Microphone placement is perhaps more important in creating your recorded sound than the actual microphone you use. The general breakdown of the sound you get regarding the order of importance is something like this:
- 50 percent: The instrument and the player
- 20 percent: Microphone position
- 20 percent: Room sound
- 10 percent: Choice of microphone
While the actual numbers could be debated until the end of time (and vary depending on a huge number of other variables), mic placement indeed plays a huge role in your final sound.
This is particularly true in home recording studios, where the room sound is often the variable home engineers have the least amount of control over. Here are a few tips to help determine the best mic placement in your studio.
Forget the ‘Fix It in the Mix’ Attitude
You’ll constantly be in the process of learning your room, and this is something that’s just as true in million-dollar studios as it is in home studios. One great way to speed up this process is not to rely on your arsenal of effects to cover up bad microphone placement results.
When getting your sounds, don't use any initial EQ or Compression on your track; that way, you get a more accurate feel of exactly how your mic is picking up the audio source. Say you’re recording an acoustic guitar track, and the recordings have some unpleasant, shrill highs. Instead of deciding to cut the frequencies when mixing, try moving the mic you’re using around until you naturally get rid of those sounds.
This advice goes for every track you cut, and will give you a huge head-start on your way to a great mix.
Experiment, Experiment, Experiment
Let’s continue with the acoustic guitar example. Typically, if you’re mono mic-ing an acoustic, you’ll want to put the mic slightly higher than the fretboard level and slightly up the neck of the guitar, with the mic aimed at the soundhole. This is a great place to start, but it’s not going to be ideal for every microphone on every guitar in every room.
Instead, you can treat this as something of a default position and slightly adjust the position until you find the sound you want. This will take some time, but if you are often recording the same instrument in the same room, you’ll soon learn what works best for you and how to tweak your mic position when you need a different sound than you normally do.
Don’t Be Afraid to Switch Gear
Though the two tips above can be great, sometimes you’ll still find that you’re just not getting the sound you need for your project. When this happens, if possible, change the gear you are using.
If you’re using a condenser mic to record that acoustic guitar track, switch over to a dynamic mic to see if you can get a more desirable sound. Sometimes you may have to try out another guitar.
Whatever you have to do, always remember it is worth spending that extra time in the studio to get a great sound than to forever live with a subpar recording.
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So, Why A Membership?
Let’s face it — trying to create professional mixes without the correct knowledge, tools, services, and network is like playing a concert with a broken instrument to an audience of no one.
That’s where the Sage Audio membership comes in — the membership gives you everything you need to create professional mixes consistently.
The membership is the secret to your success — it’s the difference between the 1,929,999,999 of poor-sounding mixes and the .00000002% of mixes that make people say 'WOW!"
There are 7 unique value-points included in your Sage Audio membership.
Let’s go over each one so you can decide if the membership is right for you.
1. Sage Audio University
- SAU Flagship Mixing Course: 23-video in-depth mixing course that reveals the little-known secrets of mixing and matches the needs of the new music industry.
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- SAU Pre-Mastering Course: Concise pre-mastering course that details the latest industry standards for preparing your mixes for mastering.
- SAU is designed for every experience level, ranging from budding mixing engineers to advanced engineers. The techniques and concepts taught can be applied to any DAW to create industry-leading mixes without expensive software or plugins - and free plugin alternatives are suggested throughout each course.
- Each SAU course includes Start-to-Finish session walkthrough lessons for multiple genres so you can follow along with your preferred genre.
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- Mixing feedback is invaluable, and the Sage Audio membership gives you continual direct access to us for real-world feedback so you can improve every aspect of each of your mixes while you're in the process of mixing.
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- 50 free mastered songs per year with your own dedicated professional mastering engineer so you can get all your mixes sounding like professional songs.
- You get your own dedicated Sage Audio mastering engineer to create custom masters that are specific to you and sound exactly how you want.
- Unlimited revisions with your dedicated mastering engineer. As a standard of our service, we are not happy until you are happy with the sound of your masters.
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