CHAPTER 3 :
Recording tips from the Pros

Move Around the Room
Angle Your Amp
Play with Mic Placement & Angles
Get the Air Moving
Focus the Energy
Multiple Mics
Re-amping.

Play with Mic Placement & Angles

Mic placement and mic angles go a long way
toward capturing different tones from the same
sound source. For example, to help record a very sibilant vocal performer, try angling the mic up toward a 45-degree angle and you might find
a lot of that popping and hissing goes away. Just
by taking a microphone and adjusting it a few
degrees — or just a little bit to the left or the
right — can make an enormous difference in the
tones and sounds you capture on record.
“If you are recording a guitar cabinet,” says Raison, “the sweet spot will vary from cabinet to
cabinet. When you consider a speaker is a diaphragm that is physically moving air, bear in
mind that the sound emanates from that ansgled cone — no sound comes from the center
of the speaker. Aim the mic at the cone portion
of it, or inwards or outwards, upwards or downwards, off axis a little, or towards the cabinet away from the speaker — in every single case, you will get a different kind of a tone.”

Get the Air Moving
If you’re recording with a computer, there are
hundreds of software plug-ins that can emulate
the sound of an array of guitar and amplifier
combinations in a variety of ambient settings.
But in the end, speaker emulators simply can’t
push the air and do what a speaker does. Even
in the most basic situations, if you put an instrument through a 10- or 12-inch cabinet, it will make a significant difference in the tonality of the instrument as compared to going direct from a rack mount effects processor or a computer plug-in.

Focus the energy
If you’re in a home studio environment and you
don’t have a lot of control over the acoustics in
your room, you can end up capturing
a lot of unwanted early reflections, flutter
echo, and the like. To get a sound that’s more
direct, try taking sleeping bags, blankets, or
cushions off your couch and build a little space,
like a fort or a teepee, and put the microphone
in it. You probably want to avoid using acoustic
foam treatments for this, as you could lose
too much high end. But something to focus the
energy and cut out the ambient noise can help
you capture the source more effectively.

Another way to get a tighter, more controlled
sound and get less of the room is to use a filter,
like the Auralex MudGuard. For $100, it will create a baffle around the microphone and focus all of the energy into the mic so you pick up virtually no reverberation from the room.

Multiple mics
Before you consider using multiple mics in your
studio, ask yourself how much experimentation you want to do. It may not be worth the extra work, as a single microphone can usually get the job done. When you introduce a second or third microphone into the equation, you’re introducing potential phase anomalies, e.g. two microphones picking up similar signals and canceling each other out. One microphone is safe and easy, with two or more microphones there are rules you have to follow, and they’re not necessarily going to get you a better or radically different sound.