The Art of Producing - Part 2 - Mic'ing

This is the second of three episodes on the Art of Producing. In this one, I talk about the mics and equipment I use in my studio, and the reasons why.

The example used for this series features an album project for singer-songwriter Corrie Lynn Green. It is an acoustic-based project, although there are some electric guitars and bass on some songs. I explain why I make certain decisions for this project, and how a recording with a different artist or genre would require a different approach.

Corrie’s album, “Time To Be Brave,” will be released on Outer Marker Records on September 6, 2024, and distributed by Native DSD as a download purchase only. But you can listen to all the songs for free (in mp3) on the Native DSD web site.  https://www.nativedsd.com/label/outer-marker-records/

The third and final episode of this series on producing will look at mixing and mastering.

email: dwfearn@dwfearn.com
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https://dwfearn.com/

Transcript

Episode 95           Producing – Part 2 -- - Mic’ing                          August 31, 2024

 I’m Doug Fearn and this is My Take on Music Recording

 In the first part of this series, I talked about my approach to producing an artist, focusing on recording the basic tracks. In this episode, I explain what mics I use and why.

This illustrates the overlap of producing and engineering. Some producers started their recording career as engineers. But all producers need at least some technical knowledge in order to do their job. This episode combines the technical with the aesthetic.

These techniques are not meant to be something for you to duplicate. What I do works perfectly for the artists I am producing, in my studio, and my notion of what I want things to sound like. Your approach should be different.

But I always learn new things from hearing what other people do, so I hope this description gives you some things to think about.

And I should add that I would do things differently with a different artist and a different genre.

This approach applies to producing songs by Corrie Lynn Green, a singer-songwriter from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Her influences are wide-ranging, but she grew up listening to Bluegrass music. Her primary instrument is banjo. Her songs have evolved into something quite different from Bluegrass, and the musicians I have backing her up in the studio bring their own influences.

The music is almost entirely acoustic. The exception is the occasional electric guitar or electric bass. Any keyboard parts are played on grand piano.

Before the session, after the instrumentation is decided, l make a spreadsheet of the mics I want to use and how to route them. That’s based on experience, but I am always looking for ways to make something sound better. Sometimes I will specify two different mics for an instrument, especially if I feel that previous recordings did not fully capture the sound I had in mind. This can also apply if I have a new mic in my collection and want to explore its capabilities.

I set up my usual mic and the new mic in close proximity. I record each mic on separate tracks, and can later decide if the new mic is an improvement or not. Sometimes I will use both mics in stereo, if that makes sense. But usually, it doesn’t and I choose one or the other.

When I find a great mic for an instrument and player, I usually stick with it – unless something tells me it isn’t right for a particular song. But I never stop trying something new, especially if a song is quite different from previous ones.

For example, on a song that needs a more aggressive bass part, I might change the cello mic to something with a more aggressive sound.

Sometimes it might be necessary to make a major change for a session. For example, I may want to have the option of putting the drums in an isolation booth. I will specify that on my worksheet, and we will have the alternate setup ready to go, if needed. Often a change like that will require other changes, like using the garage for an additional isolation booth, for vocals.

In an ideal world, there would be time to make the switch. But I never have that luxury when working on a tight schedule. Everyone at the session has to be somewhere else soon after we finish. So I have to have the alternate plan thought out ahead of time. Being prepared to change also has the advantage of keeping the session moving along. I want to keep the creative process flowing smoothly, which improves the final product. Interruptions are not beneficial, unless they come at an opportune time, like a break for lunch. But we seldom have time for a lunch break, so everything has to be efficient, with minimal disruption.

If everything is planned ahead of time, and the mics, cables, and stands are already in place, the change might only take a few minutes. Longer than ideal, but still worth that time and effort.

Adam Monaco plays acoustic guitar (and sometimes mandolin) on all of Corrie Lynn Green’s songs. He has an old, large-body Gibson that sounds amazing. It is well-balanced across the range, which is unusual for a guitar that size.

But it does sound a bit dull. I could add eq to improve that. But in thinking about my mic collection, I knew that the brightest mic I own is a Flea C12. Actually, I have a matched pair of them. I prefer the sound of an acoustic guitar in stereo, so we set up the C12s as a Blumlein pair. The Blumlein stereo technique was invented by Alan Blumlein, who worked at Abbey Road studios in the 1930s. It uses a pair of bi-directional mics oriented at 90 degrees to each other. The original concept used ribbon mics, which are inherently bi-directional. They are equally sensitive on the front and back, but have a huge amount of rejection off the “sides.” Actually, the deep null extends around the mic, both sides, top, and bottom.

Another great feature of bi-directional mics is their very consistent frequency response off-axis. That makes any bleed from other instruments, or the sound of the room, sound very natural. Omni mics share this characteristic.

