Above: what the authors suggest you do NOT do…
How y’all doing out there in the land of Ooo… srry for the dearth of new ‘content’ lately; it’s been v v busy here at PS dot com HQ. Anyhow, I recently came across an interesting article in an old issue of DB magazine concerning distant-mic’ing. The authors are Roger Anderson and Robert Schulein; you can download it here:
DOWNLOAD: Distant_Micing
Essentially, the concept is that best-results with distant-mic’ing are obtained when the microphone is as close to the most prominent boundary (in most cases, the studio floor) as possible.
I use both a distant-mic and a close -mic on pretty much every instrument that I record at GCR; I don’t always use both sources, but shit, we’ve got a big, great-sounding room, why not record it? But I’ve always set the distant-mic on a stand approx. 4-feet above the floor, much like the diagram above. I carefully position it to obtain what I feel is an appropriate balance between direct and reflected sound, but I’ve never thought much about how far it is from the floor. Anderson & Schulein make a very compelling argument for doing otherwise, and I’m gonna give it a shot at this week’s sessions.
To all my working recording-engineer readers: thoughts on this technique? Weigh in,,,
Tomorrow morning: 7AM-9AM EST (that’s NYC time, buddy) I will be doing a guest DJ set on-air at WPKN, 89.5 FM.
