Before we talk about how to use a mic, I want to briefly talk about what a microphone actually is. Generally speaking there’s three kinds of microphones you’ll encounter, dynamic, condenser, and ribbon mic. They each have their own advantages and disadvantages and we’ve included a PDF recommending the best use scenarios for each. But all microphones ultimately function in relatively the same way. They have a filament of some kind sitting in a neutral position and when sound hits that filament, it moves in either a positive or negative direction. This positive and negative movement directly translates the shape of the resulting sound wave, literally capturing the source by mimicking the movement of sound through air much in the same way your ear fluctuates to capture the sounds around you. I want you to understand this because I believe it helps demystify the magic that is a microphone! When you understand the microphone is literally moving with the sound around it, it’s easier to comprehend that microphone placement is quite the same as putting your ear where the sound is you want to hear. If you put the microphone closer to the source go get more of only that source, if you move it further away you’ll capture the sound of the source as it travels through the space it’s in. Not only does this help us capture good quality sounds but it also helps us think of microphone placement as a creative tool.
So let’s look at a practical use case for this information. One of the most common uses of mic placement is to create a focal point within our production. Let’s say we have a song with three part harmonies; one lead vocal and two harmony vocals. Although we want all the voices to be heard, we want the lead vocal to be the focal point while the harmonies fill the space around it. To accomplish this, we could place the microphone very close to the singer recording the lead vocal so that we are capturing only their voice and it sounds like it’s right there in front of us. Think of Billie Eilish‘s voice, she records very close to the microphone and sings very quietly, the result can sometimes make it sound like her voice is literally inside our heads. Then we could have the harmony vocalists stand a couple feet away from the microphone which will capture more of the sound of their voice in the room they’re in. This will create space in our production and make it sound like the harmonies are surrounding the lead vocal rather than three voices all smashed together. Creating a space in our production is one of the primary ways we can harness a vibe and make something that’s interesting to listen to. Yes there are many ways we can do this in post production but by making these choices early on we create less work for ourselves later and often capture a more authentic performance by committing to the sound we want when we capture it.
One more common use of mic placement is to help define the energy of different sections of a song. Say we’re recording guitars, and we want our verse to be a little more distant while our chorus should be punching us in the face. We could place the microphone a couple feet away from the guitar amp well recording our versus which will capture more of the room and result in a less focused but more vibey sound leaving room for all the other elements like the lead vocal to take the focal point. Then for our chorus we could move the mic right up to the guitar amp which will create a focused and punchy sound driving the rest of the track to push with the guitars and amplifying the energy of the chorus as a whole. QOTSA are masters of this technique often dramatically changing the placement of microphones between different parts of a song resulting in energy shifts that help make their music as impactful as it is.
The last thing I wanna mention is that we should also think of mic placement as the front lines of gain staging. Just like a sound will get quieter the further away a source gets from your ears, microphones function the same way. It’s a little confusing because the gain knob on your interface will appear to make a microphone louder or softer but what it’s actually doing is increasing the sensitivity of that microphone. So if you place a mic closer to the source and turn the gain down, you’ll capture more of just that source. If you put it further away and turn up the gain, you’ll capture more of the space around the source. In fact, in the early days of recording they didn’t have the ability to turn the gain up or down and had to work with a fixed value. This meant that early recording engineers would control the gain of instruments by placing the musicians closer or further away from the microphone. There isn’t really a right or wrong way to do this so long as the resulting signal coming into your DAW is within the DB limits we mentioned before. Take some time to play around with this concept! Try recording the same source from multiple distances and gain settings to see what you get. So much of this depends on your personal taste so it’s worthwhile to take some time and discover what configurations create the sound you like most.
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