Record Guitar Like A PRO (& revealing my BIG secret!) 

This could have been an expensive “MasterClass” and I’m glad it’s instead FirstClass n Free. Most excellent

You're like the Bob Ross of guitar

That reverb panning trick is insane... time to buy another mic and mess with recording acoustic stuff

This is absolutely fascinating. One of my favorite things about RU-vid - one of my favorite things in life - is watching knowledgable people talk about what they're passionate about.

The idea of sending the left side’s reverb to the right, and vice versa, isn’t something i’ve heard other people do, but it was something that i thought to try on one recording a while back. I thought it sounded cool, and now i’m glad to see that someone who knows way more than me suggests doing it too

Recording acoustic is definitely not an easy or simple task I believe! Really appreciate the advice and look into your gear man, helps out a ton!

The effort that went into the video is commendable! Thank you so much ❤️

Paul, that's a real masterclass. Best tutorial on acoustic guitar recording I've seen - and heard. Those final touches are amazing. Up until then I was thinking, OK, sounds alright. Then.. Oh man! Thanks so much!

This is, without doubt, the best guitar recording video I've seen. I have tried for years to learn how to simply record guitar and watched countless hours of RU-vid videos of producers explaining things in too much detail so I get overly lost and confused. This breaks it down perfectly. Thank you!

This mic placement technique is now the only way I'll record my acoustic. The moment I hard-panned each channel I was sold. It sounded like I was in the room standing in front of someone playing the guitar instead of hearing a recording of someone playing the guitar. Thank you, Paul, for this amazing tutorial.

I use a matched pair of small diaphragm condenser mics on a stereo bar in XY configuration, at a 90° angle. This way, I get two (almost) identical sounding tracks which simply give me the stereo space I want. Admittedly, this does not offer the different timbres you get with different mics in different positions, but it completely removes any risk of phase issues without having to worry about the distances between the mics and the instrument. So yeah, I just learnt something new. 😃 Instead of the hard-panning trick, I usually record the same track twice (or use the two best takes of any recording loop) to pan these almost (but not quite) hard left and right to add more depth to the guitar. This also works great for electric guitar.

Hi Paul, I don’t usually leave comments for videos I watched. But I really wanted to say this video completely changed my acoustic guitar recording’s standard so a massive thank you from Hong Kong for willing to share your knowledge with us! Liked & subscribed, keep up with the good work and God bless you man!

I would've paid to watch this. Thank you, you're a good man.

I thought I knew a decent amount about recording and mixing. Turns out, I’m barely even getting started. The difference he made with EQ alone is amazing. Thank you very much for sharing this video, it’s an absolute privilege that we can get this for free on RU-vid. People have charged money for less useful things

Even though I've heard of the phase problem, I haven't seen it visualized that easily and effectively like you did it. So that's one thing I'll be thinking of next time.

Hi Paul, I hope you're well! I could hear the low EQ on my Lap Top speakers! Haha Have a marvellous time!

The production quality of your videoes is absolutely ridiculously amazing. You somehow manage to be concise and yet thorough, and that's truly inspiring. I can tell a lot of thought and intentionality went into the pre-production, and I really appreciate that :D

Holy shit, I can’t believe how good the final product sounds! That panning reverb is amazing and I’ll definitely need to give that a try. I’ve been really struggling with how to properly record solo acoustic guitar and this video is SO helpful!

Can't believe how much effort is done for making a record beautiful.

Really brilliant. I’m so grateful that you are generously sharing these secret tips with us. ❤️

We all know that paul recorded this video only to show his new guitar once again

Brilliant! What a GREAT way to demonstrate the phase issues.... so simple, yet perfect.

I’ve been following Pauls journey from the beginning and he’s doing a great job clearing up the clutter. He’s always inspiring me to make better content! Love his style as well!

My mouth dropped multiple times throughout this video. Such an insightful tutorial! This is absolutely the greatest walk through I have seen on recording guitar and turning the already beautiful sound of that guitar into something breathtaking. By the end of the video, that humble guitar track turned into a cinematic masterpiece. Incredible and inspiring! Thank you!

Hi Paul, thanks for this video, I used it to record Hallelujah yesterday to share with my family in Australia (I live in Switzerland) on my father’s passing. It made my ordinary playing sound much better and the result was much appreciated. Cheers !

14:11 put it on spotify please. It sounds awesome!

