and am using minimal compression/effects/limiting.

All comments welcomed. I am curious to know also how you are hearing this (i.e. earbuds, studio monitors/speakers)

http://www.mixcloud.com/StevenSongs/danny-boylondonderry-air-solo-gtr-arr/

[MB]

I listened thru my JBL studio monitors. It sounded very nice. That is a cool tuning...similar to the one Jimmy Page used for Rain Song.
Anyways, for my taste it was just a little towards the thick/bass side. Where did you have the mic pointed? How far away was the mic?
It sounds like you had it close to where the neck and body join but maybe pointed a tad towards the sound hole?
Love the warmth from the mahogany....Nice arrangement and playing too!

[GuitNGood]

Thanks for listening and commenting MB! The Rain Song always takes me back to "fond" memories of all those months of my life that I desperately tried to learn Page's parts...in standard tuning  Live and learn.

Great ears...the mic was 10 - 12" away and pointed to where the neck and body meet. I angled myself and the guitar slightly but any boominess I suppose I enhanced with eq. I'll give it a few days and listen again with reference tracks. My signature sound is boominess/muddiness/drowning in reverb so this recording was a departure for me.

It's amazing how many challenges present themselves when trying to record acoustic guitars.

[TaylorMate]

Bravo!! I love your finger style and the piece. Listened through my Shure SRH 840 headphones and had also the little-too-boomy experience. If that is due to too much (low) EQ than it will be easy to remedy. Your bass strings will sound fine anyway; certainly in such a low tuning.

[GuitNGood]

Thanks TaylorMate! I'm all smiles at the responses. I'm going to give my ears a rest and come back to the mix fresh.

[MB]

I learn lots by listening to others record their acoustics. I appreciate the opportunity to listen...especially to a good finger style player.
Your recording sounded very nice.

Recording acoustic guitars is really a challenge. I've found the simpler the better. I've tried many stereo configurations but one good mic pointed at the sweet spot seems to always be the best result. That is what you did here. It's all about the mic and where you place it. I record flat thru a good mic pre and make sure the levels end up at around -12 db in my recording software with minimal compression going in.

After the recording is done,  I use EQ to take away low and low mids and rarely add any frequencies. If your mic placement was right, then you won't need much EQ. Especially with a great sounding instrument. I end up spending more time with mic placement and that saves having to EQ after the fact. The EQ adjustments I do make are subtle. By taking away low and low mid frequencies you give the high mids and highs more space in the spectrum and in effect, add high end naturally.

A great performance helps....makes a lot of the above inconsequential 

Incidentally, my reference to the Rain Song tuning was way off....the Rain Song tuning is DGCGCD.
I did record that one a while back and you can hear it here if you like.
http://youtu.be/EE2tQLQFiao?list=UUT73AG0m6dMVrhOC59_LNNw

[GuitNGood]

Nice vid and playing! That looks like an awesome room to log many hours in too.

[guitarsrsoawesome]

I listened through my Sennheiser HD 380 pro studio headphones and the recording wasn't too boomy for me, perhaps the headphones tamed it down.  I'll try on my studio speakers tomorrow.  It just sounded plain great to me.   

As for your playing, I absolutely loved it.  What a great treatment of Danny Boy.  You absolutely killed it.

[GuitNGood]

@guitarsrsoawesome - thanks so much for listening and the kind words. I've loved that melody for a long time and the typical treatment on solo guitar that I hear is more traditional harmonization.  I wanted to sort of modernize it while maintaining the emotional impact. Eva Cassidy's vocal version inspired me to try for something new. Look it up on youtube if you haven't heard it. I get chills every time I hear it.

I've read a lot of great things about those sennheisers for mixing. Do you mix with them?

[guitarsrsoawesome]

@guitarsrsoawesome - thanks so much for listening and the kind words. I've loved that melody for a long time and the typical treatment on solo guitar that I hear is more traditional harmonization.  I wanted to sort of modernize it while maintaining the emotional impact. Eva Cassidy's vocal version inspired me to try for something new. Look it up on youtube if you haven't heard it. I get chills every time I hear it.

