Mic placement Ideas?

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wtfuhz

wtfuhz

5 dollar loud blunts
Okay, so recently I bought a couple new mics and now I'm not sure which ones I should use and where I should place them. Right now I have a Blue Spark, AKG c214, AKG Perception 170, and some 57s. I'm looking for a warm, full sound since the mix will have only vocals and guitars. Usually, I'd just play with the placement and adjust it to taste but I'm curious to see what other people would do in my situation. :drunk:
 
What instruments do you need to record, and how many? Will the guitars be played through amps? And do you want to record all the instruments at once, or will you multi-track separately?
 
wtfuhz said:
Okay, so recently I bought a couple new mics and now I'm not sure which ones I should use and where I should place them. Right now I have a Blue Spark, AKG c214, AKG Perception 170, and some 57s. I'm looking for a warm, full sound since the mix will have only vocals and guitars. Usually, I'd just play with the placement and adjust it to taste but I'm curious to see what other people would do in my situation. :drunk:
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Posts like this leave me more confused than I would be if it were written in ancient script ! I call these questions "Earth in search of a sun" questions.
Please don't take me as being rude or dismissive, I'm not. But seeing as though you have these new mics, why don't you just try them out on everything that you intend to record and see how you feel about them ? That is what you say you'd usually do. No reason to change it around !
Having done that, then you could ask people what they would do.
 
grimtraveller said:
Posts like this leave me more confused than I would be if it were written in ancient script ! I call these questions "Earth in search of a sun" questions.
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:D

Not sure why so many folks don't just dive into *experimentation*...and then ask questions later! :cool:

"Guys...I've got these mics _________ and I've tried placing them at these points _________ and this is what happens __________. Does anyone have some other ideas I could try in order to get _____________ ? "

See...when you do it that way, you've already learned a lot about your setup and how it sounds...and now your questions have some context and some reference.

I was looking for a guitar sound for a lead track I'm recording. I started last weekend and finished this weekend. After trying 5 different guitars and 4 different amps...lots of test tracks and playbacks and a lot of dialing in this-way-n-that-way...I finally found what I was looking for.
I guess I could have just asked..."I have 5 guitars and 4 amps...which combination would be best for me?" ;)

But like grimtraveller said...don't take our comments the wrong way...we ARE trying to help you help yourself...so just try out some stuff, move the mics around...make adjustments...change your room position....etc...etc....etc.
It's a great way to learn more about your gear and what it does under certain combinations....rather than have some here just tell you "Use XYZ mic and place it _______."

The most fun I had with recording was way back in the early days when I had almost no equipment and no clue about what I was doing...it was just one long endless experiment, but boy I had a lot of fun playing around with everything and learning.
 
miroslav said:
Not sure why so many folks don't just dive into *experimentation*...and then ask questions later! :cool:
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Yep. That's the fun part of music production. Trying different things out to find your sound. There's so many variables to mic placement, that it makes more sense to just try out what you have with what you know and adjust accordingly.
 
If your room sucks close mic. Period.

You don't say if you are recording electric or acoustic guitars. You also don't say what kind of mic amps you are using. When I think of inexpensive condensors the words "warm sound" don't really come to mind. But maybe that's just me. For "warm" acoustic guitar sound I would say start by having well-played strings that aren't super new and bright but will still stay in tune. Be prepared to roll off some of the highs and mids but do it post tracking.

For electric start with the 57 on the grill or a few inches out. Put the mic closer to the edge of the speaker for more bass or right in the center for max treble response from the speaker. If you want some room in the take set up the c214 2-3 feet (or more depending how much room you want) in front of the amp. You may have to align tracks later due to phase differences. Sound travels at about 1 foot/millisecond.

