With all the talk going around re: a BKP CD, I thought it would be cool to post a few examples of different mic'ing techniques that I thought yielded a really big guitar sound.
A common misconception people have is that if there is a guitar panned to the left and a guitar panned to the right then they are listening to
stereo guitars. In fact, you are listening to
multi mono guitars, since the original mono guitar tracks are simply panned left and right. True stereo recording requires at least one pair of matched microphones.
Something else I've noticed is that most guitarists are so used to hearing either direct guitars or guitars through modelers that they've become addicted to that very in-your-face sound. Not that there's anything wrong with that sound, but you're really missing out on the subtleties you can get when you postion mics to pick up room reflections and out of phase parts of the signal.
If enough people find this interesting/informative, I will cover a few of the more obscure methods of mic'ing.
The methods I'm going to cover here are
close mic'ing,
room mic'ing,
spaced pair mic'ing, and
middle-side mic'ing.
CLOSE MIC'INGAs the name implies, you simply place a mic very close to one driver on the amp cab and move it around until you get a sound you like. This sound is very direct and doesn't allow for any of the room's reflections to get into the mic.
ROOM MIC'INGThere are several ways to achieve this, but in it's simplest form, you place one mic right on the cabinet, and you place another someplace further out so that it captures a bit of the direct sound, but mostly gets the room reflections. Some people face the mic in the opposite direction of the cabinet so that it's not getting ANY direct sound! You can then take the two signals and blend them to taste.
You have to make sure that both mic's are
in phase. The simple way to do this is with the close mic turned up, raise the room mic until it is the same level. If the sound gets LOUDER, then they are in phase. If the sound gets SMALLER or doesn't seem to change, then they are out of phase and the room mic needs to be adjusted slightly.
SPACED PAIR MIC'INGThis method involves 3 mics. You mic the cabinet up close, as before. But now you place TWO room mics side by side facing the cabinet, further into the room. You pan one mic hard left and the other hard right. When blended in, this will give you a HUGE, but slightly defuse guitar sound. The amount of close mic'd guitar you mix in will have a baring on how much focus the sound will have.
I like using a
stereo bar for this mic'ing technique, so you only use one stand and it's easy to set up.
MIDDLE-SIDE MIC'INGTo me, this is the most interesting mic'ing technique of the 4 mentioned, and it yields a HUGE guitar sound, but more focused than the spaced pair mic'ing technique.
You keep your close mic as before, but now you place another mic with a figure 8 pickup pattern either above or below the close mic, as close as possible without touching, and turn it
SIDEWAYS. This mic will now be picking up all the sounds that are 90 degrees out of phase with the close mic.
When mixing, you need to copy/paste the side mic's audio to an empty track, and reverse the phase of one of them. You then pan them hard left and hard right, and VOILA, you have a stereo track. You then bring up the close mic and blend/pan to taste.
Here's a quick sample of the mic'ing techniques described above. The sample goes in the same order:
Close Mic
Close + Room
Close + Spaced Pair
Middle-Side
http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=3754409&q=hiHere's how the guitars sound when mixed. The guitar on the left was recorded using m-s mic'ing and the guitar on the right is spaced pair mic'ing. You can hear how they are both different, but the spaced pair seems to take up a lot more room on the mix.
http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=3754419&q=hiHope you find this helpful!!!
