Here is the first song I recorded, mixed, and -ahem- "mastered" in reaper only. It's basically me, my acoustic axe, and a shure '57. Ok the song is spanned on wayy too many tracks and overdubs...and it has truckload of plugins running too, but still, its very bare bones compared to the full fledged bands i'm used to fiddle with. My main gripes are the vocal compression, and the essssssssssssssses. I have a very dynamic voice that goes from a whisper to a hurricane in a blink of an eye. So, if I set the threshold too low, it hits the red when I give 'er, and if set it higher, you don't hear the soft parts. Tried to fiddle with the ratio, but a higher ratio kills everything, and a lower one dosen't have enough teeth, and the vocal level becomes VERY uneven. Tried quite a few different ones, but to no avail...so I had to live with a bit of distortion on vocals. GRRAH! help please? as for the esssssssssssssssssssses, I tried the reafir set on compression, and zeroed the offending freqs...Works well until I start signing loud...Then my VOICE triggers the damn thing, and I sound like I sing through a phone...so I removed it. I give up! Any advice would be appreciated.

acoustic and vocals are usually tricky to pull off. But SM57 works pretty good. First, I would get the lead vocal all on one track, if not done already. Then arm the track for Automation, and ride the fader. You can watch the meters as you move the fader and try to keep the signal hitting the same loudness during each syllable, say -15db or so. Doesn't have to be exact, your ear will tell you what's best. You'll probably have to do many passes before you are happy. I'd also strip down the acoustic to one take. One voice, one guitar. The acoustic just needs to watch for loud transient spikes that you can ride the fader to reduce. Also timing issues = no good, so cut and paste might be needed. Get those sounding to as near perfect as you can, then one by one introduce the layers and effects.

thanks! ill definitely try to "ride the fader". But the effects are pre fader right? So....Should I buss the resulting audio to another track, and put the effects on that other track? Am I in the ballpark? As for the vocals, yeah, they are already on one track....But you want me to remove my back vocals? And remove the excessive guitar tracks? Hmmm I'm not that much of a signer, and even a lesser guitar player.... I'm not convinced I want to "reveal" how bad I am by removing all the artifacts. But ill give it a go...And maybe re-record the acoustic to be a bit tighter. Your comments are really appreciated, and thanks again.

It does sound very good, and you are on the right course! I agree that its very hard to make a good solo acoustic/vocal track. Nuances get lost and hardly matter in a full band mix, but in an acoustic/vocal mix every nuance becomes front and center, and very important. When you have layered guitar and vocals, then the layers' nuances start to become very front and center as well. I wanted to mention that you can certainly add multiple tracks for both guitar and voice and double everything up, use effects, etc. I liked the effects and doubling you are using, pretty neat kind of sound! If you feel like taking it to the next level, try to get the layers to line up, beat by beat, note by note. When each note starts and stops at the same moment on each of the takes, layers will blend together nicely as one sound. For a layered acoustic/vocal mix to get to that point it can take a lot of tracking and editing though.