For acoustic guitar there are a few different techniques that are good starting points. One is simply pointing a mic at the 12th fret or neck/body joint about 4-6-8" out. Or pointing the mic just below the soundhole. Or pointing the mic at the body BEHIND the bridge. Or putting the mic up about shoulder-high with the capsule facing to the floor about 2-3 inches in front of the plane created by the top of the guitar. This tech is best if you have a good sounding room to begin with. Another good place to start if you have a good room is put the mic about 2-3 feet in front of your acoustic guitar. You need quiet mic amps for this too.

Try any of those and you'll find big up-front sounds and not-so-up-front sounds.

Track at about -18dBFS for peaks. This will leave you plenty of headroom for later mixing and FX. -18dBFS (digital) = 0dBVU (analog).
 
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I had to reframe my response from a one-liner to chapter form.

:D
 
And honestly, the last thing I want to do is spend an entire day dicking around with this or that. If I wanted to focus on minutiae I would go clean my garage. I just wanna play and get a good take. Experimenting is fun and I'll turn on the Voyager and let it drone away and twist knobs like I'm tuning in Tokyo. I could do that for hours and have done it for hours.

But when I get the mics and all that bullshit out it's time to make something happen. I go with the tried-and-true methods and try to focus on playing the line right at least once during the session.
 
c7sus said:
But when I get the mics and all that bullshit out it's time to make something happen. I go with the tried-and-true methods and try to focus on playing the line right at least once during the session.
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Yes...I totally agree.

These days, when I'm going to be tracking stuff...the last thing I'm doing is messing with a lot of mics and positions.
I may try out a few different amps or guitars for some things if I'm really looking for something different or something that needs to fit in a very tight spot in the overall mix...but most cases I know what amp I'm probably going to use and it may come down to a couple of guitars.
Like I mentioned earlier in the thread...I spent some time last weekend and again this weekend looking for a very specific guitar sound, and while I knew how to get pretty close to it regardless which amp/guitar I was using, I was sure that one combination would probably stick out above the rest...so it was time for some experimentation, and for me, experimenting with guitar tones is actually a lot of fun, because in most cases, I'm not even quite sure what I want to play...so I kill two birds with one stone...finding the right tone and working out my lead lines.

That said...you, me and a lot of other guys here have done this stuff a many times before...so of course we already have a pretty good idea what we need to do and how to do it, but for newbs, I think they should spend a LOT of time just experimenting. They need to know what doesn't work as much as they need to know what works. If they are just told how to do it, they don't appreciate it or understand why that works and something else doesn't...plus, like I said, experimenting in the studio is a lot of fun, as I'm sure most people will agree. :)
 
I get the thing about experimenting with mics because after a while you start recognizing the mic and how you use it is as much of an instrument as a guitar or amp or voice or whatever.

I think the same thing applies to higher-end preamps and channel strips too.

I also think it's good to have some baseline or fundamentals to refer to.

I actually don't record as much as many around here do. Frankly I find it as tedious as building watches. I'd rather play and try to get better chops. Recording broke me down to trying to play a verse or chorus or whatever EXACTLY right and I got to the point I couldn't play anything anymore. I'm sick of computers and Sonar patches that bluescreen and have half a mind to get either an 8-track reel-to-reel or an ADAT to make loops to jam against. Seems like every time I have a somewhat cool idea the computer craps out one way or another and the cool ideas go out the window.

But RR has its own set of problems too.

So I'd rather just play for now. Maybe when I can swing a new computer I'll mess around with it some more.
 
I know what you mean!

There are days where the juices are flowing...and I'm stuck soldering a connection, or trying to figure out why some pedal is causing noise today when it wasn't yesterday, or why isn't my synth responding to a MIDI command from the computer....etc...etc...etc. :D

You know, you might do good with a basic tape deck setup...just a straightforward mixer/deck setup. You might even try one of those tape or digital "porta potty" ;) rigs where it's all in one box...that way you're just hitting RECORD and you can focus on the playing.

