THE INAGURAL RECORDING TIP: I want to keep these as out of the box as possible. Nobody needs another engineer giving away age-old but common “secrets” like adding a couple dB around 2.5kHz to your kick drum. If you hadn’t heard that before, you’re welcome… it does help with punch. Here’s a big, heady one: Ignore “the standard” microphone for any given task. Common knowledge says that an SM57 should always be the go-to mic used on an electric guitar cab or the top of a snare drum. Why?! Sure, tons of famous engineers have done this on tons of famous recordings … but does that automatically make it the right choice? Personally, I don’t think so. One of my favorite techniques for BIG electric guitar tracks is to combine two mics that sound completely different. This can be delicate, phase-wise. Make sure your mics are placed equidistant from the speaker … if you’re using a condenser and a dynamic (which I highly recommend), you may have to work on the placement a bit – as the two types of mics respond differently to transients and high SPL sources. To test your placement, pan both mics to one side of your mix interface, making sure that they are putting out similar volumes. Do you hear a weird swishing effect? Are the tracks louder alone than when combined? Would you describe the overall sound as excessively tinny or “squaky?” If the answer to any of those questions is yes, you have a phase issue – mess with your placement. When you’ve got the mics “in phase,” meaning that you don’t hear any of that weird stuff I just described, then you can fine-tune your sound. Pan the mics hard left and right – making sure that you’re getting a sufficiently different sound from each side. If you’re pleased with the result, then place them wherever you’d like in the stereo field. Experiment with their levels, favoring one mic over the other vs. equal volume … find a tone that speaks to the song. BAM!! Now, as long as you can play guitar, you should have much bigger and more unique guitar tones from the get-go. Happy tracking, folks! I hope this helps. :) - Chris Frasco
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 18:09:24 +0000