acoustic Girl said:
want a good challenge?? mic this group
senerio:cinder block garage w/ concrete floors metal doors...60 by 60 by 20 i have to mic an acoustic guitar, keyboard, bass guitar, cellist, trumpter-singing, sax-also singing), drummer(snare,bass,two toms, hight hat, 3 cymbols, timpani, triangle, 3 female background vocals?
That's my kind of group. Trumpeter/singer....
Since you don't say how many of each mic, I'm going to assume infinitely many.
There are two schools of thought.
The first school: less is more
The first school of thought---and the one that I would tend to go with---is to take a pair of small diaphragm condensers and mount them in a coincident pair a good ways out. Then add a decent vocal mic, since the vocalist almost invariably ends up needing to be turned up in post.
Cover the floor with old blankets. Add some anchors into the block walls and fasten hooks. Attach old blankets to the hooks to cover the walls as much as possible. Cover the entire garage door, or better yet, open the garage door.
Next, begin taking these coverings away until the room ceases to be completely dead, but make sure you can't hear any really bad slapping when you clap your hands. If you do, you have two hard, parallel surfaces and one of them should probably be covered.
A good trick to avoid being too live or dead is to alternate sections. Make one section covered, the next section not. Alternate them in the opposite order on the other wall so that anywhere you have a hard surface on one wall, you have a soft surface on the opposite wall and vice-versa.
The second school: more is more
The other school is to mic everything... and I mean everything... with appropriate mics. I'll cover that as best I can, but... that's one hairy arrangement of people.
Acoustic guitar: pickups if you've got 'em. With that much sound, you're going to have trouble doing this with mics.... Otherwise... probably a pair of small diaphragm condensers, but failing that, a well-placed SM57 would be okay. You might also consider a carefully placed piezo mic stuck to the body, but there's definitely an art to EQing the heck out of the results.
Keyboard: direct in, unless you mean piano, in which case it depends on upright vs. grand vs. electric.
Bass guitar: direct in. You can always reamp it later if you want a particular sound.
cellist... two large diaphragm condensers (e.g. a c4000). One in front of the f holes just far enough out that the cellist doesn't keep bumping it, the other about three feet behind the cellist. If you don't have enough of these, drop the one behind the cellist and put the cellist directly in front of the miked guitarist unless the guitarist has pickups, in which case... invest in a set of bridge-mounted pickups and use this to supplement the front mic.
Trumpter-singing: Ribbon mic for the trumpet if you've got it. Otherwise,
Shure 565SD or other Unisphere III. Buy one on eBay. For the vocals, either a ribbon or LDC (e.g. a c4000) where the player can turn 45 degrees and have it in his/her face. Get the player a stool.
Sax-also singing: see trumpet, except that you'd probably be better off with a bit warmer dynamic like an SM58 or something. Hmm. Try the Opus 59/59A and see how it behaves. Worth a shot.
Drummer(snare, bass, two toms, high hat, 3 cymbals): Two SDCs (e.g. your
Beta 98s) for overheads (position to suit), one AKG D112 (or a Shure Beta 52 to stick with that line) inside the kick drum about three inches or so from being opposite the beater. Definitely find yourself a kick mic. I don't see anything in your list that I would expect to do well for that application, though since you have a whole fleet of drum mics on that list, I'm guessing you probably bought a Shure mic kit or something and simply forgot to mention it.
If you find the toms don't project enough, either add one of the Beta 56 mics (or Opus 62 mics if you'd prefer) to each tom (I prefer them on the bottom, but other people will probably disagree... point the back rejection node towards the other tom if you can) or get yourself a couple of AKG D2300S mics---they're not the greatest mics in the world, but I like them for bringing out toms in a mix-cutting sort of way, and they're pretty cheap.
timpani: Oh, heck, never miked one. If I were to venture a guess... probably a pair of similar LDCs (e.g. your C4000s), one set to figure 8, one set to cardiod, pointed in a mid-side arrangement, then use a mid-side decoder plug-in to convert this to a stereo image. Set that up about three feet above and just in front of the center tympani. Be aware that I' totally guessing here, though, and particularly about placement....
triangle: position this near the kit and it should be picked up in the overheads. It will cut through on its own; you shouldn't need to mic it separately.
3 female background vocals: share a LDC (e.g. a c4000) and make sure they back off from it a couple of feet so they don't overpower the lead. (Singing quietly or ducking the level just doesn't give the same effect.)
Finally, bury the boundary mics in your back yard.
Good freaking luck.
