Way Beyond Your Dreams - unplugged

[Geir]

Hoop, how do you get the acoustic guitar to sound that good?  Please tell!

He's a magician, and I think he lives in Abbey Road studios !!!

Fabulous song and performance Ken !!! Really inspiring !!!

[OsCKilO]

Sounds Stunning Hoop!!

Perfection!

[stoman]

Great songwriting and good lyrics. Very pretty.

Regards,
  Steffen

[hooper]

Thanks for the comments, guys.   
FWIW and to answer ScottieD's question:

I was experimenting with a mike set-up and mixing trick that I had just read about by Bob Denis, chief guru at the RecordingWebsite, here:
http://www.recordingeq.com/rw/tip7.html

Bob's tutorial refers to micing a cabinet but I used the same technique micing an acoustic guitar... a SM-58 for the 'close' mic and a AKG3000 for the 'distant' mic (about 12") behind the first mic.  Note: You need to be able to 'reverse' or 'invert' the Phase of a track to do the mixing trick.  No can do on a Micro-BR and I don't know about any of the other BR's. Maybe you can do in Audacity.  I used Sonar.

1)  Record the guitar performance in stereo with the two mics panned hard R/L
2)  Then copy the 'distant' mic track to another track... so now you've got 3 tracks
3)  Pan the 'near' mic track to near the center and pan the two cloned 'distant' mic tracks pretty wide R/L.
4)  Then Reverse or Invert the Phase of one of the distant mic tracks.
5)  Tinker with track levels and pans

What you're doing here is playing Russian Roulette with phase cancellation, creating some kind of comb filter with the 'distant' tracks.  The center track provides the body of the sound and the outer tracks provide lots of ambience without too much thickness.

There are some Golden tips from Bob Denis at the RecordingWebsite. Well worth digging into.   

   

[Tony W]

^ Awesome tip Hoop, and man what a cover of an original. Superb listening experience.

[AndyR]

Like it

Not sure I've heard the original, it sounds familiar though, I'll go and check it out.

And that's a top tip with the mics - sounds simple and obvious when written out like that. I've been wondering how on earth to record just one accoustic part and feel it's enough to fill the song... You're right that there's no phase inversion on the BRs (certainly not on the BR1600, anyway) - BUT you can do something similar by moving one of the tracks a tiny bit forwards or backwards in time. Can't remember if the MBR will do a small enough move, but the BR1600 will... You need to experiment with different amounts, and sooner or later you get a position that doesn't sound too much like a tight delay, but when you combine them both in mono it gets quieter rather than louder - that's out of phase... I've done it by accident once and hurriedly got rid of it!! Should have noted down the setting 

I shall experiment - I have a song that needs a well played part on DADGAD and, really, not much else. Fattening her up like this might be just what I'm looking for...

Anyway, love the performance on here.... off to check out the original

EDIT: I have heard it before!! (well, I commented on the original anyway!) Listening to it now - like both versions...

[Oldrottenhead]

hoop this still makes me greet, its donny's birthday so a glass of merlot in hand and cheers

[Oldrottenhead]

on this day bump.

[launched]

Great bump - Never heard it before. Sounds fabulous!

Mark

[Rolow]

What a surprise, Hoop has played crisp, clear guitar and sung well along with it.  . There may be some recording magic going on here, but I know most of the quality of the tones comes from Ken's playing.

I like the original a lot, but this flies high in the LitLr category.