Acoustic Guitar Dynamics

[jbarnosky]

Hello!

I lead youth worship for my church, but I do amateur self-recording with Apple's Garageband for church and personal projects. Recently I wrote a song with acoustic guitar that varies in dynamic from an easy picking in the beginning to a fast and heavy strum pattern as the chorus builds into a stronger version of itself.

The problem is that when I record, the picking barely lights up the VU meter, but if I turn it up to get a decent level (something beneath half, even), I peak when I reach the full strumming section.

Do I need a compressor? I need to make the dynamic of the sound be less dynamic in volume. I'm sorry to be an amateur about this; I've focused most of my time developing as a musician and getting by as a self-taught sound man. Now I'm realizing the importance of high-quality sound as I travel to perform in different venues, and I want to start with a high-quality tone in my home venue. What should I invest in?

[Tarktones]

A compressor is exactly what I'd recommend. Something that will help tone down the peaks on your harder strumming so that you can take your listeners on a journey from soft to loud without overloading the PA/input of your recording equipment.

[jbarnosky]

Thank you; I knew that they helped do something like that, but the Garageband's software compressor doesn't do much to the sound, and... well, I'm going to go try to learn how compressors work, exactly, and then look at the prices and functionalities of different models.

Many thanks for the reply!

[DAS]

When you use a compressor in your software it can't do anything to the recording that's already been made. If you want to control the guitar level prior to recording then you'll need an outboard compressor.

On the other hand it may be fine to wait and do all of this after the recording has happened. You'll have to live with the low level stuff being very low on the recording side (and metering), but then you have other options once it has been recorded. One I would look at is to, instead of just using a compressor, use automation to turn the volume of the guitar up and down in the track at the right places. Compression can only do so much (without the side effects making worse problems than you are fixing), sometimes an instrument just needs to be turned up or down.

I speculate a lot more experimentation is needed before you run out and spend money on a compressor...not that it wouldn't ultimately be useful.

[Rad]

Hm. If he's recording on 24 bit, why not leave the quiet sections be as quiet as they want - he'll have in excess of 110 dB dynamic range with a decent convertor - just make sure he doesn't hit 0dBFS, finish the tracking and then compress at leisure during mixing. The compressor is going to bring up the overall level with the gain make-up switch.
This method is no good for live sound, but my understanding was this is a recording.

[DAS]

Hm. If he's recording on 24 bit, why not leave the quiet sections be as quiet as they want - he'll have in excess of 110 dB dynamic range with a decent convertor - just make sure he doesn't hit 0dBFS, finish the tracking and then compress at leisure during mixing. The compressor is going to bring up the overall level with the gain make-up switch.
This method is no good for live sound, but my understanding was this is a recording.

Exactly the point being made (however unclearly) in my second paragraph above.

[Tarktones]

jbarnosky,

Can you tell us more about your recording setup? Are you recording a live performance? Or is this in a home studio type setup? What are you using as your preamp and how are you getting the audio into Garage Band?

Working a compressor takes quite a bit of time to learn. I've always had a good ear for mixing but that just came from my musical experience as I knew the balance of instruments that I wanted to hear. When I first started recording, I never used compression. It took me months of futzing around and re-reading that stupid explanation of "it makes the loud parts softer and the soft parts louder" before it really sunk in and I had the slightest clue how to make it work for me.

It sounds like the compressor in Garage Band should be sufficient as long the quiet parts are so quiet that they can't be heard over the noise when you play them back. For example, have your settings so that you're not peaking out when you strum the hard parts. Then record the quiet parts and see if you can turn up the volume and still hear the quiet parts. If you can and they're just too quiet, then you should be able to get some good use out of the Garage Band compressor.

[Audioholic]

I always track my acoustic dry, and then volume graph and compress a little once recorded. What mic or mics are you using? or are you using your acoustics direct out? whatcha doing to record your geeetar?

[jbarnosky]

My thanks to all for the kind and helpful replies!

To give more information, we do record live services, but I use my many nights at the church (I'm a janitor, too) to do home-studio-style recording. I run the guitar dry (no electric pre-amp; it's a 1976 Alvarez) to the sound board (mostly for EQ purposes) and am currently using the mixer's Sub Outputs to track into a 4-channel Alesis recording interface (the iO|14, if it helps any). I use Sub Outputs because I only have four channels to record through until I buy a larger interface. I typically use a few spare channels when doing personal recording, so I don't mess up the basic sound levels for our services. By using spare channels, I can track to any sub output (read: audio track) I want for recording.

I have no mic on the guitar (yet; I'm considering with the possibility). I have access to a few Shure SM58s, one Shure SM57, and two Shure Beta 87Cs (can you guess what company my church likes to support?) at the moment. There are a couple others (e.g. - a V-Tech mic that looks like the SM57), but I never really use them...

Part of my problem is that I run the computer audio back into the sound board and listen to the recording though the sound system. The outboard EQ makes it sound better than the base recording, and I have plenty of headroom to turn up the computer channel and hear the recording. Then I take it home and listen to it on my laptop, which reveals all the flaws I made in the last couple of hours.

Thank you for helping me clear all of this up! Figuratively and quite literally...