#microphone placement

Step 4: Ensuring consistency between sessions

After you have finally found the ideal microphone placement for your instrument, you might want to be able to remember it for your next session.

I currently have 8 pieces to record and, although they’re all quite short, I don’t have the time and skills to record all of them in one day. When it’s finally time to publish a complete playlist, I don’t want every piece sounding different depending on the day of recording. I want the whole thing to sound as consistent as if it had been recorded in one session.

An easy way to achieve this is simply to choose a definite spot in your room and stick to it.

My music room has big tiles that make the process really straightforward: I always place the microphone at the centre of the same tile near the piano, while I stand a little bit to the right of what is pictured here. That way the microphone will always be at the right distance and directed to the part of the instrument that produces what I think is the best sound (thanks to the experiment explained in step 3).

Now if your room floor is completely uniform, maybe you can mark your preferred spot with adhesive tape, or leave a small carpet there?

If you move your feet around a bit as you play (or if you tap your foot instinctively as I sometimes do), a carpet has the extra advantage of almost completely muffling the noise produced by your shoes.

Step 3: Microphone Placement

Sometimes overlooked, this is the most important part of the recording process. Placing your microphone correctly means you will get the most out of your instrument.

As you can see in the picture, I chose to stand rather close to the microphone and to direct it to somewhere between the bridge and the sound hole.

Did I pick this placement at random? No, of course I didn’t, I initially took half an hour to experiment with different options:

Directing the microphone to the fingerboard around the 5th fret picked too much sliding noise caused by my left hand traveling up and down the neck

Directing the microphone to the 12th fret captured too much of the sound of my fingernail hitting the strings

Placing the microphone further away reduced unwanted noises, but made the sound of the ukulele less defined and captured too much of the not so pretty reverberation of my music room.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the recording arts have no easy “plug these numbers in” formula for greatness.

(Yes, yes, though, I know… there may be some arithmetic involved in calculations for the reflective properties of sound waves, etc… )

When it comes to capturing the details of your sound source, microphone placement is more important than any formula you could be given. However, it isn’t as simple as “place your mic X to get Y sound”. You have to be an engin-ear, and move your microphone around until all of those precious details are revealed.

For example, I was recently walking in the evening and heard a bunch of grasshoppers hiding in a bush and felt an urge to capture the sound.

I whipped out my field recorder, squatted down and began recording and received this:

As I moved in closer, and re-arranged the position AND direction of my microphone, the finer details of how exactly these grasshoppers produce this sound were revealed:

As you can hear, by re-positioning my microphone, I was able to actually hear the insect’s wings vibrating, exposing and capturing the biological and mechanical working of these creatures.

Microphone placed inside the broadcast desk at a location where it will pick up mostly sounds of the individuals in the studio interacting with the broadcast equipment.

A lot of us as music makers a drawn to the fancy new tools that every audio company in the world is dead set on convincing you that you need. As though some fancy new plugin or slightly higher quality converters will unlock everything you thought was missing from your music.

But take a step back and think about your skills, is your mic placement second to none? Is your gain staging flawless?  Do you really know how to EQ and balance a session of 30+ instruments that take up space in the mid range? Do your compressor settings achieve the exact sound and dynamic control that you need? Just as importantly, do you know when to leave a sound as it is? That takes a confidence that I sure as hell am yet to develop. 

I know that I'm not the best audio engineer in the world (yet!) and that means that my main focus is to take the basic skills to a new level. Finding that EQ curve that will open up my mixes, using compression in a unique and creative way to tighten up my low end and really control every aspect of the dynamic range. Using gates to musically bring the important information to the foreground whilst bringing the ambience down.  

When you master the basics, you can start using them in creative ways. That's where the magic happens! 

Christmas is approaching and it's always good to receive a new bit of gear to bring your audio work to a new level. But do yourself a favour and spend that extra bit of time and effort working on the basics before you make your next purchase. You wont regret it!