It seems simple, but its one of the biggest mistakes and oversights of the new home producer. Where do you place the mic? What you’re trying to record plays a big part. As well as the desired effect you want from the recording. Position can effect a great number of things, and I’m going to address some of them here.
First off what you plan to record determines a few things. As does your environment. If you have a studio that’s great, I’m interested in talking to people without a studio. Since we don’t have the benefit of sound booths, professional wiring, and all the other fancy equipment and Microphones Pro studios have, we must use a little ingenuity and imagination.
Lets start with isolating what you’re recording from the backing track. Now unless you have a savant singer, or instrument player, they will need to hear the rest of the track to get their cues. So how do you do it?
The easiest way is to play the track over headphones on a separate computer or player, then record with your main system. If you cant, try isolating the recording mic instead. If you really have no way of keeping the live sound from bleeding into what you’re recording, try your best to position the mic, where it wont pick up as much of the backing track.
I have found that using an amp, and a recording Microphone works best. If you don’t have a USB Mic that plugs into the computer, or an adapter for plugging a standard mic jack into a computer, I have never seen a computer that doesn’t have a plug for an online chatting mic. They don’t pick up sound as good as a real mic, but they get the job done when you can’t afford anything else.
You can use a mic to record directly into the computer if you don’t have an amp, but you lose whatever ambiance the room adds when you go purely digital.
For electric instruments, place your mic about a foot or two away from the amp, for instruments like woodwinds, and strings, set them up close to the recording mic or the amp, and play with where you put the mic till you hit a sweet spot. For recording vocals, you need to differ for the vocalist. Some like to hold onto the mic when they record. For clean singing the mic they sing into should be slightly higher than their chin.
As you can tell there are a lot of variables to deal with. The most important thing to do is try to get the purest recording you can, with what you have. Don’t waste time worrying over what you don’t have, and do your best with what you have on hand. With a little experimentation and trial and error, you can make even the worst equipment work for you.
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