Post by svart on Jul 26, 2013 7:46:58 GMT -6
I know a lot of folks tend to give out the "advice" that there is "no set way" to mic stuff, but I beg to differ. While exact placement can vary a little, there are plenty of professionals that have "go to" mics and "go to" placements for most everything. That's how they get a lot of their sound.
1. Finding the sweet spot on the guitar speaker. I rarely see anyone go into this in detail. The pros don't really say much and the me-too crowd just parrots the same tiny bit of info that the pros say. Here's how you do it.
Take an amp, plug in a cable but leave the other end on the floor. Jack up the gain until you get plenty of hiss and hum. Place your mic about 1" from the grill and about 1" from the place where the cone meets the center cap. Run your mic through your system and monitor it with some very isolating headphones (or make an assistant move the mic while you sit in front of the monitors) and listen to the change in the hiss/hum sound as you move the mic forward and backward. This takes a little practice but listen for how the natural EQ changes. Over a few tries you should start hearing the "hollow" sound of being in a null point of the sound. Move this forward and backward and you'll start to hear where the sound becomes more normal. Chances are that you have to move the mics back further than you thought at first. Listen for the point where you no longer hear the "hollow" sound but still have a balance between high and lows. That's where you put the mic in distance. Now you can move it slightly side to side to get more brightness if you move it more in line with the center cap, or more dark as you move outwards toward the edge. Now you can adjust your amp a little more to make the sound perfect.
2. Setting mic overheads, my way. I found a bastard way of doing drum overheads that works so well that I don't use ping/hi-hat mics anymore. It's also one of the more natural sounding setups that I've tried, with a balance of cymbals and drums, however this also includes proper drum setup.
Set your drums up as you would normally. TUNE everything (I can't tell you how many folks don't tune their drums correctly, if at all..) until the drums SING (this will be another thread at some point). You can always deaden the drums later if needed, but for right now, leave them untreated (chances are you've been deadening them too much!). Now, I'd bet your hi-hats are too close to the snare. If they are closer than 1ft from the edge of the hats to the snare, move them away, preferably 1.5ft away. Set up one mic exactly over the middle of the snare about 7ft up. Now, take a measuring tape and measure from that mic to the center of each cymbal and the hats. Try your best to adjust the distance on each cymbal until they are all roughly the same distance. Distance in this case is in 3D, so a cymbal that is lower, is farther away than a cymbal that is higher. If a higher cymbal is too close, you don't need to move it down, just move it away. Also, don't worry about being absolutely perfect, a couple inches is close enough. Now, measure the total width of your drumset. Divide this by 3. Now, place one overhead mic 1/3rd of the distance inside the drumset on one side, and place another overhead 1/3rd of the distance inside the other side. Now you have your overheads placed in both height and distance to the cymbals. The final thing to do is aim them. I find that a couple drumsticks held end to end can help you here. Place the end of the drumstick up to the mic as if to draw a line from the mic. Now aim the mic towards the center of the largest group of drums. For instance, if you are aiming the overhead that is over the floor tom, ride and say a crash or two, find the area in the middle of that group and aim the mic there. Same for the other side, aim the mic between the high toms, hi-hats, crashes, etc. This setup yields something between a spaced pair and ORTF. The advantage of this is that now all of the cymbals are equidistant and none of them will be louder or softer unless they are naturally.
1. Finding the sweet spot on the guitar speaker. I rarely see anyone go into this in detail. The pros don't really say much and the me-too crowd just parrots the same tiny bit of info that the pros say. Here's how you do it.
Take an amp, plug in a cable but leave the other end on the floor. Jack up the gain until you get plenty of hiss and hum. Place your mic about 1" from the grill and about 1" from the place where the cone meets the center cap. Run your mic through your system and monitor it with some very isolating headphones (or make an assistant move the mic while you sit in front of the monitors) and listen to the change in the hiss/hum sound as you move the mic forward and backward. This takes a little practice but listen for how the natural EQ changes. Over a few tries you should start hearing the "hollow" sound of being in a null point of the sound. Move this forward and backward and you'll start to hear where the sound becomes more normal. Chances are that you have to move the mics back further than you thought at first. Listen for the point where you no longer hear the "hollow" sound but still have a balance between high and lows. That's where you put the mic in distance. Now you can move it slightly side to side to get more brightness if you move it more in line with the center cap, or more dark as you move outwards toward the edge. Now you can adjust your amp a little more to make the sound perfect.
2. Setting mic overheads, my way. I found a bastard way of doing drum overheads that works so well that I don't use ping/hi-hat mics anymore. It's also one of the more natural sounding setups that I've tried, with a balance of cymbals and drums, however this also includes proper drum setup.
Set your drums up as you would normally. TUNE everything (I can't tell you how many folks don't tune their drums correctly, if at all..) until the drums SING (this will be another thread at some point). You can always deaden the drums later if needed, but for right now, leave them untreated (chances are you've been deadening them too much!). Now, I'd bet your hi-hats are too close to the snare. If they are closer than 1ft from the edge of the hats to the snare, move them away, preferably 1.5ft away. Set up one mic exactly over the middle of the snare about 7ft up. Now, take a measuring tape and measure from that mic to the center of each cymbal and the hats. Try your best to adjust the distance on each cymbal until they are all roughly the same distance. Distance in this case is in 3D, so a cymbal that is lower, is farther away than a cymbal that is higher. If a higher cymbal is too close, you don't need to move it down, just move it away. Also, don't worry about being absolutely perfect, a couple inches is close enough. Now, measure the total width of your drumset. Divide this by 3. Now, place one overhead mic 1/3rd of the distance inside the drumset on one side, and place another overhead 1/3rd of the distance inside the other side. Now you have your overheads placed in both height and distance to the cymbals. The final thing to do is aim them. I find that a couple drumsticks held end to end can help you here. Place the end of the drumstick up to the mic as if to draw a line from the mic. Now aim the mic towards the center of the largest group of drums. For instance, if you are aiming the overhead that is over the floor tom, ride and say a crash or two, find the area in the middle of that group and aim the mic there. Same for the other side, aim the mic between the high toms, hi-hats, crashes, etc. This setup yields something between a spaced pair and ORTF. The advantage of this is that now all of the cymbals are equidistant and none of them will be louder or softer unless they are naturally.