That reverb trick is amazing, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom :)

Thanks a lot Paul! Amazing video! Regards from Portugal!

This is one of THE most useful recording tutorials I've found, and I've been trawling the web for weeks! THANK YOU!! I feel like I finally actually know how to record something now. Awesome sound!

"I'm not saying this is the best way." "This is the best way."

Never taught of recording myself but I really enjoyed watching and defenitly learned new things :)

*listens to his own playing* "This sounds otherworldly great" I love your modesty 😂

Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I was most fascinated with your opposite reverb panning method, I will definitely try this technique on my next project😊

This is insane, I've listened to twenty condenser mic videos and none sounds big on my phone speaker, this sounds like a hifi system on my phone!! It's so big, makes all these other 'experts' like newbees

the guitars really triggered a smile when they got hard panned and you let it play. it just sounds so good, omg

So, like, he pans the neck and bridge tracks hard left and hard right, creating a spacious stereo image. He also applies reverb to add ambiance. A unique trick he shares involves sending the neck mic to the right speaker's reverb and the bridge mic to the left speaker's reverb, creating a surreal, larger-than-life effect. He uses a compressor and EQ on the reverb bus to control the overall sound.

Beautiful! That guitar sounds gorgeous to start off with, and the recordings and mix are just wonderful. What a fantastic video!

"I'm not saying this is the best way" "(This is the best way)" "There is no right or wrong." "(Do not do it like this)" I wonder if anyone else caught onto that haha

LOL, maybe the funniest guitar lesson intro ever at 0:22: "I'm not saying that this is the best way" [then cuts to video with Paul saying "this is the best way"]. "There is no right or wrong" [then cuts to video with Paul saying "don't do it this way"]. Paul, love your humor and of course your classes, especially your Intermediate paid class, which is fun and incredibly helpful.

Understanding the phase difference thing was a revelation! Thanks Paul!

This is my third time going through this video. There is a lot of good info here. Been wanting to do recording for several years and can finally afford the equipment. Don't want a astronomical studio. I just want to do acoustic guitar tracks and do electric guitar with modeling software. His gear is way out of my budget.

Sounds beautiful as always. Thanks for the insight!

Or for short: 1. Record with two microphones and eliminate phase-outs 2. EQ (bass cut and treble boost) 3. Compressor (low attack) 4. Panning (Paul likes hard panning to the left and right which I wouldn't do, more like 85% each) 5. Reverb (2.9 miliseconds) (6. little delay) 7. again overall EQ (high-mids or low-treble)

That reverb trick is the most ingenious thing I've learned about producing in years. Great tip.

Paul, you are like a ZIP file, not to flashy at first glance but once opened up, I find more tutorials of yours that make you stand out from the crowd in regards to teaching music. I believe you will become more stellar on RU-vid as time goes by. Thank you for your videos and being my guitar teacher. My life has opened up more possibilities with your channel. BRAVO !!

Very thorough tutorial. Glad to seem I'm doing pretty much the same thing. I've been using cla unplugged which has two reverbs so you kinda get that effect minus the pan. But will try your suggestion also. Keep up the great work dude.

this is a beautifully sounding guitar recording! In fact, so simple when you know what to do... Thank you so much for sharing these little secrets

You could be a professor ! Man u r awesome! Keep It Up!

Your content is absolutely top notch, educational and understandable easily. You are on of the best and I thank you for you contribution to music.

This is one of the most helpful videos you've posted. All your videos are excellent, but I find myself revisiting this one frequently to help improve my own recordings. Thank you.

I’m using pair of pencil mic as well when recording but I only do some basic mixing. This video is very helpful and it gave me a lot of ideas. Time to unleash my mic’s full potential. Lol. Thank you!

Golden tip - Always check the tuning of your Guitar just before you press the Record button. 🔊

I have to get my sound together at my recordings, thanks for sharing this tips man 👍

good gosh man, that panning thing is magic, i can't beleive i never thought of doing that

I did mic and direct and still sounded so big, can`t wait to have another mic to do it again! This a great tutorial.

