Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Unusual Microphone Techniques - Coggle Diagram
Unusual Microphone Techniques
Stereo microphone techniques
The Under-snare-only Technique: Only one mic is used underneath the snare which captures a bright and colourful sound.
Mono compatibility is the ability to collapse a stereo signal into mono with no loss in fidelity or deterioration of sound quality due to phase cancellation. However this isn't as frequently used anymore.
Bob Clearmountain Dual Over-snare TechniqueBob Clearmountain popularized another 2-mic technique where both mics are deployed on the batter (top) head. For this, Bob used a Shure SM57 and a small-diaphragm condenser mic (such as the AKG C 451 B) placed closely in parallel:
Tubular Kick: this technique involves tightly gaff-taping a 24″-diameter PVC duct to the front of a 22″ kick drum and produces a sonic result.
John Lennon’s ADT and Leslie Effects: drum compression, sampling, looping, backmasking, chopping up tapes and randomly splicing the pieces back together, and altering the playback speed was used
The David Bowie Heroes Effect:. He set up three mics, one close mic for David to sing into, a second around 15 feet away, and a third even further back into the ambience-rich room which created Tverb
Cymbal Plate involves placing a cymbal very near, in this case, a loud electric guitar amp cabinet. Mic both, and mix to taste. The sound waves give the guitar sound a nice unique sheen.
If you are making live recordings, the choice of technique may be dictated more by the restrictions of the venue than that of obtaining the desired sound quality.
The main goal of many of the techniques is to make the signal mono-compatible for those in the radio audience listening in mono rather than stereo.
Vocals, Drums and Acoustic Guita
r
Vocals
Tape 2 omnidirectional microphones together with a block of wood between them. One microphone should be switched to opposite polarity.
Acoustic Guitar
A small diaphragm condenser microphone can be placed near the right ear, pointing towards the bridge . This creates an natural sound.
You can tape an omnidirectional microphone inside the sound hole to create a boomy tone
If guitar is being recorded with vocals, two touching ribbon microphone can be used
Drums
A large diaphragm cardioid can be used by mounting it over the bass drum, while pointed at the snare drum. This creates good balance.
An omnidirectional condenser microphone can be placed 1-4 inches above the snare and above the middle kit
Recording Techniques
The Trash mic - An extra mic (usually a dynamic) you can use to capture the overall sound of an instrument in order to manipulate the sound later
The underwater Mic - Placing a mic underwater can be used to make it sound like you are in a submarine or capturing low, wobbly sounds from a kick drum. The mic, of course, needs to be covered fully to be waterproof so it doesn't electrocute anyone!
Prepared instruments - This is one for the actual instrument itself, you can change how an instrument sounds, for example placing an object into the strings of the piano, instead of changing where the mic is placed
The gear mix-up - This means that you shouldn't limit the gear to just what it was made for, for example run vocals through a guitar pedal
capturing sound
on axis/ 90 degrees to the sound source- make it sound brighter
the proximity effect
low frequencies become more prominent with a directional polar pattern
further away from mic- amount of ambience and reverb captured increases
