Friday, January 3, 2003

[QA] Microphone for vocal, guitar, piano, trumpet

> I would like to ask you 2 questions about sound and recording.The first
> one is can you decribe the microphone techniques used for reinforcement
> of a singer and an acoustic guitar?The second one is can you also
> decribe the microphone techniques for recording a piano and a trumpet
> for vrious genres of music?

> I would like to ask you 2 questions about sound and recording.The first
> one is can you decribe the microphone techniques used for reinforcement
> of a singer and an acoustic guitar?The second one is can you also
> decribe the microphone techniques for recording a piano and a trumpet
> for vrious genres of music?


Hi XXX,

Is this your school application essay? If so, I strongly suggest you get a book and study it since a short answer doesn't make a good essay.

Microphone reinforcement techniques have a lot to do with personalstyle. There are many factors to be considered -- what mics to use,where to put them, and also the room acoustic treatments. And the EQshould be done according to all the previous factors.

However, there are some common grounds. Condenser mics capture thosenuances so they are usually the way to go. To record trumpets you'llneed a mic which can take rather high volume without distortion; forpiano there are many different ways (at least 6 that I know of) but inshort you want a good balanced stereo image and you probably want totreat the lower register and the higher register differently. Forvocal, gosh, there are even ten times more things to say because it_really_ would depend on the singer's vocal quality and your musicgenre. I'd say the sibilants and other harmonics are what we areusually very careful with -- this is where EQ comes in to shine. Ipersonally don't touch fundamental frequency (F0) too much, but again,that depends on the style. For acoustic guitar solos, I place a mic 3inches in front of the sound whole and sometimes close enough tocapture all the picking/fretting noises. Sometimes I use hypercardioidfor that one and place another one farther from the player to get thefretting noises or even overall ambience. I usually had to remind theguitar players to make as little unnecessary noises as possible sincemic'ing really amplifies everything.

That's all I can (afford to) say now. Hope this helps.

Tsan-Kuang

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