I am starting a new project and would like some suggestions. I am recording tracks that I plan on playing live at coffee houses, and want them to sound very similar (but not exactly) on CD as they will live. I also want the mixes to sound good in their own right, and have been unable to find any commercial examples of the setup I intend to use. I want to make my arrangements with an acoustic guitar, a very subdued bass, lead vocals, and a second backing vocal of the same voice but harmonizing (also very subdued). The lead vocals and the acoustic guitar will be much more prominent than the other elements, as they will be the only things you here when I play live. My question is: where do I place everything in the stereo mix. I always used to record with two guitars, one on the left, one on the right, with the bass smack in the middle. I don't know how to make a balanced mix with just vocal, backup, bass, and guitar. Any suggestions?
Comments
Stereo mic the guitar with two mics and pan both off and add som
Stereo mic the guitar with two mics and pan both off and add some delay to each to thicken it up a bit. Compress the bass a lot and lower the track level to the appropriate amount and leave it panned center. Put the lead vocal up the middle - maybe put a stereo delay on the lead vocal with a 1/4 delay on the left and a 1/8 delay on the right and experiment with the parameters of each to get it to match the song and give the vocals a subtle fullness. Then take each harmony vocal track and pan them 80% left and 80% right to fill in the gaps a bit. There is no right rule of thumb with this but this is what I would tend to do if presented with your project.