Recording acoustic instruments for your compositions is a great way to make your music stand out, but it can be difficult to get high-quality results in a non-ideal space. There are a lot of factors that can impact the outcome - acoustics, microphone technique, and hardware configuration, to name a few… Here we discuss some considerations to help you get the best out of your home studio recordings.
Are two mics better than one?
Pairs of microphones set up for a voice and piano recording.
Often people ask us what microphone they should buy to improve the sound of their recordings, but one of the best things you can do is to use two microphones instead of one. Just as you wouldn’t mix your music in mono, you’ll get better results from your recordings if you don’t capture instruments in mono either. Using a stereo pair will give a more realistic sense of space, and potentially some tonal improvements, even on a solo instrument. We hear in stereo, after all! It doesn’t need to be any complicated setup - often, just a pair of cardioid mics spaced a little way apart will do the trick (the wider you space them, the wider the instrument will sound).
How does your room sound?
The next thing you’ll need to think about is the room you’re recording in. Is it large? Are there lots of reflective surfaces around the walls and ceiling, or is it acoustically treated? Is there a hard floor, or carpet? Does it sound small or boxy? If you’re working in a room primarily designed for writing and mixing, then chances are it’s a little smaller and less reverberant than spaces you might be used to recording in. This needn’t hold you back - you just need to think about your mic placement.
An acoustically treated garden studio room…
A general rule for microphone placement is don’t get too close to the instrument. If you do, it can make the instrument sound very dry and direct, and can often drastically change the tone of the sound - for example, if you were to mic a cello very close to the bridge, then you’d get a scratchy and nasal sort of sound, rather than the warm, full sound you might expect.
However, in the context of smaller untreated rooms, it’s also important not to place your mics too far away. By changing the distance of the mics from the instrument, you’re essentially controlling the proportions of direct and reflected sound that your mics pick up. In a more typical recording space (a large hall, or a church, perhaps), you may well want more distant mics, to capture some of the natural reverb - but in a home studio space, you’re likely to be facing a shorter reverb time than you want, and possibly some unusual and unwanted reflections. In this situation, you’ll want to keep your mics relatively close, to minimise the sound of the room that’s picked up. Additionally, a closer sound gives you more flexibility in pre-production - it’s easier to add reverb to a recording that isn’t covered in reverb already!
…compared to a large, reverberant concert hall.
One good way to strike this balance with mic placement is to position them higher up, angled down towards the instrument. This maintains a good amount of direct sound without getting too close, and allows you some distance without having to place the mics far away in the room and risk having too reverberant a sound. In addition, this approach puts the mics further away from the floor, which is often a major source of unwanted reflections, as it usually isn’t acoustically treated.
We designed the AcoustiCase® for improving control of reflections in short-term live recording environments.
Acoustic treatment can be a key part of the puzzle here and for many all-in-one-room studio owners, striking a balance between an ideal listening acoustic and a desirable recording sound will involve some compromise. In addition to a room’s overall acoustic treatment scheme, moveable acoustic screens can be really useful for controlling unwanted reflections.
Remember to consider the polar pattern of the microphone(s) in question too. If you only have limited acoustic treatment resources you can adjust your microphone angle to use the null axis of the polar pattern to pick up fewer reflections in that direction, whilst maintaining a similar pickup from the front.
Comfort is key
Another crucial consideration is ensuring that your musicians (even if you’re just recording yourself!) are comfortable. This can cover a number of things from a recording point of view:
Can they hear what they need to?
A monitor controller that features a Cue output, so you can send a dedicated headphone mix to your musicians.
Getting foldback right is very important - if a musician can’t hear the things they need to, they certainly won’t be playing their best. You’ll likely need to set up a separate mix in your DAW to send to their headphones, which may contain a combination of the musician themselves, any other parts you’ve recorded, a click, and any synthesised or sampled instruments too. It’s worth spending some time adjusting this mix with the musician to make sure they’re happy with it before you start recording - their intonation and ensemble will benefit no end!
A typical set of single-sided headphones.
Have they got the right sort of headphones?
While you might normally use open-backed headphones for listening or mixing, you’ll quickly find you don’t want to use these for recording, as the sound from them will be picked up by the mics. You might not need headphones that are as high-quality as those you would mix on, either - the musician doesn’t need to be able to make accurate judgements about the sound, they just need to hear the various things mentioned above. Lastly, they may prefer single-sided headphones, so that they can hear themselves in the room as well as the foldback mix you’ve created.
Are there microphones in the way?
When you’re deciding where to place your mics, it’s worth considering what space your musician needs, alongside the sound. Are they likely to move as they play? If they’re a string player, do they have enough space for bowing? Can they clearly see their music, and each other if there are multiple players? There’s little more annoying than being halfway through a take and accidentally knocking into a microphone!