Hi folks, following on from the first in a three part guest post from Rick Alexander (here’s the LINK in case you missed it) on how to approach a recording set-up, I have a fabulous post for you from Rick on microphone positioning for optimum sound capture during the recording process.
Microphone positioning is one area where recording becomes more of an art than a science. You do need to experiment in order to get the best results.
Figure 1 above shows a typical setup for stereo recording (see more on stereo vs mono below). Pointing one mic at the bridge, one mic at the 12th fret works well. As noted in part 1, you won’t want the mics too close to the guitar or you’ll get too much bass. I usually have around 25 to 35cm from the mic tip to the guitar. If you have the mics further away you’ll be picking up more and more of the sound reflections from your room’s walls and floor. Unless your room is acoustically optimised you probably don’t want this. Also, an advantage of having the microphones fairly close to the guitar is that this will help the guitar’s sound to outweigh any sound from traffic etc. from outside.
The Best Microphone For Recording Classical Guitar
The microphones I used are Neumann KM184s and the audio interface a MOTU 828 mk3. The guitar is a 1995 Carson Crickmore with a traditionally braced spruce top. The strings are Hannabach high tension Silver Special basses and Carbon trebles (which are fairly bright). The music is the introduction of my piece “Bellbrae” from my CD “Fine Light”. I’ve put the right mic signal, from the listener’s point of view, on the right channel and the left mic on the left channel. (Putting each mic’s signal totally on one channel gives the widest stereo image.) Note that this is a raw recording – I’ve done no adjustment except to adjust the levels of the left and right signals to about the same level and to fade the ending.
I sometimes put the mics perpendicular to the sound board of the guitar as in Figure 1. Alternatively, I angle the mics as in Figure 2, with the mics about 25cm from the guitar. Audio Example 2 is a recording I’ve made with the mics setup as in Figure 2. I prefer the sound of example 2 but the difference isn’t large.
Strings. You don’t need to be too precise but, for example, I think you’d start noticing too much bass if you aimed as far off centre as the 6
Acoustic Guitar Microphones
If you have a hard wooden floor I’d recommend putting a rug under yourself and the mic stands in order to reduce the guitar sound reflecting from the floor to the mics.
Finally, if you’re recording using a computer I’d suggest setting up so that you can point the back of the mics in the direction of the computer so as to reduce the level of computer noise recorded.
You might well ask: why stereo? We only want to record one guitar after all. Also, you’ll often see concert performers only using one mic on their guitar.
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But you’ll find that if you record a single guitar in stereo you’ll get a much more realistic sounding result. Especially when listening on headphones. Audio Example 3 here illustrates the difference. The example has a short section of audio in mono then a short section in stereo followed by longer mono and stereo sections. I’ve used the setup in Figure 2 for the stereo section and the mono section is just the right channel from the stereo recording.
K & M make good quality mic stands. They have a small stand, K&M 25950, which is particularly useful for classical guitar recording. http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/KM25950 Using this stand lets you avoid having the large boom of a typical mic stand cluttering up your room.In this overflow from the “Recording Classical Guitar” feature in our Summer 2018 issue, recording engineers John Taylor (based in the UK), Norbert Kraft (based in Canada), and Ricardo Marui (based in Brazil) offer more specific advice about capturing classical guitar.
CLASSICAL GUITAR: On a typical recording project with a solo guitarist, how many mics are you using on the guitar, and can you describe approximately where you place them in relation to the guitar and in the room?
Two Mics On Acoustic Guitar Isn't Just For Stereo Here's Why
JOHN TAYLOR: In terms of mic techniques, the main change I made at an early stage, in the mid-1980s, was to abandon the crossed-pair configuration—known as X-Y stereo— in favor of the spaced-pair—called A-B stereo. An X-Y pair of highly directional mics placed close together and pointing towards the left and right, with an angle of around 90º between them, will give a clear spatial image of a group of musicians, when played through a pair of loudspeakers.
But there is another way of creating a stereo image using a single pair of mics—one that is in some ways closer to the way our ears give us a sense of space and direction in real life. Although the ears have some directionality in their pickup, because of the shielding effect of the head and the peculiar shape of the pinna, the eardrum itself responds more like an omnidirectional mic capsule—that is, it senses the fluctuations in air pressure without “knowing” or “caring” where the sound is coming from. Much of the directional information reaching our brains comes in the form of differences of the
Of sounds arriving at the two ears: For example, a handclap coming from somewhere to the right will produce a disturbance of the air that travels as a sound wave and reaches the right ear just before the left ear. This timing information plays a big part in our localization of sounds, and it means, for example, that if you set up a pair of omnidirectional mics spaced about a head’s width apart, record a group of instruments or singers with this pair placed side-by-side in front of them, and listen back on headphones, you’ll get a very clear image in your head, not only of where everyone is, but also of the space where they are performing. Unfortunately, the image on loudspeakers tends to be less clear and stable, but it can still be pretty good, especially if the spacing between the mics is increased somewhat.
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My typical way, for what it’s worth, is to use a single matched pair of high-quality omni mics, mounted side-by-side on a stereo bar, about 36 cm (14 inches) apart, and placed not directly in front of the guitar body—which tends to sound rather harsh—but a little higher off the floor, and slightly off to the side; usually to the right from the guitarist’s point of view, i.e. nearer to the bridge than to the soundhole or fingerboard. I take the bridge to be close to the “epicenter” of the sound, and therefore the distance of the mics from the bridge is the most critical thing to get right. The optimum distance can vary quite widely according to how reverberant or otherwise the acoustic [of the room] is, but in the church I most often use—in Weston, Hertfordshire, England—it’s usually around 165 cm (65 inches).
NORBERT KRAFT: At the beginning of each session, I drag along about eight different pairs of microphones in order to try to match a mic’s “personality” to the sound the player is making.I know a number of engineers who simply bring the same mics, trusting that they are “flat” and that they grab exactly the sound being produced.However, there is much more to consider. Each player—even on the same instrument—has a different tone production and projection, and then, mixed with the characteristics of the room, this becomes a tapestry of sounds.This can be a nightmare to the inexperienced, or a fantastic field of discovery for the engineer with good ears and a knowledge of how his microphones work.This part of the session always takes an hour or more, and relies heavily on experimentation and comparative listening tests until the right combination of mics and exact placement are found.
Sure, there are some “formulas, ” but the really fine nuances that make the difference between a satisfyingly musical recording and one that is either nasty and too close, or woolly and too far away, can only be found this way. To give an idea, once I have chosen the best mic for the job, then we are playing with distances that may vary at most one or two inches—usually less—in any direction: up, down, apart, or proximity. In my acoustic, which is quite “wet” [ambient] I am typically working at a distance of about 45-55 inches (140–165 cm) from the guitar, with my mics spaced about 18–24 inches (46–61 cm) apart.
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Norbert Kraft: “I need to credit my life-long musical partner and wife, Bonnie Silver (pictured here), who shares this work with me and carries at least half of the responsibility of our recording team.”
Needless to say, everything else in the recording chain has an effect, so my cables, as well as their lengths, preamp, and especially A/D [analog-to-digital] converters are
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