Mic placement for Violinist

[jhughs]

Anyone have experience recording a single violin?
What's a recommended microphone placement(s)?
Above or straight in front? Close enough to hear the bow scrape or back off a few feet?
Thanks.

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

I recorded a sole violinist one time. After some experimenting I found I got the best results by putting them in a semi-live room that was roughly 16x24 and distance mic'ing it (approximately 8-10') with an AKG 414.

 

[mshilarious]

It depends, of course. What sound are you going for? You can mic anywhere from soundboard level up, from 2' all the way out to where Cloneboy suggested. It would be very unusual to close mic a violin. Ribbons, SDCs, and LDCs are all used, and will yield very different sounds.

Can you tell us what type of sound you are trying to achieve, what the space is like, and what mics you have available?

 

[jhughs]

Room & Equipt

First, this is my first attempt at decent home recording (I'm familiar with sound systems from being in bands and working the mixing board (Yamaha OV1) at church). I'd been using a Sony ECM330 directly into the computer mic port (yeah, it records sounds but not anything that's worth the time it took to record).

So, I'm planning to get a Yamaha MG10/2 mixer and an Audio Technica AT3035. (Please tell me I can expect vastly improved recordings.) I'll run the mixer output into a laptop PC line-in. I'm just using that to capture the WAV files - I'll do additional work on a desktop.

The quitest room in the house, which is the one I plan to use, is my daughter's bedroom that is about 13 x 14.

The styles played are classical, which will just be the violin by itself, and bluegrass fiddle, to which I'll later add an acoustic guitar track and maybe, on occasion, a dobro.