Microphone placement - Posted on 2017-11-02 by Michael Bittle

There are many different Microphone placement techniques. I learned that each technique has its own use and is good in certain settings but can be bad in others. I learned that when you mic an amp it a lot of times creates a better sound than when you play into a DI box. There are many different ways to mic an amplifier, close miking gives you the most direct sound and if done correctly can come out very clean. Ambient miking is more about getting the room's sound than it is about getting direct sound. Distant miking gives you a lot of room sound but not as much as ambient miking, distant miking can be done by placing the microphone in a separate room or by placing it in the same room as the amp but by keeping it far away from it. Accent miking is used to give one track a little more pop than the other instruments playing. For example, if you had a men's choir singing with a woman lead you would mic the choir with a spaced pair miking technique while giving the female vocalist her own mic to make her voice stand out more. There are many different miking techniques, XY miking refers to when you place two microphones together with the heads of the mic's almost touching. This technique is used because the two microphones will both pick up their own side of the room which results in a very nice sound. Spaced pair miking is any two microphones spaced apart, my favorite microphone technique is the Decca tree technique which is primarily used for recording orchestra. This technique is used when a venue doesn't have amps so you place three mics around the room, one facing right, the other left, and the other facing center. This picks up the sound of the whole band without them having to use any type of speakers. A good example of this is the Philadelphia orchestra when they played at the Academy of music. The Academy of music is very old and everything in there is to be played acoustic so when they would be recorded they would use a Decca tree technique to pick up every instrument. You can tell they are using this technique because when a guy coughs in the audience you can hear it louder than the band.