by Keith Hatschek
October 4, 2009
Fast Forward’s Pro Studio guru puts four mics through their paces
One of the key elements in any popular song is the vocal performance, and an essential part of capturing a vocal performance accurately is the microphone used in the recording. Top recording engineers know how important it is to match each singer’s particular vocal qualities and timbre to the microphone that will best capture the power and subtleties of that voice. This month, Fast Forward brought four high-quality vocal microphones (i.e. list price of $1,000 or more) into the studio and ran each through its paces, recording male and female vocal tracks and some narration. By the end of the session, you’ll have a good idea of which of these mics may be worth the investment for your home recording studio and what you might want to look for in studios near you. The four contenders include: the Kiwi, from BLUE Microphones; the TLM 103 from Neumann; the Black Hole BH-2 from JZ Mics; and the KSM 44 from Shure. I invited my colleague Jeff Crawford, a local producer and engineer over to provide a second set of ears for the evaluation. Two singers were asked to help with the testing, each one bringing a backing track of a song that they were familiar with to use for the test session. Read more…
by Keith Hatschek
September 9, 2009
If you’re doing home recording, one of the main instruments you may be using for accompaniment is the acoustic guitar. Learning the basics of acoustic guitar recording requires time to experiment a bit to find your instrument’s sweet spots for micing, and also understanding some essentials with regard to your guitar and recording environment. We’ll use the most popular dynamic mics that many musicians rely on for gigs, the venerable Shure SM-57 and 58, to show how to get a good recorded sound from your acoustic guitar. We’ll also recommend two affordable condenser mics that can help you take your guitar’s sound to the next level. Read more…
Part 3: The truth about isolation booths 
Many of your best known recordings were done to analog tape. Do you prefer the sound of analog to digital?
