Guitar Lovers

MICROPHONE TIPS

The microphone is where it all starts—the sound is never going to get any better than it does when it is captured by the mic. You can tweak it, twist it, slice it, dice it, and squash it, but the quality of the raw miked sound is essential to the final results. These tips will help you optimize your miked signals.

11. Mono Miking
One mic will give you a tight, punchy track.
Should you use one or two mics on your guitar? The answer depends on the result you want. For a driving, hard-strummed track in a band context, one mic will create a tight, punchy sound without taking up too much room in the mix.

12. Stereo Miking
Use two mics for a complete picture of your guitar.
For a solo guitar track—fingerstyle or picked—two mics will give a broader, deeper, more spacious sound, with width that fills both speakers. Two mics can also be positioned to capture a more complete “picture” of the guitar than a single mic can.

13. Multiple-Mic Solutions
Make sure your tracks are in phase.
If you’re using more than one microphone on a source, or if you’re recording more than one instrument at a time and the sound from one instrument is getting into another instrument’s mic, you could have phase issues caused by the different arrival times of the sound waves at different mics. “Out-of-phase” tracks have a hollow, empty sound when combined. Most mixers (software or hardware) include a phase switch for each channel; try it both on and off. One position will usually sound noticeably better than the other.

14. Tracking Guitar and Voice
Use mic polar patterns to isolate tracks.
Tracking someone who plays and sings at the same time can be a real challenge—it’s difficult to isolate the guitar from the vocal so that each can be treated differently during mixdown. There are several things you can do to increase isolation between the two. Place the mics as close as possible to the guitar and the singer’s mouth. Take advantage of the mic polar patterns—cardioid, figure-eight, hypercardioid; all these mic patterns have “nulls” where they don’t pick up sound well. Try to position the nulls for the guitar and vocal mics so they aren’t picking up the other source. Depending on the song and performance, I prefer to just go with it—either live with the bleed between the guitar and vocal or use one well-placed mic pulled back a bit to capture both. The result will be a natural, “you are there” recording of the performance.

15. Recording More Than One Player
Make the performers comfortable.
As a recording engineer, my goal is to capture a great performance. When recording more than one player simultaneously, I make sure the performers are set up so they are completely comfortable, then I’ll place my mics to capture the sound as well as I can. As in Tip No. 14, try to place the mic “nulls” so that there is as much isolation between the performers as possible, and consider putting something between them—a sofa, a divider, whatever you have, in order to improve isolation. Or, again, just go with it: place mics in front of the performers and capture a “you are there” recording of the performance where everyone happily bleeds into everyone else’s mic.

16. Size Matters
Experiment with different mic types.
Should you use a large- or a small-diaphragm mic to record? For vocals—and vocal-like instruments, such as wind instruments—large-diaphragms are the standard. For acoustic guitar, in general, small-diaphragm mics will give you more detail and clarity while large-diaphragms will provide a fuller, punchier sound. Having said that, experiment! Try each type and see which you prefer.

17. Omnidirectional Mics
For natural sound and room ambience, try an omni.
Omnidirectional microphones mics pick up sound well from all directions. The advantage is that they will give you an even, balanced sound and good dynamic response, with no proximity effect (bass boost), even with the mic very close to the guitar. You also get some room ambience, resulting in a more natural sound. The disadvantage is that there is no isolation—the mic will pick up everything in the room to some degree. And if the room doesn’t sound all that great, you may not want its ambience in the recording. I love omnis for stereo “live” recordings of classical, acoustic jazz, and similar styles. They aren’t as common for multitrack recordings, but I’m using them more and more for their natural sound quality.

18. Give It Some Space
Pull your guitar mics back a few feet.
No one ever hears an acoustic guitar from a foot away—which is where we often place our microphones. As listeners, we always hear the instrument from some distance back in the room. For most instruments the sound “develops” and comes together a few feet away from the instrument. With guitar, for example, the main source of the sound may be the soundboard—though the sound quality will vary depending on the spot on the soundboard you are listening to. But vibrations from the neck, back, sides, even headstock, all contribute to the overall sound to some degree—and a close mic will never capture all that resonance. Try pulling your mics back a few feet, or use distant mics placed five or more feet away in conjunction with close mics, to really capture what your guitar sounds like.

19. Laser Accuracy
A laser pointer will show you exactly where your mics are pointed.
Want to know exactly where your mics are pointing? Use a laser pointer alongside your mic to see exactly where it is aimed.

20. Sonic Reinforcement
Record a pickup track alongside mic tracks.
If a guitar has a pickup, I always record it to a track, even if I’m using microphones. I then have the option of blending in the pickup sound (with or without EQ to shape it) to reinforce the mic tracks.

21. Tweak the Pickup Track
When recording a pickup signal, use a good direct box and shape the signal with EQ.
If you’re working with just a pickup (no mics), it can be a challenge to get a great recorded sound. First, use a good direct box or instrument input. Consider using something like one of the Fishman Aura processors, which use digital “images” of real acoustic guitars—I’ve done solo guitar recordings using these and had excellent results. Many listeners couldn’t tell I hadn’t used a mic! D-Tar’s Mama Bear is another option, as it uses digital modeling to create more realistic acoustic sounds from a pickup. Otherwise, record the pickup signal dry, then during mixdown carefully EQ the pickup signal to remove any harsh upper midrange. Brighten the top end to open up the sound, and shape the bass to be more realistic. Then, add a small amount of extremely short reverb—1/10 of a second or so—to simulate the resonance of the instrument. You don’t want so much that you hear it as a reverb tail, just enough to add some space and depth to the pickup sound.