This is simply the best video on micing and recording acoustic guitar that I have ever seen. I have tried for years to inform folks that the sound hole on a guitar is not for sound. It's actually an air hole, to prevent sound wave reflections and resulting harmonics from destroying the tone. Also, the center and apex of sound production on an acoustic guitar is the bridge. Energy radiates out from the bridge through the sound board [top] of the guitar. Not very much energy is reflected by the back, and very little by the neck. Micing near the bridge is a great location, and micing near where the fret board meets the body is another very good location, as it will pick up the higher overtones. You can see how much louder the input from the bridge mic was in the corresponding wave forms. The mixing and mastering part of this video is sheer brilliance. The use of selected compression and reverb is awesome, and the EQ balance is equally amazing, as well as the additional tracks to fill out the sound, and make it huge and beautiful. This short video was like a free lesson on studio set up and recording. Truly well done!

The issue with hardpanning like this though is that if you listen to it in mono like on a phone or one of those bluetooth speakers it kinda breaks down. Dan Worrall has a great explanation on how to fix that while still keeping this wide sound in a video called "Headphones Are Not Stereo (mid side phase trickery)"

5:03 I really heard "I have a hype-ass filter" and thought "hell yeah dude your filter IS hype"

This foot moving the mic stand trick is worth gold

Excellent. Excellent because you were off-the-cuff enough to demonstrate the experimental aspects, the give and take. Educational!

Try pointing a cheap SM57 at the lower right of the guitar body, amazing.

should have put a nice little before and after in the end... apart from that, great video. come winter, i shall buy a mic and record my acoustic guitar playing for the first time :)

This video was EXTREMELY HELPFUL for me. I just started out with recording my guitar and didn't know any of this before. This was very helpful. THANK YOU! ♥️

Most RU-vidrs waffle on for ages and it’s pointless crap to extend a video. Everything you said is golden and you had my attention throughout.

I’m a professional sound designer and I learned several things from this video! Incredible teaching and demonstration.

5:20 I was listening on my smartphone,ran to get my headphones xD

Me: Aight let me get this setup. (Clicks the amazon links) Wallet: WTF.

Simply the best video tutorial on how to record a fingerpicking guitar.

Hey NICE ONE Paul. I have owned a recording studio in England for many years and when I watch your videos, you remind me what i'm doing wrong when I drift into not recording things right again (like we all do over time). Nice simple techniques, really easy to understand. I have subscribed.

Him: "wow that sounds way different!" Me on my cheap earbuds: 😐

I NEED to know what you are playing at 3:22!

Hi, I'm hoping this comment doesn't come out the wrong way. I'm a full time owner/operator of a recording studio and am just on a quick lunch break and stumbled onto your video. I really like your channel and have just subscribed. I'm glad you've found some strategies that work for you but I spend a lot of time teaching audio to newbies and when a video shows EQ being added because it's what that person normally does or normally likes that's when I have to join the conversation. Imagine watching a cooking video and the chef says, I like to add (or cut) "x" amount of salt and "x" amount of whatever other spices they have in the recipe without tasting the ingredients first as well as along the way. If the bacon is salty and the capers are salty but the chef still says "they like to add a certain amount of salt etc to each dish", well, that literally becomes a recipe for disaster because you will have an overly salty result. To stretch the analogy, Often there are dishes that have no salt added because it's already being added through the ingredients being used. This is the same with microphones and instruments and the rooms the recording is taking place in. All ics allow a certain and differing amount of each frequency to pass through within it's capable range, but at different volume levels (based on the angle of the mic to the instrument (on axis/off axis), the type (ie: condenser, dynamic, ribbon etc), style, brand, make/model, polar pattern, sensitivity etc), Mics should be thought of as EQ's that are placed based on the frequencies you are hoping to include/reduce/remove. The type of EQ does actually make a difference (sometimes a big difference) in how it preserves or causes phase issues when boosted/cut. There is actually a lot more to go into here, but the main reason for my comment is to ask the owner of the channel to use caution when applying "salt to the food" so to speak the same way regardless of the recipe. New strings on a guitar will dramatically affects the perceived volume of various frequencies of the guitar for instance. If the guitar is over a hard floor or soft floor will make a difference in the reflecting off axis information coming back from the room. It is all cumulative and needs to be considered. Panning the mics into the location they will be in the final mix is a great idea to do before ANY EQ or other processing is added, because what and how we perceive audio changes and is dependent on so many things. Use your ears and EQ through placement in the room first and then what the mics are looking at and then EQ after recording is to help move the sound forwards in the speakers or back away from the speakers, combined with volume and any early reflections being added through reverb etc. Hope this at least helps you think about things from another perspective.

