Acoustic Instruments
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 very nature of how the instruments produce sound. First, point the microphone where the sound comes out. The difficulty with a lot of the wind instruments is that the sound actually comes out of the whole instrument — finger holes leak sound and so on. So where do you microphone? This might seem simple…but certain instruments might fool you.
To cut down on breath noise from a flute, try using a pop filter in front of the microphone. The filter will cut the air from reaching the microphone and sounding overly “breathy.”
Trumpet and the other brass instruments have a very clear 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. Flute is a more difficult one. While it might seem as if the sound comes out of the end of the instrument, most of the sound actually comes out from the head joint, where the player blows. The problem with this is, that's also where all of the breath noise is, which can make it very difficult to get a clean flute sound. Place the microphone just slightly next to the flute's head joint to pick up a good combination of some body sound, head joint sound, and minimal breath noise. Use a large-diaphragm condenser microphone that uses either an omnidirection or cardioid pattern.
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.
In saxophones, the bell delivers most of the sound, but there is also sound from the keys as well. Try to position the microphone in a way that you can clearly hear both sounds; 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).
FIGURE 11-8
Miking a piano
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, guitar, or anything else, place a condenser microphone close to the sound hole or
FIGURE 11-9
Acoustic guitar miked
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.
The biggest problem recording a large group is microphone bleed. Microphone bleed occurs when a microphone unintentionally picks up the sound of other instruments nearby. To minimize this, try to isolate your sources with baffles and or room dividers, and use cardioid microphones.
Stereo Recording
When you record acoustic instruments, or anytime you want to capture a stereo recording, you will utilize something called the “XY” technique.
FIGURE 11-10
XY mike 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.
