Mic'ing acoustic old time band

[crazydoc]

If I were to record an old time/bluegrass band in a living room, I thought of doing it in the round with two MK 319's set facing away from each other a foot or two apart. I'd put the bass at one relative low level position from the two cardioid patterns, as the bass frequencies are picked up more omnidirectionally. I'd put the banjo at the opposite low point to keep it from being so fucking loud.

Everybody sings except the autoharpist, so the bass and banjo players might not be as audible as I'd like.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

 

[kid klash]

Sounds like a clever solution... try it out and report back with your conclusion.

 

[jnorman]

i wouldnt recommend your proposed setup - you will not get a realistic soundstage that way (ie, weird imaging). there are basically two principal methods of recording a live acoustic group like this - a main stereo pair to capture the group as an ensemble, or individually micing each instrument. with your octava's, you should try an ORTF or NOS setup about 6-8 feet out from the group arranged in a semi-circle. you will do better with a nice pair of small condensers, such as km184s, cmc64s, akg c480s or similar, in ORTF, due to their superior off-axis and transient response. scott fraser, who mics the kronos quartet, uses a single km150 on each instrument and mixes to taste (also my prefered method these days for chamber music). i have used both these methods with good results, but typically you will need a pretty nice sounding room to use just a stereo pair. you and the group need to do a little experimenting before you begin. try the blumlein setup (or ORTF sd condensers if you have them), and then try close mics (2-3 feet out) on each instrument, and see which setup you guy slike best. good luck.

 

[sloop]

I wouldn't do it this way

this is not a good representation of the sound. I would place the group in a semi circle and use either an XY stereo pair or a ORTF stereo pair.

Other option would be to mic everything separately then deal with it in the mix. A stereo pair on the group and individual vocal mics can also work well.

Good luck and play around. You'll get something nice.

 

[DJL]

I too would place the group in a semi circle and use either an XY stereo pair or an omni and record them in mono.... if neither worked the way we wanted, I'd mic everything.

 

[crazydoc]

Thanks for all your helpful responses.

I was hoping that putting the two tracks together would superimpose the two banjo images in the middle, and the bass would be at the far side of each track, and since bass is poorly directional it would also seem to emanate from the center (if there were no phasing problems.)

One problem is that there's not quite enough room in the space to record in a semicircle. The room is about 8 feet wide and 15 feet long, and has some furniture that's hard to move.

Another is that the band hates mics and recording, and I just wanted to put a couple of mics up in the middle and let them forget about them. Individual mic'ing is not going to happen.

Well, I'll keep thinking about it.