Microphone placement for beginners

Here is an article I wrote for Audiotuts+ about microphone placement. It is a part of their BASIX tag which is aimed at beginners in audio production. It goes into the various techniques of close, distance and ambient miking as well as which microphone you should use in which situation. Read on below for an excerpt of the article.

"Miking up an instrument isn’t an easy thing. It’s not like a digital camera where you point towards what you want to capture and then click. Super cool vacation photo! You might not end up with a great photo, but you can certainly make it better afterwards. Not to offend photographers, but in audio, if you have a lousy source sound from the beginning, you are going to end up with a lousy mixed sound in the end.

Joel wrote a great introduction to microphones a while back where he talked about different types of microphones, their polar patterns and various specifications you need to keep in mind when buying your microphone. During the following article I’m going to continue on the path of the microphone and give you a great beginners guide to using your microphones.

Before I start, let me stress that in the end, it’s all in your ears. Be experimental when you can, move the microphone around wearing headphones to find the so-called sweet spot of the instrument. But to make things a little bit easier, here are some general tips, industry standard work principles and guidelines."

If you want to read the full thing you can check out the article here.

I recommend it to anyone that's having troubles and doubts on how to position their microphones. Knowing these few guidelines will give you a broader perspective on microphone placement making you a more effective recording engineer instead of just fumbling around in the dark with microphone in one hand and instrument in the other.

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For microphone placement aimed at guitar, click here

Check out these drum recording techniques