You put that microphone where?

It’s been a while since the last post about recording, so here’s a quick story on an experience I had with mic placement. (You can stop reading now if for you: audio recording < rebecca black live…and yes that is a less than sign which should break some universal rule in this case).

So I had this $100 no-name acoustic guitar that actually sounded all right with a good set of strings on it. But every time I went to record something with it, it sounded like garbage. You read about how this mic and that mic are good for recording acoustic guitars and here’s where you should place them, then you should do this, blah blah blah. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t get the darn thing to sound nearly as good as how it sounded to me when I just sat there and played it. Then, like most ideas I get, I was doing something else and it just randomly popped into my head to try moving the mic around a lot more than you’re supposed to and see if it sounds better. So this time I had someone else play it and then I put on some ear-cup headphones with the microphone signal coming in live. Then I moved the mic near the ground, up high, way far back, under the chair, then finally next to the guy’s ear pointing down at the guitar and POW! Magic sounding all of a sudden! But when I sat back and thought for a sec, it made perfect sense because when I took off the headphones and just listened from different places, it never sounded as good as when I was the one playing it. So for whatever reason, that guitar’s sweet spot was above it right at your head (a clever trick to make me buy a cheap guitar that I thought sounded good).

Once the idea sank in that many instruments, amps, and even voices tend to have a sweet spot where they sound that much better than anywhere else, suddenly all my recordings got that much better…even with cheap recording gear. It’s actually pretty amazing the difference it can make.

—Adam Steele