You must keep in mind the equal sensitivity off the back of the Blumlein mics. And you must keep the instrument entirely in front of the mics, since the side pickup is out-of-phase. This can be challenging in a recording situation with a lot of instruments playing in the same room. Thinking about the implications of the Blumlein setup while planning the session will minimize the characteristics that could otherwise be a problem.

With two Blumlein mics in the same room, like I do with acoustic guitar and drums, the acoustical puzzle gets even more complicated.

Off-axis sounds arriving at the mic will have fairly flat frequency response, which is a major advantage with bi-directional mics. But the out-of-phase pickup off the sides in Blumlein could be a problem. Or it could enhance the overall sound. Being aware of these things will help. I often check the sound in mono, just to be sure, but usually my ears are a fine phase detector. But be sure to listen for pickup you might be unaware of. That’s where the mono switch can be revealing.

The way I record almost always involves some degree of bleed. That can be unsettling to engineers accustomed to total isolation between sounds. But you must think about the overall effect. The interaction of the players all in one room is worth the compromise in isolation. And there have been times when the bleed of the drums, for example, into the other mics enhanced the drum sound. Think of the other mics as room mics.

There have been many times when the bleed concerned me. Once the song starts, you have to leave the other mics in the mix, even when some instruments are not playing. Otherwise, the sound will shift dramatically as you bring in the other tracks. That might be a useful effect in some circumstances, but usually it is not.

The point is, when recording like this, all these things must be part of your plan. Otherwise, you may create a major challenge for yourself when it comes time to mix. Pulling out an instrument for a section of the song is an example. That’s not going to work most of the time.

Back to the acoustic guitar pickup. The C12 is a multi-pattern condenser mic. I almost always use it in the bi-directional pattern. Some people call that “figure-8.”

For Adam’s guitar, I place the mics about a foot away. He is good about maintaining the right distance. I often use movable baffles, or gobos, to improve the isolation between instruments. The players like to be able to see each other, however, so this is a trade-off.

Blumlein is the stereo technique that I use almost exclusively. It has its drawbacks, such as equal sensitivity off the back sides of both mics, but I am willing to deal with that for the sake of the glorious stereo image and sound.

For the drums, I use a single AEA R88 stereo ribbon mic, which is permanently fixed in the Blumlein configuration. It is an amazing mic, with an uncanny naturalness and realism.

Mic’ing the drums this way isn’t for every situation. The R88 is equally sensitive to sound arriving from the back, so if there is a lot of bleed from other instruments, that can be a problem. It also requires a decent-sounding room, since there is going to be a lot of room sound in the drum pickup.

The main advantage of this single-point pickup is the total lack of any phase problems that can result when using multiple mics on the drums. The stereo image is more realistic and believable than it is with multi-micing. Whether that is best for the song depends on the music and your interpretation of how the drums should sound.

Single-point mic’ing like this requires a drummer who plays with consistently good balance between all the drums and cymbals. Some drummers are great at this, but not all are. The balance you get cannot be changed in any useful way later, so you have to get it right from the start.

If I had a bigger room, I would probably move the R88 farther from the drum kit than what I have to do in my small studio. The farther away you can place the mic, within reason, the easier it will be to get a natural balance.

By necessity, I can only go back about 5 or 6 feet when there are other instruments playing in the room. That works well, but it might be better at 8 or 9 feet.

There are occasions when I put the drums in my shop, which is about 12 by 15 feet, with a low ceiling. That room sounds very good, especially after some work to improve the absorption and diffusion. But it is a small room, and that does not sound good when you want a big drum sound. The R88 can go back a bit farther in the shop, but there is a limit before the boxy character of the small room becomes a problem.

I also have mic lines run to the garage, which is quite big, larger than the studio. The drums out there have a distinctive sound. It is a garage, after all. Sometimes that is the perfect sound for some situations. But usually not.

Most of the time I record the drums in the studio with other instruments.

There are a couple of locations in the main studio where I can put the drums, and they each have quite different effects on the sound. Out in the room sounds good. There is also an oddly-shaped section in the back of the studio that provides a different sound. Since the space is bounded by concrete block walls, and that section of the studio is underground, all the sound produced by the drums remains in that space.

That area has its own absorption and diffusion panels, so it sounds very good. There is something about those solid walls (and concrete floor with commercial carpet tiles) that I like. The low frequencies are more solid, and the kick drum sound is best there.

I can’t move the R88 as far out from the drums as I might like because the mic then starts to pick up too much of the rest of the room – and the other instruments. The mic ends up about 4 to 5 feet from the drums.

Another challenge with this mic’ing technique is getting a good balance between the kick drum and the rest of the kit. Moving the R88 up and down will change the balance easily, but it also will change the position of the kick drum in the stereo image. I sometimes use a separate kick mic, usually a U47fet, just in case I need it. I usually do not use it, but it can save a track in some songs.

