LO2-Microphone Techniques
In the first lessons we learned about some basic micing techniques. I have listed below, four different techniques that we can apply to the Korg D1200 as well as the big studios at the college. The microphones that we are using are the collages microphones. They are condenser microphones. We also demonstrate use of the direct input on the Korg to record guitar; the direct input also works on other instruments like bass guitar. I am going to go into further detail on the micing positions and the microphones that I have used in the recording process of my song that I have been recording in both, studio 1 and studio 2.
Spaced Pair Micing
In this picture we are recording a acoustic guitar through the Korg D1200. We have positioned the microphones carefully into a spaced pare. We put one of the microphones pointing towards the bridge of the guitar and one of the microphones facing the 12th fret. When I record with a spaced pare it enables me to do a lot more. Even though the recording we did here is not on the main studios equipment we can still take advantage of having the equipment to use more than one microphone. We can change them by panning one left and one right and adding affects to both tracks instead of one track.
Spot Micing
This is a condenser large diaphragm microphone which we are recording on the Korg D1200. We are using a micing technique called spot micing. Spot micing only requires one microphone. Spot micing tends to create a less natural sound and can ruin the quality of your recordings if you position the microphone wrong. When spot micing you can isolate individual instruments. This enables you to record live sessions with bands and spot micing a lot of the different instruments at the same time. You would also use spot micing if you were recording an orchestra. When spot micing the room you are in will make no difference. This can be good because it means if you are in a room with very bad acoustics your recording will not be ruined by the room. It is also bad because you will lose the natural ambiance of the room. When you are spot micing one of the most important things to remember is that the closer you put the microphone to the instrument the more bass you will record. This is because when you move a microphone with a cardioids polar pattern is close to the sound source. The microphones pick up more bass energy. This is called the proximity affect.
Direct Input (DI)
In this picture I am using the direct input on the Korg D1200. This input can be used from bass guitar witch would work the exact same way when setting up the Korg to record a track. There is also a direct input on the Korg for guitars and basses in the two big studios witch I did use to do the guide track in my recording on Quebase. I direct input is never going to sound quite as good as a microphone would for recording most
guitars. Like when recording an electric acoustic guitar on the Korg you would almost definitely use microphones if you had them and maybe use the direct input just to record a guide track to play over with the microphone recorded guitar to keep the right timing.
guitars. Like when recording an electric acoustic guitar on the Korg you would almost definitely use microphones if you had them and maybe use the direct input just to record a guide track to play over with the microphone recorded guitar to keep the right timing.
XY Positioning
In this picture I have positioned the microphones in an XY position. This is where the microphones cross over each other like I have tried to demonstrate in the picture. To do this you do require two microphones but the sound will be very warm and vibrant if you are to do it right. When setting up to record using microphones in the XY position you have to remember that the diaphragms of the microphones should be as close together as possible without touching. It is also important to remember that XY micing is not always necessary because it can just overcomplicate the guitar micing process when you could get a better sound with just one microphone. For ensample; when recording a classical orchestra it would be more affective to spot mi the classical guitars other that the XY micing that could pick up exes noise.
Microphone Techniques used in my Recording//Diary of my Recordings
Session 1 - In studio 1 from 2.20 - 6
Recording Glockenspiel
My first session of recording my song called pretty scares was held today. The date is Monday the 24th of March. I was in the studio one for most of the time however we did set up in studio two because studio one was being used but we then moved to studio one and set up there instead. In this session we had a goal set of recording all of the glockenspiel in the song. And work out the tempo of he song and work out the structure. We did manage to do all of these things and I am very pleased because we did get all of the glockenspiel recorded to a high standard. I was recording my friend (wil) paying the glockenspiel. I have uploaded a few pictures of the positioning of the microphones. We spent a lot of time moving the microphones around and changing microphones around to see how it affected the overall song. We started of with just two microphones, these two microphones were the Large diaphragm condenser microphone which is often used to record vocals and the other microphone was the Sontronics pencil condenser. The sound was not great when we used the combination of these two microphones so we tried adding sure SM-57 as well. It did sound better but we decided to change the sure SM-57 for a more sensitive microphone and use that instead. We used the AKG C1000s condenser microphone and that mede the sound a lot more full and less twangy.
My first session of recording my song called pretty scares was held today. The date is Monday the 24th of March. I was in the studio one for most of the time however we did set up in studio two because studio one was being used but we then moved to studio one and set up there instead. In this session we had a goal set of recording all of the glockenspiel in the song. And work out the tempo of he song and work out the structure. We did manage to do all of these things and I am very pleased because we did get all of the glockenspiel recorded to a high standard. I was recording my friend (wil) paying the glockenspiel. I have uploaded a few pictures of the positioning of the microphones. We spent a lot of time moving the microphones around and changing microphones around to see how it affected the overall song. We started of with just two microphones, these two microphones were the Large diaphragm condenser microphone which is often used to record vocals and the other microphone was the Sontronics pencil condenser. The sound was not great when we used the combination of these two microphones so we tried adding sure SM-57 as well. It did sound better but we decided to change the sure SM-57 for a more sensitive microphone and use that instead. We used the AKG C1000s condenser microphone and that mede the sound a lot more full and less twangy.
The pictures to the right of this paragraph are picture I took of the recording process. The picture in the middle is a picture of the microphone set up we had when we were only using two microphones. As you can see in the picture, at this stage in the recoding we were using the Sontronics pencil condenser microphone and the large diaphragm condenser microphone. Shortly after I took this picture I set up a Sure SM-57 to try and capture a richer and fuller sound in the recording. The SM-57 did not help much so I set up an AKG C1000s condenser microphone and that did the job very nicely. The picture on the far right is a picture of the pencil condenser that I used.
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The pictures to the left of this paragraph are pictures of the set up that we were using to record with. There was one change that we made to the set up that you can see in the picture in the time that we were trying to get good takes to the time we god the perfect take. The thing that we changed was that we swapped the position of the large diaphragm condenser microphone with the AKG C1000s condenser microphone. We left the pencil condenser where it was because it was giving us a very nice rich sound. The picture on the far left is a picture that I took from the control room through the glass of will recording the glockenspiel.
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