Need ideas on mic placement and selection

[CajunMan]

I will be recording an acoustic cajun band at my house next week. The band consist of accordion/vocals, two fiddles, and an acoustic guitar. They want to record "live" playing all together in one room. I need some suggestions on how I should mic them. I have the following equipment, a VS1880 recorder, a SP B1 mic, a AKG C3000B, two Oktava MK012s, four SM57s, one SM58, an SP VTB1 pre, a Behringer T1953 ultragain pre, and an Audio Buddy pre. Should I mic every instrument and say damn with the bleed, or should I just use two or three mics to capture the room sound. They are open to doing the vocals later if that would make it easier. All suggestions are more than welcome. Thanks in advance.

 

[chessrock]

Should I mic every instrument and say damn with the bleed, or should I just use two or three mics to capture the room sound. They are open to doing the vocals later if that would make it easier. All suggestions are more than welcome. Thanks in advance.

If it were me, I would do both.

I would stick the AKG in front of the accoustic guitar, the B1 on the accordian, and 57's on the two fiddles.

I'd then place the two oktavas in a stereo spread several feet back in order to get the bigger picture of everyone in the room.

At mixdown time, you'll then have the option of mixing the individual tracks (with bleed) . . . or just using the two room mics, although my guess would be that you would probably use some combination of both. But this way, you'd have the option of deciding at mixdown . . . rather than committing to one method and later deciding that you'd wished you'd done it the other way.

 

[Digital Reason]

Should I mic every instrument and say damn with the bleed, or should I just use two or three mics to capture the room sound.

I would say use accent mics mixed with room mics, (Same as mentioned above) use your ear to experiment with different mic placements and mic selection to find what works best.

Just on the topic of bleed for a moment, when close mic'ing the instrument in this situation have ALL OF THE PLAYERS play along with the instrument that you are getting settings for. The purpose for this is to listen to the bleed of the other instruments. Bleed dosen't matter as long as it sounds natural, if instrument A is bleeding into instrument B's microphone it should not be boomy, hissy, squaky etc, natural sound is the key. Adjust mics to find the best compromise between the bleed and the main instrument being recorded.

Also, many open microphones in one room can sound good on their own but when you put them all together you could very well experience some heavy phase problems. To combat this check EACH TRACK against EACH TRACK after the set up is done before recording. (for example bring up track 1 and 2 and listen for any phase problems, then check track 1 and 3, 1 and 4, 1 and 5, 2 and 3, 2 and 4, 2 and 5, and so an and so on. until you have eliminated all phasing problems).

Just a note from experience. I have had a few gigs in the past where I was recording bluegrass music. 6 to 9 players in 1 small room no seperation, no headphones just a couple of baffles and some creative mic placement. First time I took a shot at it I got the perfect sounds for individual instruments then put all of the tracks into record and hit the deadly red button. There was bleed that sounded like stomach rumblings and instruments tracked through a tellephone I also had so many phase problems that I think I launched myself into an alternate dimention for a few minutes. I had recorded my self into a huge corner and thought that I could fix it in the mix. (Good luck on me, guess what didn't work) anywayz bottom line is to get all sounds while tracking so when it comes time to mix all you have to do is push faders to the proper levels and not worry about phase or even EQ for that matter (Or little EQ to worry about). I know that the above has been said a thousand times over and I am sorry for repeating it but in a situation like this the above comes into play first and foremost.

Just my thoughts, hope this helps.
Jeff

www.reasondisappears.com

 

[littledog]

I recorded my very first accordian for an Argentinian folk music project recently. The musician suggested I use a pair of condensers, one on either side of the instrument, as the sound comes out of both sides. Worked pretty well.