Recording guitars

[MadMax]

I know it's been beat to death, but why doesn't anybody ever talk about distance or room micing? When I'm playing thru my Marshall, the sound I hear and love is at my ears, not right on the grill of tha cab. Why not stereo mic at exactly my listening position?
Or is the issue one of not capturing the sound of the solo amp, but one that will sit well in a mix?

[Nick The Man]

try it.........

[gummblefish]

Umm, yeah what he says .
The Home-recordists Creed
You should try everything, get to know what things sound like, how sources interact with the microphone and environment. Only then can you really make judgements about how something will sound in the mix. You should never get complacent with the way you work, or get too fixed in your ways. Try your crazy ideas, Most will never work, some will, but alas all will expand your ability to create. Always strive for "your" sound, for it is only that, that is truely yours alone. Reflect this individuality with the souce and you will open a whole new world of invention. Every song is different, the day they stop being so, the day our job ends. Above all, Have Fun, be safe in the knowledge that theres always tomorrow, and you havent booked time in a top studio.

[MadMax]

Well, I'm trying to get the big studio sound. And from what I've been reading, they always talk about close micing with a 57 or a 421 or a royer 121.
But as a guitar player, the sound I want to hear is the sound at my ears when I'm playing.
I guess my question is, obviously it's been tried, but what about it doesn't work? Is it that the ambience of the room is just too hard to mix? Does it make the guitar too big for a mix?

[RAMI]

Stop reading for a minute and TRY IT.

[mixsit]

Originally Posted by MadMax

Well, I'm trying to get the big studio sound. And from what I've been reading, they always talk about close micing with a 57 or a 421 or a royer 121.
But as a guitar player, the sound I want to hear is the sound at my ears when I'm playing.
I guess my question is, obviously it's been tried, but what about it doesn't work? Is it that the ambience of the room is just too hard to mix? Does it make the guitar too big for a mix?

It can work fine.
There's the whole scale from 'close up, 'in your face, 'hyper-intimate to fully back and deep.
'Might try a combo of close' and mono or a pair up nearer where you're hearing it on separate track so you can blend and experiment with it -or just try far' sets alone.
The far' mic distance may not want to be as far as where your ears are to get in the ballpark. We can focus in on things live in a way a mic can't.
And it will depend on how much space you want to give it in the mix.
Wayne

[stickbugg]

Know that if you go close up to eliminate as much room noise as possible, that you can add reverb and the such later. Just make sure that if you're gonna move your mic away to get some room noise, that you don't over do it.

[MadMax]

Originally Posted by RAMI

Stop reading for a minute and TRY IT.

I will when my 121 & pre's get here.

I just know that close micing will capture the single speaker, but the magic of a Marshall cabinet is thr OOMPH of the 4-12's. I've heard of using LDC's on the back of the cab. to capture this.

[killmachine]

I love double micing with a room mic and close mic. The problem and I think the tendency why most tend to avoid, is due to 1. phase problems which are almost unavoidable but can be at least controlled. 2. bad room treatment which results in less than favorable room reverb. I mean double micing a cab in a 9 x 11 room is really gonna give you that sound your looking for.

[sirguitar]

If you are going to stereo mic your amp add an 11ms slap back delay on one side and a 23 ms slap back delay on the other side then right left the pans

[mixsit]

Originally Posted by MadMax

I will when my 121 & pre's get here.

Ooh you gona' like that one. That's a sweet one.

[thedude400]

Ambient miking is cool and all but when it comes to getting guitars tracked well, I've always sorta liked that close up, "in your face" sound. At least thats what my goal has always been to try to capture.

But I must say I'm kind of excited to try combining a room mic and a close mic with my strat and my mesa DC-2 and see what I can come up with.

[killmachine]

just remeber about phase issues, cause your gonna have a least some regardless of how much work you do, but they can at least be minimized.

[Creamyapples1]

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Micing the back of a speaker through an open backed combo/cab is pretty sweet. I would still use two mics on the front, be it up close or further back, but the 3rd on an open back is pretty sweet.

[gcapel]

It also depends on your guitar tone from your amp. For me I get great ambiant large diaphram recordings using a clean tone. Now for high gain tube distortion I use a Senn 421 close up.

Thats; just me.

[Dani Pace]

Micing an amp (with room mics) will work fine if you are doing one track at a time. Different mic placement can have a big affect on the sound you record, for example, cloce up seems to capture sounds like the "ping" of a Telecaster while a little distance can capture the "growl" of a Les Paul better. This isn't any sort of set rule, just an observation. Don't be afraid to try variations, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Aside from the obvious phase problems you may encounter with room mics, your room will make a lot of difference in what will work and what wont. What you hear and what the mic "hears" may not be exactly the same. Mic placement is largely a matter of experimentation to find what works to get the sound you want. You might try two mics, at ear level, pointed away from each other (like your ears) and not pointed dirrectly at the amp, this may or may not work. You know what you want to hear on the recording, just keep rearrainging the mics untill you get it. Once you find it, remember what you did so you can do it again.