On Corrie’s songs the kick drum is not as important as it might be in other genres. In fact, the drums are usually are pretty low in the mix, compared to other genres. Her songs do not need a clicky, in-your-face kick drum sound. I would modify this mic’ing for other types of music. But the Blumlein main mic will always be the core of my drum sound.

I recently recorded an album for a punk band. Well, they don’t like to be called punk, but that is the closest category that most people would understand. It is very high energy music, and I wanted to capture the full impact of the drums.

I used an R88 as the main pickup, but I also had a U47fet on the kick drum and a SM57 on the snare. And about ten feet from the kit I placed a Beyer-Dynamic M160 ribbon mic, up high and facing down at the drums. The M160 had a huge amount of compression on it, from a Hazelrigg Industries VNE compressor. The drum sound was just right for the music.

In all recordings, I want the kick drum as close to center as possible because that always sounds best to me. Plus, most of my projects will also be released on vinyl, and it will drive the lacquer mastering engineer crazy if you have excessive low frequency content that is not centered. They can compensate for that, but it is better for the sound if you can deliver a mix that is optimum for vinyl.

Finding the best spot for the single-point Blumlein mic can be challenging. It could take a lot of experimentation, which is not a luxury I have at these sessions. But if you get it right, or even pretty close, the overall drum sound is wonderful. Not for every project, but certainly for the acoustic-based music that I am describing in this series.

Peter Oswald plays cello on all of Corrie’s songs. It is the perfect bass instrument for acoustic music. It is generally an octave higher than an upright or electric bass. Peter plays either pizzicato, like an upright bass, or bowed like a traditional cello sound. In almost all songs, he plays both, either during the tracking or as an overdub.

I have tried many different mics on the cello, to find the best sound. My favorite is an AEA R44. Others I have used are a Neumann U47fet, a Coles 4038, a Sennheiser MKH416 short shotgun, AEA KU4 and KU5, and a vintage Calrec small diaphragm condenser that is very bright and has a nice edge to it. Sometimes I have used combinations of those mics.

Most often, however, I end up with the 44. It works great on cello. The mic is generally pretty close, a foot away or slightly more. It needs to be out of the way of his bow. The proximity effect is often beneficial to the cello sound, but sometimes the sound lacks precise articulation, so I back off the mic, or use some low-frequency roll-off. Or a different mic.

Corrie’s vocals are always recorded with a 44. It is a mic made for her voice. I have tried others, such as a U47, M49, an SM7, and a C12. Those all sound good, but the R44 is special.

Corrie’s mic technique is very good. She sings about 18 inches from the 44, but can move in or out a bit during the song, depending on the sound we want during louder parts or the more intimate parts. I do not use a pop screen.

I use the 44 for both the reference vocal and for the finished vocal. I also use 44s for the Cate Monaco and Julia Finegan, the background singers.

For Corrie’s banjo, I use a Royer R121 whenever she is singing and playing at the same time, like when we are tracking her voice and banjo for reference only. The R121 sounds good on the banjo, and can be oriented with its null to minimize vocal pickup. Same with the 44 on her vocal, set so it rejects the banjo. Even though her vocal and banjo are just for the other players to hear, I record them as if they will be the final version. I have not needed those parts on Corrie’s songs, but with other artists, I have sometimes ended up using those reference tracks as the final version, if that performance is outstanding and could not be exceeded in an overdub.

For the final banjo part, I use an R88. That gives the instrument a nice stereo feel, although that is not obvious until you hear it in mono. I place it about 2 feet away, sometimes 3 feet, depending on the song.

If we use electric bass, I take it direct through a D.W. Fearn VT-I/F, which is the original tube DI I designed and we manufactured for many years. The same circuit is now used in the Hazelrigg Industries VDI tube direct box.

For electric guitar on Corrie’s songs, Tom Spiker brings a collection of instruments to try. That is usually plugged into our studio Vox AC10, but Tom can also bring various vintage amps from his collection when we need a different sound.

I almost always use a Royer R121 on the amp, but I have also used an AEA R92. There is a not-too-subtle difference between the R92 and the R121, which can be a useful tool. But the adjustments on the instrument and amp have a much larger effect on the sound than does the mic.

The mic is pretty close to the amp, just a couple of inches from the grill cloth. The mic is placed differently depending on the amp in use. I have recorded the amp in the garage, for a different sound, maybe with a couple of room mics.

I almost always record a violin in stereo with a R88. It is a great sound, but the player has to maintain the exact same position all the time. They can move around a bit, which sounds fine, but they have to be pretty close to the optimum spot. The violinists I use are good at that consistency, but it could be a problem with other players.

I have also used a R44 on violin, with excellent results.

