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Acoustic Instruments

Acoustic Instruments by Marc Schonbrun

Acoustic instruments can be more difficult to record well. You'll need to practice a few times until you get a sound you're happy with.

Winds and Brass

The wind instrument family can be difficult to record because of the way the instruments produce sound. With many wind instruments, the sound actually comes out of the whole instrument—finger holes leak sound and so on. So where do you put the microphone? This might seem simple, but certain instruments might fool you. Start by pointing the microphone where the sound comes out.

Instruments may sound good by themselves, but when you add them to the rest of the mix, they may not fit as well. This is a common problem and can usually be fixed with some creative EQ and effects placements.

Trumpet and the other brass instruments have a bell where the sound shoots out. Simply place a condenser microphone slightly in front of the bell and you're good to go. For loud brass players, place the microphone back slightly to ease possible distortion. In saxophones, the bell delivers most of the sound, but there is also sound from the keys. Try to position the microphone in a way that allows you to hear both sounds clearly; then move the microphone around till you get a sound you like.

Piano

Acoustic piano is a difficult sound to get just right. If you are lucky enough to have a grand piano, open the lid to expose the strings. The best way to record piano is to use two condenser microphones, one devoted to the top strings and one devoted to the bottom strings. You can pan one microphone hard left and the other hard right to get a fairly wide-sounding stereo image (see Figure 11-8).

If you use just one microphone, choose an omnidirectional microphone for this job and place it dead center to get the best sound you can. For those who use upright pianos, which are far more common, take off the top of the piano's case to expose the strings. Follow the same technique noted earlier for either a single or double microphone setup.

Strings

For any single string instrument, whether it's a violin, cello, bass, mandolin, acoustic guitar, or anything else, place a condenser microphone close to the sound hole or f hole to get the most direct sound. You can place the microphone fairly close to get a good strong signal without much fear of distorting the microphone. Figure 11-9 shows an example of an acoustic guitar miked.

Figure 11-8: Miking a piano

On bowed instruments, you might get excess bow noise if you are too close, so move the microphone around until you get a rich, pure sound. For large groups of strings, like string quartets or groups of guitars, you can either close-mike each individual instrument, or use one or two condenser microphones set back to get the sound of the whole group. Stereo microphones work well for this sort of thing too.

Figure 11-9: Acoustic guitar miked

Stereo Recording

When you record acoustic instruments or capture a stereo recording, you will utilize something called the “XY” technique.

The XY technique uses two microphones crossing at their heads, pointed in opposite directions, usually at a 90-degree angle from each other (see Figure 11-10). This works great on acoustic instruments and any time you want to record a simple stereo mix. There are other ways to record in stereo besides XY. Other popular techniques include mid-side, spaced pair, baffled omni, and the famous “Decca Tree” used by classical music engineers.

Figure 11-10: XY mike technique