[Hollowdan]

Hey max, give this a shot. Run your guitar into a direct box before the amp and run it on a seperate track clean. Put an md421 (assuming you have one) on the speaker grill on the lowest spkr close to the ground. Next put up the 121's (damnit I want a pair too lol) in whatever stereo configuration you like (try them all) so you will have 3 mics and 1 direct track recording to 4 different tracks. (Hopefully you are running a good software program like cubase, pro tools, or sonor) then turn the reverb OFF completely on the amp. After you record a guitar track, grab and slide all the mic tracks (one at a time) to match up to the direct track. The biggest problem with recording away from the cabinet is that the time alignment gets looser the further away you get. This causes the recording to sound muddy, phased, and all around sloppy. If you record a clean direct track straight from the guitar then align all the mic tracks to that clean track (of course delete the direct track after you get the desired sound) it should solve the phased, loose, muddiness problem. If you are not getting enough low rumble, try an LDC (like an AT 4040) sitting in a short mic stand (without a shockmount) on the ground about a foot or so in front of the cabinets. Then use a low cut at about 80hz just to kill the actual mud. Give it a shot and anything else you can think of, and remember if all else fails just have your cats/dogs run around in the room and knock all the mics over then hit record! LOL hey you never know! Happy accidents RULE! Hope this helps a little bit at least, Dan

[MadMax]

Dan, ypu gptta come over and check ouy my rig. I just got the royer.

[killmachine]

hollowdan, that's a good idea. Good thoughts about fixing phase problems without and flipping or anything else. A lot of work, but I'm sure it'll pay off.

Good Advice!!!

[LeeRosario]

Originally Posted by MadMax

I know it's been beat to death, but why doesn't anybody ever talk about distance or room micing? When I'm playing thru my Marshall, the sound I hear and love is at my ears, not right on the grill of tha cab. Why not stereo mic at exactly my listening position?
Or is the issue one of not capturing the sound of the solo amp, but one that will sit well in a mix?

Well ideally, thats what we want to happen. For whatever we hear to come out exactly on tape. Except it gets complex, because our hearing mechanism is complex and mics can't do an absolute perfect job of recreating how we hear sounds.

The closest thing to "lifelike" listening is the binural head, which uses a dummy head with high grade mics inside the ears. You can walk around it and it feels like it's really happening around you. Even then, the binural head can't really replicate the fluids in our head and the fact that we have shoulders which affect our listening.

Some people actually position that in front of the drum as overheads or ambient mics and they get really good sounds.


Other than that, it's really in the different patterns you can use in tracking. Your X/Ys and spread pairs. Then your T-Tree set up, really good for just capturing a solid lifelike stereo image from one general location (orchestral). The list goes on.


But really what it turns into is a matter of accepting the realities and physics of the tracking/mixing process. Some people may find better results by DIing everything and then completely adding ambience artifically later on.


Others might have an awesome room to track in and utilize the room as an effect itself. I honestly prefer the later method, just that it becomes really hard to find a good space to do that in. Cause it is forgotten that the room is a major part of the equation. Shitty rooms mean shitty depection of depth and ambience.

Plus, as a means of getting contrast in mixing, it helps to know that DIing stuff will have a different color/feel/presence than a miced cab. You might want that at some point (whether something will stick out or stay recessed in the mix)

And let's face it, a good track/mix engineer is measured by the time based FX (including the room) he has and how he uses it. Or at least one of the major factors I should say.


But really it can be done at the home. A simple way is to use to good mics (that you feel are good to do this). Say like take a LDC and put it on the grill to your liking. Then perhaps take your other LDC and position it somewhere in the room distant to that mic. If you think about it, that mic is sorta acting like a lifelike "superduper convolution reverb" plugin. So instead of adjusting parameters on a plug-in, you're doing that through mic placement, mic selection, room treatment, the gear you use to record with and whatever else your imagination can think of.

At that point, spend all the hours you have to in search of the perfect setup for that room. Position mics farther or closer, angle then, twist them...whatever you feel will get the sound. Mark it with tape if you have to.

Then mixing wise you treat that as two seperate tracks. For example, maybe you'd have your dry track panned hard right with the ambience in the middle. Then you can decide how much of the wet to dry you want by using your faders.

That's how alot of the engineers I've met have done it. They took the time (hours to days) to find what they felt was the absolute best setup for something, then remembered it for next time. From that point on, total setup time can't be more than 30minutes, since you already spent that time in the beggining to see what works and what dosn't.


Just some food for thought.