In either case, the mic is placed somewhat above the violin and aimed slightly down. It is about 2 feet away. Farther might be better for the sound, but then I get too much of my room, which is not beneficial for violin. If we double the violin parts, I usually have the player take a couple of steps back from the mic for the overdub. That provides a nice sense of depth to the string parts.

To record the 1903 Mason and Hamlin AA grand piano, I use an R88 about 18 inches above the sounding board, near the bridge. The piano never has the lid on it. This is a great piano sound for any situation.

There are times when Geoff Hazelrigg plays upright bass on a track, usually in conjunction with George Hazelrigg on piano. I use a R44 on Geoff’s bass, very close to the bridge.

Sometimes we add some unusual instruments or voices, and the mic’ing technique will depend on the intent. For example, on one of Corrie’s songs I wanted male background singers, but I didn’t want them to sound like an ensemble. I needed them to sort of shout the words. For that, I used an R88 with the four singers arrayed two in front and two in back of the mic. Balance was achieved by moving people closer or farther, as needed. It was perfect for the song.

We did this at the end of the session and everyone had someplace to be next, so we only did two takes and I had to accept the balance as we captured it. Ideally, we would have spent more time perfecting the mic’ing, but in the end, the unpolished nature of the part benefited from the less than perfect pickup.

On one song we used a 1730 harpsichord, played by George Hazelrigg. We recorded several Bach harpsichord pieces a few years ago, using a different instrument. That one sounded best with a pair of Blumlein R44s about 7 feet out from the instrument. But for Corrie’s song, I used an R88 very close to the sounding board, much like I record piano, but closer. The sound was amazing.

All the mics in my studio go through D.W. Fearn mic preamps. I have 16 channels available, although it is rare that I need that many.

Usually, the preamps outputs go directly into the Merging Technologies converters, but if I need compression or eq, that is patched in between the preamp and the converter.

The DAW I use most often is Pyramix, by Merging Technologies. It is an odd DAW, which is very good at some things while other standard features are either hard to implement or non-existent. When necessary, I use Reaper if a needed feature not available in Pyramix. For DSD recording, I have to use Pyramix.

The sound of the Merging converters perfectly matches my sense of how things should sound. I have 16 I/O channels, plus 16 AES channels in and out. That is plenty for my projects. The number of tracks can be much greater, but I seldom exceed 20 tracks, many of which are stereo pairs.

I always record in DSD. The sound is a significant improvement over PCM to my ears. The format is called DSD256, which uses a 11.2MHz sample rate.

I won’t go into the technicalities of DSD here except to say that it is a pain to use. You cannot mix in the DSD format. You can do some basic editing in DSD, but there is no way to add any processing.

It’s a good thing it sounds great, because it certainly is not user-friendly. I put up with its shortcomings, because even after the final product is reduced to a PCM format, typically a wav file, the improved capture in DSD persists. It even makes a data-compressed format like mp3 sound better than it does from a purely PCM recording.

Since you cannot control the monitor or headphone mix, and there are no aux sends, recording in DSD, requires a separate mixer. When I only had 8 tracks of converters, my 1980-vintage Neve mixer was ideal. That mixer has 8 in and 2 out, with most of the features of a large console.

When I needed more inputs, I decided on a Speck line-level mixer with 16 in and 2 out, with 4 aux sends and many other features. But it is strictly a line-level mixer, with no mic preamps nor eq. But it is fine for my purpose since I wouldn’t use the mic preamps and eq anyway.

During DSD recording, the mixer is used for monitoring and headphone feeds.

At the end of every session, whether it is for tracking, overdubbing, or mixing, I do a personal debrief. I do a mental review of the session, noting what things went well, which could use improvement, and which were not successful. I do this constantly throughout a project, from beginning to end. It helps keep me stay focused, and makes me think about how I could improve something. It might be the placement of musicians in the room, the mics I chose and where I put them, any processing, and other technical details.

As I producer, I am also constantly evaluating how effectively I have captured the song, both through arrangement and performance, but also technically. Although I usually have a good idea of what other instruments will be added, when listening to the song-in-progress I try to imagine what else the song needs.

I have never done a perfect session, although I think I sometimes come close to that ideal. I learn new things from every session, even after 60 years since I started. My goal is constant improvement.

I listen for details, but also to the big picture. How does this recording sound? Does it fulfill the needs of the song? If something is less than ideal, how can I fix it? And what did I learn for next time?

And in a broader scope, how does the song make me feel? How will listeners perceive it? I will discuss this in more detail in the third episode on mixing.

That covers the technical aspects of my studio and how I use my mics and equipment for recording Corrie Lynn Green.

In the next episode in this series, I will talk about my approach to mixing and mastering.

Thanks for listening, subscribing, and commenting. You can always reach me at dwfearn@dwfearn.com

This is My Take on Music Recording. I’m Doug Fearn. See you next time.