One small things that I do additionally to these techniques is to delay one of the acoustic mics a few ms (to taste) to add to the spacial separation. Can help with any accidental phase issues as well.

Please tell me where you got that jacket 🤷🏼‍♂️🤓

"This is the best way"

Thanks a lot! I did not understand the phase issue until this!!! (and came back to learn this again 3 year after!) Thanks!

That reverb trick is so sick!! Never seen anyone before do it!!

Very useful advices for those like me who can record, but every day with different results... :)

Wtf I just finished buying all my gear for acoustic recordings and now you upload this. Eerie, so coincidental

Easter Egg - There is a track called "plz like 14:45 "

Hey Paul. I just want to take a moment to thank you for the high quality "How To" videos (this one included) that are so well thought out and presented. If I may, I'd like to point out one thing... and ask a question or two. That thing to point out is "Record Guitar Like A PRO" perhaps should be "Record Steel-sting Acoustic Guitar Like a PRO". It goes without saying that recording electric guitar would be an entirely different animal, but also it's important to note that the tones (for better or worse) between steel and nylon stringed guitars (and most notably editing/mixing of the tracks) will vary widely between these two basic types of guitars. The biggest difference being that (generally speaking) those playing nylon stringed guitars are usually going for a very rich, full, clean and clear sound, rather than the steel-string friendly techniques you describe. In other words, what sounds "big and wonderful" greatly varies widely between the two types of guitars (with both sounds being great.) Would you consider doing a future video specifically on obtaining a warm and clear sound from a nylon stringed instrument? That would include, of course, not only the physical recording of the instrument, but also the editing/mixing. (For example, I suspect that if any reverb is used at all, it should be as light as a butterfly with sore feet landing on a leaf. Just as a sample of what I would consider a very good example of nylon string recording, here is a video I recently came across of a talented Russian guitarist Nadja Kossinskaja. Not only is her playing flawless, but whoever recorded/mixed her tracks (be it her herself or a studio), really nailed the beautiful tone of her instrument. It's getting a similar tone that I would love to figure out. (My recordings always seem to have a "computer-ish" sound to them.) Here is a sample of her marvelous tone: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2DfwWkOfTi0.html Do you have any tips on obtaining this full, rich, and clean sound on a nylon instrument? Keep up the great work! 🎸

Finally, a guitar recording video that is clear and easy to follow. Thanks for the great info!

Those 2 microphones cost over $ 2,000, so the secret to good sound is the quality of the microphones.For a rich sound, you have to be rich to afford these microphones.

Apparently he has Become a Sound Engineer too... Recording level : 100,000

it's no big secret he is just so darn good period

This is probably one of the most helpful recording videos I’ve seen.

The definition of intelligent mixing. Very impressive, very natural. Nothing too artsy, just taking those pleasing qualities and enhancing them. Good stuff

Hey Paul this is awesome content! Love the tips but you should have done this video two weeks ago because my last video was exactly an acoustic recorded with two mics in stereo :) I would love you check it and give me your honest opinion about the sound ;) Cheers

Donb't pan hard, that is unnatural for our ears. In this case it is discusable because every mic represents one ear and both mics pic up the same source. But in general that does not represent human hearing. The hearing is confused with hard panning especially on headphones. Instead pan for like 90 Percent max.

I split the guitar sound (i.e., copy the track to L and R) and use a small amount of delay on one side. That also enhances the stereo image!

The best video on mixing the acoustic guitar!

Did someone else spotted the “Plz like” in the video? Haha I automatically like every video as soon as I click it

Nice video! I'll try the reverb trick on my next recording :)

The reverb panning is awesome!! Thank you very much

I haven't watched 3 minutes yet and my equipment bill is already running up to nearly 3000 Euros. :-/

Man, you need to start a second channel about beard care and maintenance... that is another thing that you seem to do very well.

Seems so simple but the use of you pushing that left mic away to demonstrate phase issues was brilliant to hear!

I have been home studioing for a while now and something clicked after watching. feel like i understanding my goal with EQing now

Step 1, spend 20 years perfecting the instrument.

I saw an incredible demo once, years ago, where a guy took two matched wide diaphragm mics and set them pointing at each other right along the neck of the guitar - one at the bridge, facing the headstock, and the other at the headstock facing the bridge. It produced a startlingly clear stereo image of the guitar, from the brightness of the bridge, through the sound of the pick on the strings, the sound hole, and across the fretboard. Definitely worth trying out.