Archives

One of the hot topics requested through our Facebook page has been ‘recording using a small number of microphones. This is a really easy technique and can be far simpler and effective than putting out every mic you have just because you can. It is especially effective when wanting to achieve that ‘vintage’ sound. Of course, this technique is also good for those that own, only a few mics.

The first thing to be said about this technique is that it relies greatly on the quality of the musician, their instruments and the performance. This is because the fewer the microphones, the less scope you have to edit and tweak individual elements, in terms of timing, pitch and tone. This is an incredibly important thing to remember and to convey to a client when they request to use these types of techniques. Often the idea of recording in this way is alluring to an artist but unfortunately if they can not play their material well, many of the modern fixes for bad playing are not going to help due to the lack of separation in the sound sources. You want to have this discussion before your session and not after tracking!

Secondly the most important aspect of using a small number of microphones is mic selection and placement. When you are tracking with only a few mics it is imperative that you select mics with the right tone. When recording in this way you want to use as little compression and EQ as possible and what you hear during tracking should be as close as possible to the finished product. Once you have a microphone you feel suits your sound source be sure to play around with the position. Even small movements can make a drastic difference to the quality of your recording. Be sure (as always) to make sure the phase relationship (if your not sure what this is google it) of all your mics is good. You need to remember that you have no fall back option with this recording scenario, if you get it wrong you ave no additional mics to help correct things later.

Recently I did a project with a four piece blues band who wanted to recreate the sound of early blues, i.e. Muddy Waters etc. They wanted to play all in room and all in one take. I made sure they understood this meant no (or very little editing) and they assured me they were well rehearsed and understood. This was great because to actually achieve an early blues sound the track needed to be played live. All of those early recordings are one take often recorded straight to acetate or vinyl and the energy of a live recording is very hard to emulate with multi-tracking.

I chose to use mainly ribbon microphones for the recording, the most popular type of microphone for the period, using a Coles 4038 as a mono drum overhead (all early recordings were mono so this lack of stereo spread actually helps it sound older), a Royer 121 copy (made by Carillon and are a great budget option) on the guitar amp and I was lucky enough to have a Coles 4033-A which served as the vocal mic and the room (because of the figure 8 polar pattern of the mic). That was all the ribbons at my disposal so I put dynamics on the bass amp, hi hat/snare and kick drum, and the Wurlitzer was DI’s, although the speakers in the Wurli meant it would feature in the room sound as well. I find for these kind of recordings any modern condensers sound too bright and clear, bringing the sound of the recording to far into the modern day.

I let the band position themselves in a circle to that they felt comfortable and able to perform their best. This is paramount above any micing consideration. If the band do not play well you will not get a good recording. Once they were set up I turn the bass and guitar amps away from the centre of the room to minimise direct spill.

For the drums I placed my mono overhead directly over the drummers head, playing around till I found the sweet spot for the snare, position my hi hat mic loosely (so it picks up some snare) and placed my kick drum out outside the head directly in line with the drum beater. I also placed a couple of additional mics (pencil condensers) spotting the crash and a position over the top of the ride and floor tom (try and aim the mic right at the edge of the ride) just in case I needed to add a little more detail (FYI I ended up using these on one fo the tracks that needed a slightly more modern sound). I did mic up the snare (SM57) as well (just for safety) but I didn’t end up using it in any of the online mixes.

a band in a circle

Although I am a fan of making sonic choices and sticking to them, if you think you might need something later it’s better to grab it! Once I had checked all the phase and was happy with the sound it was just a matter of letting the band do the work. The most important element of this particular scenario was the vocal mic. The large amount of spill captured really made the whole mix glue together and gave it that live energy. So make sure if you’re doing this kind of recording that you have a good well placed room mic.

Playing with recording in this way is one of the best parts of being an engineer and everyone has their own special placements and ideas on pulling great sounds (I heard of one engineer mic’ing the drummers feet!) so even if you only have a few basic mics (if you don’t own a mic GO AND BUY ONE!) experiment and have fun!

[Jack Prest is an In-house Producer/Engineer at Studios 301]

Guy Gray as 30 years of experience includes engineering scores, large orchestral recordings, surround mixing as well as music production for successful film projects throughout Australia and Southeast Asia. He will be providing you a with a short series of Tips & Tricks, as only he knows how. To begin with, he delves into some MIXING secrets.

(1) When mixing vocals, use High Pass & Low Pass filters on your delay returns to help prevent masking of the vocal frequencies.

(2) To give your DAW mix buss more headroom, before you even begin mixing, lower all your faders by approximately 4 – 8 db. Then use your Mix Buss Compressor / Limiter gain make-up to achieve a healthy gain structure on your final online mix level.

(3) Using the PRE-fader mode on sends to a reverb can help you get that ‘3D’ sound and puts the source sound in it’s own space.

(4) Try compressing the send to your drum reverb for a bigger, more coloured reverb effect.

[Award-winning producer/engineer/mixer Guy Gray has rejoined the Studios 301 team following his recent return to Australia.]

We ran a survey recently to discover what aspect of production many of you want to learn about.

So, this time around I’ll be looking at a popular topic and technique, parallel compression. This is where you blend a compressed version of your signal back into the original. The idea being you can create a bigger, harder compressed sound without messing with the dynamic range as heavily. (I’m presume you are familiar with how to do this, if not I’m sure youtube can help you out with tutorials.)

First off I’d like to say that I think parallel compression can be (and often is) overused. For myself personally I prefer to use good old fashioned balance, gain and volume to make things sound big and dynamic. Never underestimate your most powerful mixing tool, the volume fader! That said parallel compression is a great technique for adding punch to your mix.

One technique I used on a mix recently was a brick wall limiter (such as an L1, L3 or UAD Precision Limiter) set to an extreme threshold setting but with the output pulled down. You can then feed important parts of you mix to this parallel bus so they are decimated through the limiter. Then make sure your parallel aux channel is metering a good 20-30db lower than your master fader. This technique brings in the distortion that many producers find appealing when they heavily limit their master bus without killing the dynamics of your track.

Another technique for parallel compression, especially for drums, is with any 1176 emulation (my favourite at the moment is the Revision-A in the new UAD 1176 series). Set both the input and output to around 18, the attack to the fastest setting, the release around 5 (2 o’clock) and the ratio to something soft like 4/8. Then just feed a touch of your kick and snare to the parallel channel, you should be seeing about -7/-10 db of gain reduction. Then dial back the attack control to get the level of transient snap you like. You might also want to play with the release time to get it breathing with your track. Then bring down the volume fader on the parallel channel and bring it back up slowly stopping at the point where you start to hear the compressed signal. This technique also works well on staccato bass parts, especially synths.

One more helpful technique is to use multi band compressors or EQ post compression to sculpt the area of the sound you want to add emphasis too. This is great for adding mid-range knock to kicks, low mid weight to snares and controlled subs to bass.

Enjoy!

Jack Prest is an In-house Producer/Engineer at Studios 301