Recording the Classical Guitar

Professional musicians have become increasingly independent of record companies and other investors that would seek to make a financial gain from the artist’s success. With the availability of relatively inexpensive professional recording equipment, musicians can now purchase and own the electronics they need to create their own high-quality recordings. However, the creation of a great recording requires more than a financial investment; it requires an understanding of acoustics, recording techniques that have produced great recordings of the past, and modern audio processing methods. The purpose of this treatise is to create a guide that will assist classical guitarists who wish to make their own professional recordings. This guide will include the documentation of nine significant guitar recordings from the last 60 years, and it will attempt to quantify sound relationships among these recordings via modern sound analysis tools. The documentation and sound analysis of these recordings will then be used in conjunction with current digital audio techniques to generate a guide for emulating a favored sonic architecture. This treatise should also provide guitarists with adequate knowledge concerning the production of professional recordings using modern recording tools.