There’s nothing wrong with the classic amp-miking technique of
sticking a Shure SM57 right up against a speaker cone. After all, there have probably
been more than a bazillion astounding guitar tones captured with that setup. It’s
simple. It works. And no one is going to call you an anarchistic freakazoid for employing
conventional wisdom.
But, one day, you might start tracking guitars with your “safe” miking methods
and find you’re drifting off into the hellish nightmare that is creative boredom. You’re
hating everything you hear. You’re uninspired. You’re pitiful. In fact, you hate the very
ground on which you tread because it won’t open up and swallow your complacent,
unoriginal, and ordinary ass in one big gulp.
Well, um, if that’s what’s going on, you may need to drop-kick conventional studio
wisdom, and surrender to the unknown. The act of fearlessly abandoning established
techniques in favor of experimentation can revitalize your passion—or at least pull
you out of an artistic malaise—and drive you to discover new sounds. And all you have
to do is try to not do what you usually do. If you’re committed to breaking with the
norm, but aren’t yet confident about taking the leap, here are some wacky approaches
to get you started. Hopefully, you’ll be inspired to try even weirder methods until your
wonderfully unconventional guitar tones jump out of playback systems, grab listeners
roughly by the earlobes, and shake them into submission to your genius.
Cool Stereo Ambiences
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| Korg CM-100L |
Nearly everyone has heard about guitar
amps being placed in reverberant spaces
such as garages, stairwells, and showers to
get unique “room” sounds—but here’s an
adaptation of that technique that lets you
also record the dry sound of your amp and
create cool stereo images in the bargain.
You’ll just need an amplifier with a second
speaker output and a second speaker cab.
The first thing you’ll need to do is decide
on a reverberant space. In addition to the
ones already mentioned, you could use any
room with an interesting ambience, be it
large or small, though typically spaces with
some combination of bare walls, an uncovered
floor, and either very high or very low
ceilings produce the most dramatic results.
Roomy fireplaces, concrete-walled basements,
and even large containers of various
sorts are also excellent choices.
Once you have your space, place the
extension cabinet inside it, and keep your
amp in a separate, preferably non-reverberant
space (you may need a long speaker
cable to accomplish this). Then record the
amp in whatever way you prefer—though
placing a dynamic microphone
such as a Shure
SM57 or a Sennheiser
MD421 tight up on the
cone is probably the best
approach, as the idea is
to get as dry and present
a sound as possible.
After you have a
tone that pleases you,
experiment with placing
a microphone in the
room with the extension
cab. The sky’s the limit when it
come to microphone choices here, as you
aren’t looking for great guitar tone—you are
looking to record the sound of the space,
and that may mean placing a condenser,
ribbon, dynamic, or even PZM microphone
of any quality, from highly directional to
omnidirectional, anywhere in that space.
Have fun, get crazy, and try everything that
springs to mind.
Now, record the amp and the extension cab
onto separate tracks, and then experiment with
panning the recorded tracks in various ways.
For example, try panning them hard right and
left
and
see
what
that
sounds like.
Then try keeping
the extension
cab track hard right
or left, but move
the dry track closer
to the center to give it
a bit more oomph. Then
try panning them at nine
‘oclock and three o’clock, or even both
straight down the middle. And as you are
doing that, also experiment with the relative
levels—from just a touch of ambience
to full-on emersion. Who knows, maybe
just the ambient sound will work best in
your mix? Be fearless! —BC
Embrace Crap
One way to force yourself into seeking vastly
different guitar tones is to limit yourself
to dreadful or inappropriate tools. A great
microphone, for example, can capture awesome
sounds without breaking a sweat. But
a $19 karaoke mic purchased at Toys “R”
Us is likely going to give you nothing but
trouble—that is, until you find the soiled
beauty within its fractured frequency range.
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| Audio-Technica U851 |
One of my favorite hunting grounds
for cheapo mics is Radio Shack. Some of
my recent favorites (or, more aptly, “sonic
trouble makers”) include the $9.99 Sony
FV100 omnidirectional dynamic (great for
capturing searing mids and bright, articulate
room tones), the $14.99 Sony ECM-F8
omnidirectional boundary mic (made for
recording lectures and teleconferences,
it’s tinny and overloads real easy, but produces
massively aggro tones when used to
track raging amps), and the $17.99 Emerson M193 headset condenser mic (I just
drop the entire headset into the rear of an
open-back combo, mic the front of the cabinet
with a decent condenser from a distance
of five feet, and blend the two very different
mics to taste).
The fun here is that you can’t employ
these super-low-budget microphones in conventional
mic positions, because they really
sound quite atrocious. The trick is figuring
out where to place the mic in the room where
it can deliver a unique or interesting sound.