I'll spend some days just playing...maybe I'll spin some tape or go direct to the computer...and just keep playing/recording, without even worrying about getting perfect recordings...just playing. That way I can get some good raw/fresh ideas down.
Then when it's time to record...I focus more on getting the engineering setup right, and hope the playing will be there too.
Some days, as I mentioned previously, I'll work on the playing and the recording setup at the same time...that way, by the time the playing is where I want it to be, the recording setup has also been fine-tuned.
 
c7sus said:
And honestly, the last thing I want to do is spend an entire day dicking around with this or that. If I wanted to focus on minutiae I would go clean my garage. I just wanna play and get a good take. Experimenting is fun and I'll turn on the Voyager and let it drone away and twist knobs like I'm tuning in Tokyo. I could do that for hours and have done it for hours.

But when I get the mics and all that bullshit out it's time to make something happen. I go with the tried-and-true methods and try to focus on playing the line right at least once during the session.
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I agree with this in part. But it's people that have been recording for a while that reap the benefits of their earlier experimentation and who know exactly where to put the mics for a session and they become the tried and the true.
I used to be a trial and errorist and the experimentation of placement would be the take. It was a long and convoluted way of going about things and some great takes weren't captured well. But I could never go through that thing of put a mic here, record it, see how it sounds etc because it was never going to be in the context of the mix. But one lives and learns. I think of it as ultimately balancing the sounds you have.
The other thing is that I think too much is made of the time taken in experimenting and placement. It need not take all year !
 
Thanks for all the helpful feedback! Looking back at my original post, I wasn't too clear. I'm recording acoustic guitars and I'm having a little issue with having too much bass when I strum. I have the mic about 1 foot away from the 12th pointed at the soundhole. Too close?
 
wtfuhz said:
Thanks for all the helpful feedback! Looking back at my original post, I wasn't too clear. I'm recording acoustic guitars and I'm having a little issue with having too much bass when I strum. I have the mic about 1 foot away from the 12th pointed at the soundhole. Too close?
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I think pointing it at the soundhole is your bass problem. Have you tried a second mic angled more towards the 12th fretboard or bridge? Or angling the single mic a little differently?
 
I actually have a mic at the first fret because I read somewhere that that was an area with some good highs. I could try putting my second mic on the bridge for less bass
 
wtfuhz said:
I actually have a mic at the first fret because I read somewhere that that was an area with some good highs. I could try putting my second mic on the bridge for less bass
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Stick with getting decent sound from ONE MIC for now. Any of the mics you mentioned should be able to do very decent quality reproduction of whatever you put in front of them.

The mic at the 12th fret needs to be pointed at the bottom side of the neck for less bass.

Are you using headphones to dial in the sweet spot or just doing takes and listening and not liking?

Get some headphones on and find the sound you are looking for with mic and instrument positioning before you get anywhere near the red button.

Like I said earlier, mics are instruments. If what you are getting is too boomy or too thin POINT THE MIC SOMEWHERE ELSE OR MOVE IT IN PROXIMITY TO THE INSTRUMENT. Just a few mm can make a huge difference in response.

But wear headphones while you do this.

Here is another important point:

Chances are you've never had your ear 12 inches away from the 12th fret of a guitar while somebody was playing it.

So you are hearing THAT particular sound for the first time, through mics that may or may not be properly placed.

The acoustic guitar tone you are used to hearing is actually from 2 feet above the soundhole and BEHIND it, where your ears are.

What make and model of guitar are you recording. Don't say Taylor 'cause we'll know you're lying.
 
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It would also be most helpful for you to read Harvey Gerst's big sticky thread in the Mic Forum about mic patterns and how to use mics to take advantage of the various properties inherent to each pattern.

Like the knowledge that cardioid mics can have a pronounced proximity effect that can make your takes sound boomy.

Stuff like that.
 
Hahaha actually, I am using a Taylor 310 in open C tuning. That's why there's so much bass that I'm trying to control. My room isn't too bad since I have a few traps in here.
 
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