Ribbon Mic Summit

Aug 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Gino Robair

           
 

Ten top engineers share their favorite techniques.

Strike Up the Band

When it comes to recording brass, the engineers agree that there's nothing better than a ribbon. Kramer was enthusiastic about using ribbon mics to record trumpet. “The RCA 44 is one of the greatest trumpet mics of all time. It's an undeniable sound.

“If I'm miking a trumpet section, I like to put an RCA 77 maybe a foot away, sometimes 2 feet away so you get all that air. If it's a nice studio, with good acoustics, a wood floor, and a nice high ceiling, that makes a big difference. The 44 is the darkest-sounding one. The 77 is brighter, and you can switch the patterns — figure-8, omni, and cardioid. What we used to do was put two trumpet players, one on each side, and set the mic to figure-8. If there is a nice quiet passage, maybe I'll get the players to lean in. But if they're screaming, they need to get back — you don't want to overload it. There's a famous saying: distance makes depth.”

FIG. 8: Eddie Kramer extols the sound of a trumpet recorded with an RCA 44 at approximately 2 feet. Each engineer offered their own preferences for distance between mic and musician, but the room sound and volume of the musical passage must also be taken into consideration.

Ainlay, Churchyard, Kramer, and Wakeman all noted that they have the trumpeter play directly into the mic, suggesting a range of distances — 1 to 3 feet — between the mic and player, depending on the room, the music, and the trumpeter (see Fig. 8).

Chiccarelli, on the other hand, doesn't have brass players play directly into his mics. “The guys that are well trained tend to feel more comfortable playing off-axis a little bit, 3 to 5 feet in front of the mic, depending on the room and everything else. If they feel comfortable with the horn sound and the mic position, and things aren't in their way, they're going to perform better. Certainly, the more you can back them off the mic and it sounds good, the happier they are. I think they feel like there are too many little anomalies and little bumps in the sound when they are too close to the mic — all the little squeaks and honks are magnified. But when the player is backed off the mic, you get the room and it tends to be a wider sound, and not so scratchy.”

Schmitt noted his preference for ribbon mics on trombones. “If I'm doing a section,” he explains, “I'll have it about two or two and a half feet in front of the trombonists. Although lately we've been putting a mic on every trombone.”

Chiccarelli says ribbons are great on the lower brass: “Like that Salvation Army brass band sound, where you don't necessarily want punch and percussion out of the tuba or euphonium. They have a rich lower midrange. For me, getting enough lower midrange out of an instrument, and getting quality lower midrange that doesn't murk up a track, is always tricky. You always want to clean up that area because you want to make room for vocals or whatever the lead instrument is. At the same time, if you can leave a lot of that information in a track, it makes the track sound huge, realistic, and warm. It's always a trick of how much you can get away with.

“I found that if you put a mic too close to a tuba or euphonium, they can be really brassy,” Chiccarelli adds, “and it can sound like you're getting only half of the instrument. Usually with a tuba, I'll put the mic over the bell, and on a euphonium, I'll mic it out front. A lot of brass instruments don't radiate sound in one direction, so instead of putting a lot of microphones up, I've found that a ribbon mic with a figure-8 pattern, depending on where you place it, can give you enough of the real sound in the room as well as the presence of the instrument. The distance of the mic from the instrument is based on the room and how hard the player's playing.”