Last night I did a radio interview with Tim Hill, a buddy of mine from college. Tim hosts a political radio show on WEBR Fairfax in Washington, D.C. In addition to discussing all things political, Tim’s been focusing on topics of interest outside the political arena.
He’s been intrigued by Home Studio Corner for a while and thought it would be interesting to have me phone in as a guest.
Here’s a recording of the show. Keep in mind, the show was streaming on the internet, so the sound quality isn’t all that great.
Can’t see the player? Download the mp3 here. [21:35 - 9.9 MB] (Right-click and choose “Save as.”)
You may remember a shoot-out I did between the Shure SM58 and its big brother the SM7B. It was interesting to hear some of the similarities between the mics, especially since one costs almost three times more than the other.
Ever since then, I’ve wanted to compare the 58 to a microphone I use quite a bit both in my studio and when I play out live – the AKG D5.
I’ve loved the sounds I’ve been able to get out of the D5, but I’ve never compared it directly to the SM58, which dominates the live sound market.
The D5 is a pretty stylish mic, with its black grill and body and nice big AKG logo. It’s also a super-cardioid microphone, as opposed to the standard cardioid pattern on the SM58.
Aside from these differences, the microphones are fairly similar. They’re both dynamic mics, and they both sell for right at $100.
So…does one sound better than the other? Let’s hear.
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If you follow me on Twitter, then you may have noticed the other night that I gave myself a challenge. I had a song I hadn’t recorded yet, so I thought it would be fun to see how much I could get done in one hour.
Whenever I think about recording in my home studio, I tend to tell myself that I need to set aside at least two hours if I really want to accomplish anything of worth. As you can imagine, this is stupid.
I had a suspicion that this was stupid, hence the challenge. If I only have one hour to record, can I get anything done? Or would it be better that I just watch TV or surf the internet? After all, an hour isn’t very long.
So, in an attempt to prove myself wrong, I set the timer on my iPhone for one hour, hit start, and opened up Pro Tools.
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Last weekend I was recording acoustic guitar for a friend. He was having trouble getting a good recording of his guitar, so he asked me to give it a shot.
It was a beautiful Langejans guitar. I had never heard of the brand, but this was a gorgeous guitar with rosewood back and sides. The guitar had a huge bottom end, but was also surprisingly bright as well. I loved the sound of it.
I decided to stereo-mic the guitar. However, rather than use a spaced pair of microphones – one up by the neck, one down around the bridge – I decided to place the mics closer together.
Then I remembered getting a stereo mic bar months ago. I had actually never used it. After some digging around, I finally found it and put it to work.
What is a stereo mic bar?
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Photo by lrargerich
In the recent shoot-out I did between the Shure SM7B and SM58, I discussed some of the reasons why you would use a dynamic microphone for lead vocals as opposed to a condenser.
One of the main reasons is that dynamics tend to pick up less of your room, so if you have a noisy room or just an acoustically bad-sounding room, a dynamic microphone might allow you to still record a decent vocal.
That said, sometimes a condenser microphone simply sounds better.
The next obvious step would be to do everything you can to minimize the amount of room the microphone picks up. The first thing people usually try is to throw the vocalist and microphone into a nearby closet. Problem solved, right? No more room!
Eh…this will usually introduce more problems than solutions. One of the main problems with most home studio rooms is that they are rectangular, chock full of right angles, corners, and parallel surfaces, which cause all sorts of room nodes, standing waves, bass build-up, etc.
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If you’ve been involved with audio for any length of time, there’s a good chance you’ve used a Shure SM58. It’s the workhorse of the live sound world, and it’s not a bad mic. But how does it sound in the studio?
Typically, when you think about recording vocals in a studio, you picture the singer in front of a nice large-diaphragm condenser microphone. Condenser mics are great, but is it ever appropriate to use a dynamic mic to record vocals?
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This guest post is brought to you by my brother-in-law Joel. Joel’s a great bass player/producer, and he’s been building up his home studio over the last year. His Crummy Church Signs blog, while unrelated to the topic of home studios, is hilarious. You can also follow him on Twitter here.
I’ve always been nervous about having my own home studio. You see, I wasn’t reared on the low-key singer/songwriter scene that seems to be the forte of many home studio owners. Nor was I content to totally lean on MIDI for all of my sounds. I wanted to make loud music, and I wanted it to sound authentic. I always just assumed that there was no way to do that on a low budget (or with neighbors on every side of me who would strongly disapprove if I miked an 8×10 Ampeg bass cabinet at full volume).
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If you’re a home studio owner, then you will inevitably be recording a lot of acoustic guitar. Whether you play yourself, or you’re working with a local singer-songwriter, it pays off to spend some time learning how to mic an acoustic guitar.
There are as many ways to mic an acoustic guitar as there are engineers in the world. For the purposes of this article, I want to show you why you should consider stereo-miking acoustic guitars (that is, using two microphones on the guitar instead of just one.)
Most home studio owners will throw a single mic on an acoustic guitar, point it at the 12th fret, and hit record. While there’s nothing wrong with this, I think a lot of people are missing out on some very cool guitar tones.
With that in mind, I’ve come up with 3 Reasons to Stereo-Mic Acoustic Guitar.
1. It adds width to your guitar-vocal demos (or solo acoustic guitar).
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