In the studio or your home recording acoustic guitar, these mic placement techniques will all yield different results
This post originally appeared on Cakewalk’s blog. Reprinted with permission. All photographs by Tara Zanett.
Microphone placement is the foundation for any solid pro studio or home recording. Placement is usually dictated by musical genre but most engineers place microphones to capture a good overall balance of the instrument. This article proves to present some different placement techniques for a simple acoustic guitar recording.
1. Blumlein Configuration
In this case the microphones were moderately close to the acoustic guitar player and the 90º angle was pointing at the highest fret of the guitar which was just past the sound hole. The outcome was a wide and clear signal that could accommodate most recordings for general acoustic guitar tracking. This worked well because the signal was within a small and somewhat quiet room. I found that the signal could be routed in stereo or mono and still work well in most mix situations.
2. One Large Diaphragm Condenser Close Mic’d
3. Spaced Pair
This configuration uses two small condenser microphones set about two-and-a-half feet away from one another. One is pointed towards the eighth fret of the acoustic guitar and the other is pointed directly at the twelfth fret, just past where most of the strumming is happening. I set these closer to the player because the microphones retain fewer lower frequencies than the large diaphragm microphones. They also tend to register the high end of the frequency spectrum with more detail.
A substantial part of the placement is how far the microphones are placed from the source. Placing the microphones any further from the source would have resulted in a thin sound and any closer would have choked the sound.
I am a fan of this configuration because it captures the fret noise as well as the body of the guitar. You could use this for many applications especially if the acoustic guitarist has a lot of busy left handed hammer-ons and pull-offs. The microphone that points at the neck of the guitar is there to capture these small intricacies that are lost down by the sound hole.
4. Mid-Side
Special Routing
Within your respective DAW you can duplicate the large condenser track or send the track to a separate bus. The end goal is to have a duplication of the large condenser’s signal. Apply the “Phase” button to the duplicated signal and pan both large condenser tracks opposite of one another, hard left and hard right. Mix these two tracks in under the “Mid” signal and the resulting effect is a somewhat roomy and spacious sound.
5. One Small Diaphragm Condenser Close Mic
6. Vertical Spaced Pair
When panning these signals extreme left and right the stereo image is very interesting. Depending on strum direction you can almost feel the attack of the guitar pick on the high and low strings moving from left to right and right to left. This may not be every engineers ideal microphone placement but it does lend itself to some interesting mix options. I would experiment with this placement specifically on a singer/songwriter act that had only acoustic guitar and vocal. The quality of the recording is very intimate and would be fitting for that style. Most of those types of acts rely heavily on the acoustic guitar for a controlled low end, present midrange, clear shimmering high end, without taking away from the vocal.
7. XY
The XY configuration is a stereo option for many different applications. For this you must have the two microphones placed at 90-degree angle with the capsules as close to one another as possible without having them touch. The angle is then pointed towards the sound source. For this placement I pointed the angle towards the sound hole of the guitar. The idea was to get a somewhat wide stereo image of the guitar but I feel that having the microphones where they were narrowed the signal out. Typically I use this configuration in a situation where there is not an ample amount of time to set up a wide stereo configuration.
Phasing Issues? Stereo bar to the rescue!
Capturing an accurate stereo recording can be derailed by phasing issues easier than you would think. If a stereo microphone configuration has one microphone slightly closer to the sound source than the other then the recorded waveforms will begin to cancel themselves out. To alleviate this many engineers will use a stereo bar like the one shown in examples 7 and 8.
8. Room
9. Dual Dynamic
Using two dynamic microphones on an acoustic leads to some interesting choices for panning later in the mix. This techniques comes from placement used on guitar amps and bass amps. In those situations you can experiment with the tone of the speaker by angling one of the microphones off-axis so the microphone retains resonating frequencies that a flush microphone would not pick up. I feel that it is important to experiment with off-axis placements because after all we never have our ears flush against an instrument while we are listening to it. To some degree we are always listening in an off axis setting so why not try it out?
One microphones capsule is facing directly at the sound source while the other is underneath it at an angle facing the exact same area. This variation of axis allows you pan these two microphones moderately left and right in the mix. It will feel a bit uneasy if they are panned too hard, but it does make for a wider signal than just straight mono. I’ve used this technique with great results when engineering for groups where the guitar is more of a rhythmic instrument and plays short percussive chords instead of heavily strummed open chords. If you are in a situation where the vocalists wants to play and sing then you could use this to reduce the amount of vocal in the microphones while capturing a great performance on the vocal with a more detailed condenser microphone.
10. Single Dynamic
Using a single dynamic microphone may or may not be your most commonly used DIY method for demoing out songs or making a quick and dirty recording. This example was included because I wanted to show the drastic differences between this commonly used technique and some others that take more than thirty seconds to set up. You can learn a lot about your own acoustic guitar by trying some of the techniques in this article. Some of these placements may work better on other guitars you own so sit down one day and spend a couple hours trying some different microphones techniques. That being said, this microphone technique is widely used in live situations because it can withstand high sound pressure levels and reduce potential feedback through on stage monitors and house speakers. It’s important to be weary of those types of situations especially in highly reflective rooms that are very small or have low ceilings.
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This is super helpful. I think a lot of guitarists get used to the fairly plug and play nature of recording an electric – especially now that people use things like Kempers and sims that don’t need to be mic’d – and forget that getting a good recording of an acoustic is an actual art. Thanks for sharing!
Wow that’s a wealth of information not easily shared. Thank you!
When wanting to capture the sound from a pair of speakers for A/B comparison which pattern would be the best ?
About the side-mic method, this requires duplicating a source and then inverting phase. It seems to work, but I don’t quite see why. If you have a sound and duplicate it, the two signals are in phase and amplify eachother. If you duplicate and invert phase, they will cancel eachother out. Panning them hard left and right will help some, but still .. wouldn’t the inverted phase track help to cancel out the sound of the other two tracks?
Why invert phase?
I got this web site from my pal who told me about this site and now this
time I am browsing this site and reading very informative articles here.
Matt’s big breakfast
I really like the sound the Blumlein Configuration captures, I’m going to have to try that out. Great article by the way
We have tired a few of these with our band. You can view samples of our recordings on our website. Not as clean b/c it is recorded in the living room but hay it works. Thanks for the suggestions.
Great article. I usually put my mic right in-front of the sound hole then angle is 45 degrees. These look like some good positions but I have never tried any of them. Thanks for sharing. Pictures are very helpful too.
I’d love to save these clips to check them out on a better stereo. Any chance of unlocking the Soundcloud files for download?
Which microphones where used?
Awesome article! I’ve been wondering how to set up my mic for different sounds during recording. I found another guitar recording article for electric guitar as well (for anyone interested): http://tomhess.net/GuitarRecordingTips.aspx
I’ll definitely be trying out these different set ups in my next recording session.