I've read a lot of great things about those sennheisers for mixing. Do you mix with them?

I definitely use them a bit for mixing, but my primary mixing audio source is a pair of entry level Yamaha studio speakers.

I am almost completely self taught at recording and have probably attempted to record about 30-40 songs over about five years.  The learning curve has been pretty slow for me, but the quality went up quite a bit when I bought some decent studio monitors and then added these headphones.

I was using bose headphones, but realized when I mixed with them that I would make relatively good mixes (for my ability level) for bose or other high end systems, but on everything else the recordings weren't so hot.  So I bought the yamaha's and sennheisers because they were supposedly known for being very flatly eq'd, so in that sense they've helped a lot.  I mean, really made a big difference and made the recordings more palatable across a spectrum of devices (car speakers, ear buds, computer speakers, etc.)

One thing I've noticed recording my 514ce (cedar/ES2), using a simple audio technica at2020 condenser mic at about the 12th fret as well a second plugged in channel, is that the recording turned out to be very boomy.  The warmth and bass response of the cedar top sounds so beautiful to the ear in the room but seems to overwhelm the low and low mids recording frequencies when recording. 

I loved MB's advice about experimenting with the microphone positioning because I would really like to be able to get the natural bass response of our guitar without having to dial so much of it out when eq'ing to get the boom out. 

One thing I noticed when seeing Tommy Emmanuel in concert was his sound man's ability to pull out bass guitar like tones from his acoustic, and did so LOUDLY, and yet there was no boom.  How the heck did he do that?!?!? If I could just replicate that when I'm playing solo, that's what I would go for.  And I would like that on recordings, too.  How on earth did they do that?

Recording is definitely a challenge, as MB said, and I love these discussion so I can learn more from you guys and get better and maybe add my little two cents, too.

[guitarsrsoawesome]

PS.  Listened on my studio monitors and it was only slightly "boomy" for me, I mean, I've done way worse! LOL.  I bet with just some slight tweaking of the eq you could get it perfect.  But we all know "slight tweaking" means several hours of experimenting! LOL. 

Still, fantastic job and I listened to some of the other tracks, if I could get my recordings to half of what you're doing I would be thrilled.  What sort of set up are you using? Pro tools? What interface?  (I'm just using garage band with a Presonus Audiobox USB.  I once borrowed a friends Apogee Duet which was awesome but not sure the difference in quality was worth the expense for someone so green as me...)

Also, who's playing the drums/bass and other instruments?  Singing?

[GuitNGood]

Yes I'm going to revisit the mix and address the boominess because it's important to me get a mix to translate on all playback systems. If you haven't already I highly recommend you check out therecordingrevolution.com a site run by Graham Cochrane. He has a ton of free content on youtube too. Look up his "5  minutes to a better mix" series for example. I wish that level of training was available when I started recording years ago.Also homestudiocorner.com by Joe Gilder. I have also paid for some of their training vids and have not had any regrets.

I have a simple setup pc> win 7> mboxpro3> cubase 7.5> Yamaha HS80Ms> AudioTechnica Ath40fs. Thanks for listening to the mixcloud tracks.It's a hodge podge of different mix attempts of things I record at home with mostly virtual instruments used for drums/keys/bass. The tracks with vocals came from another website called duelingmixes.com also highly recommended.

[Amos514]

I thought it sounded very, very good through a pair of Adams A5Xs. Great performance, too. I didn't think it sounded "boomy," but maybe the low end could be backed off a little bit. Sounded more warm than boomy to me. Really good job.

[GuitNGood]

Hi amos514! Thanks for the feedback and the kind words. I agree with the consensus of heavier low end presence and your description makes sense to me bc I'm listening on Yamaha HS80ms which are great from low mid to high but not ideal for low end clarity.

[Cindy]

I'm listening to this right now, and what a beautiful tone coupled with terrific fingerstyle playing. NICE!!! Thanks for sharing.