Recording female vocals+acoustic guitar, please help!!

[Ryszard]

Hello!

I'm newbie, looking for some advice in recording female vocals. Could someone please give me couple of tips as how to best record/mix vocal to get nice, rich, "intimate" sound? haha, don't know how to describe it, I mean sth like Norah Jones kind of music, I guess. I have recorded guitar on two tracks, one for line, second for mic and I'm about to add vocal track now. I useAKG c1000s, conected to line6 toneport ux1 and then recording in ableton live7. I know it's a shitty set up, but the effect is not that horrible. Guitar sounds fine, I just need some help with mixing it together with vocals, so there would be right balance and tone. I've been trying panning guitar on left and right leaving vocal in center, but then I'm not sure how to use reverb or compressor? should I apply on each track separately or on master?
Which other effects I might try?
Well, thanks a lot for reading this and I would appreciate any help.

 

[Boswell]

Welcome to the forum!

Unfortunately, I can't see C1000s giving you the "nice, rich, intimate" vocal sound you are looking for. They are not my favourite mic at the best of times, and especially not for female vox, which needs something a bit special to sound really good.

I seriously would try to borrow an SM58, getting your singer to "work" the mic to make good use of the proximity effect. A dynamic mic like that will also help reduce the effects of an untreated room.

You will need to put compression on the vocal track, and probably a little reverb as well. For your sort of work, apply effects to individual tracks and not to the mix.

 

[lyrical99]

I too am getting started in recording female vocals and acoustic guitar. Is this the type of mic you would recommend buying to start out? I want something good for the best price....since at this point I'm more experimenting and getting the feel for things.

This should probably be under the "mic" section of the forum but I thought since this was related i would post it here

 

[Codemonkey]

Shure SM58 is hailed as the best mic to "get used to things" with.

It probably won't sound perfect, but certainly not bad either.

 

[lyrical99]

ok thanks!