Microphone Advice For A Session

  • Thread starter Thread starter chrisharris
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John Willett said:
I would record it with a simple stereo pair and capture the sound in the room as the audience would hear it.

I would use a simple ORTF pair, an MS rig or a Jecklin disk. The final choice would depend on the room.

What I would not do is to close mic. the guitar and voice separately.
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chrisharris said:
How would you start off with mic placement if you were only using 2?

By the way, I appreciate the responses. I don't know what ORTF and "MS rig" means, but you guys obviously do this more than I do. I usually just point a mic at a source until I like the sound, but I'm used to tracking one acoustic source at a time.
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You only have 2 ears - so you only need 2 mics.

ORTF was a method invented by French Radio - you use two cardioid mics. with the capsules 17cm apart and an angle of 110° between them.

MS is "Mid/Sides" - you use whatever pattern you want pointing forwards (normally cardioid, though) and a fig-8 pointing sideways with the +ve lobe pointing left. These matrix out to an XY pair of super-cardioids.


Either of these will approximate the sound as you would hear it with your ears.

Add more microphones and you start having multi-path distortion, which gets worst the more mics you add.

Close mic'ing is not stereo in the proper sense, but "pan-pot mono".

A guitar and voice is a natural singing method and a proper stereo recording captures that magic, rather than trying to artificially create a product - which is what multi-tracking or multi-mic'ing would do.

A simple stereo recording would be much nicer to listen to and enjoy IMHO.

I have heard multi-mic'ed recordings and they just sound "wrong" and are not very enjoyable.

I hope this helps.
 
Here is a picture of my last session:

20070201_dylan_studio_3.jpg
 
John Willett said:
You only have 2 ears - so you only need 2 mics.

ORTF was a method invented by French Radio - you use two cardioid mics. with the capsules 17cm apart and an angle of 110° between them.

MS is "Mid/Sides" - you use whatever pattern you want pointing forwards (normally cardioid, though) and a fig-8 pointing sideways with the +ve lobe pointing left. These matrix out to an XY pair of super-cardioids.


Either of these will approximate the sound as you would hear it with your ears.

Add more microphones and you start having multi-path distortion, which gets worst the more mics you add.

Close mic'ing is not stereo in the proper sense, but "pan-pot mono".

A guitar and voice is a natural singing method and a proper stereo recording captures that magic, rather than trying to artificially create a product - which is what multi-tracking or multi-mic'ing would do.

A simple stereo recording would be much nicer to listen to and enjoy IMHO.

I have heard multi-mic'ed recordings and they just sound "wrong" and are not very enjoyable.

I hope this helps.
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Thank you for taking the time to post that
 
chrisharris said:
I appreciate the response. I have one mic that can be placed in a fig8 configuration...I've never used that configuration... How does one have "null pointed at the guitar?"

:D
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Fig8 mics have a very strong null 90 degrees off axis (i.e., the "side" of the mic). Point the front of the mic at the voice, and the side of the mic at the guitar. For the fig8 guitar mic, point the front at the guitar and the side at the voice. You need 2 fig8 mics to do the full deal.
 
gehauser said:
Fig8 mics have a very strong null 90 degrees off axis (i.e., the "side" of the mic). Point the front of the mic at the voice, and the side of the mic at the guitar. For the fig8 guitar mic, point the front at the guitar and the side at the voice. You need 2 fig8 mics to do the full deal.
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Thank you for taking the time to explain. Will try ASAP.
 
mshilarious said:
Here is a picture of my last session:
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Hi...can I email you or something? You're pretty famous. I feel like a retard for not knowing that you made mics. Let's work out a deal where I pay you money and you take it???
 
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