I’ve clipped these puppies to guitar cables
while walking around the amp, hung them
from ceiling lamps, gaffer’s taped them inside
a porcelain bathtub, wrapped them in dish
towels and stuffed them against the backs
of speakers, and closed them off in closets.
Obviously, not every method reaped brilliant
results, but I learned something with
every attempt, and, eventually, I’d stumble
onto an approach that blew my mind (in a
good way). —MM
Making Contact
Sometimes, you can abandon mic positioning
all together, and try attaching one or
more contact microphones right to your
electric guitar. Just a few of the many inexpensive
options available are the Korg CM-
100L ($12 street), the Cold Gold Basic ($32
direct), the AXL PG-801 ($14 street), and the
Barcus-Berry BBPCP ($20 street).
Costlier but higher-quality options
include B-Band’s UKKO series
of contact mics designed for use
with various drums ($99 street).
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| B-Band UKKO |
Try attaching the mic to the
body, headstock, or pick guard
of your instrument—anyplace it
will fit without interfering with
your playing. Then record the
sound either as is, or processed
in some way, and try blending it
with your amplified sound. Typically,
the contact mic sound will be
thin and “plucky,” and by mixing
in just the right amount—particularly
to heavily distorted tones—
it can add or restore articulation,
and increase the presence of the
sound in a mix without increasing
the volume. Of course, creative
use of compression, equalization,
“exciters,” reverb, delay, and panning
can increase the effect dramatically
and lead to myriad
possibilities. —BC
Go Long
You know, there’s no law that
forces anyone to mic a guitar cabinet
right up on the speaker. You
won’t get arrested for moving
that mic back off the speaker at
a number of distances. This isn’t
exactly a radical technique, as
recording engineers have utilized ambient
miking forever. But they often use the
“distance” mic in tandem with a close mic
in order to ensure the impact and articulation
of the guitar tone is captured. However,
consider dumping the security of
the close mic, and just go with the room
mic. I’ve experimented with mics placed
as close as a foot away from the amp, and
as far away as 20 feet or more. I’ve auditioned
several different mics in these positions—
condensers, ribbons, dynamics,
and PZMs mounted on pieces of plywood.
I’ve put the mics next to windows, walls,
tables, pillows, and couches to determine
the effects of dry and reflective surfaces on
the room tone. I think I’ve been trying to
emulate the euphoric rush of a screaming
loud guitar pummeling you at an arena concert,
but without the volume or the arena.
I haven’t gotten there yet, but I have found
some very cool “open” sounds
by letting the amp resonate in
the room. —MM
Go Outside
 |
| Sennheiser MD421 |
Former Be Bop Deluxe guitarist
Bill Nelson is one of
my heroes, so when he told
me he once recorded a song
outside in a courtyard, I was
intrigued. It’s a bit hard to pull off if you
have cranky neighbors, so I decided to not
to push my luck with loud, blaring overdriven
tones. Instead, I set a small combo
to a clean sound, and placed the amp on
the stone surface in my backyard. Then, I
placed an AKG C414 condenser about 15
feet away, under a tree in a raised patch of
the garden. As luck would have it, I didn’t
get a clean sound at all. The wind and
leaves rustling was almost as loud as the
amp. For whatever reason, I was too lazy
to move the mic closer to the amp, and too
chicken to crank up the amp volume. So I
kept the “nature” track until I had a psychedelic
moment of truth, and decided to
add a phaser to the wind-and-leaves-andguitar
blend. I overdubbed a less
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| Royer R-121 |
environmentally
challenged guitar part in my
studio, and then faded in the whack track
ever so slightly. I was rewarded with a
twisted texture that made a relatively mundane
rhythm-guitar line really strange and
foreboding. Sometimes a really dumb idea
can find its way into your production and
transform itself into a snippet of genius.
Don’t forget that. Ever. —MM
Cylindrical Sonics
 |
| Sony ECM-F8 |
In a real moment of inspired stupidity, I taped
three gift-wrap paper rolls together end-toend
(after the nice paper was removed, of
course, just leaving the naked cardboard
roll), and stuck a slim Royer R-121 ribbon
mic inside one end of the roll. I completely
covered a small combo amp with a couple
of thick blankets, and then I gaffer’s taped
the other end of the long paper roll to the
front of the speaker grille. The whole thing
rather looked like a headless, legless armadillo
with a very long tail. I played around
with overdriven, saturated, and clean
guitar tones to see which sound worked
best, and I discovered I liked the cleaner
tones, because they sounded a bit hollow
and spooky. The overdriven tones tended
to blast away any strangeness. Total time
to construct the “tiny tunnel of sound” was
about ten minutes, but I caught heat for
not replacing the gift wrap nicely on the
barren paper rolls—proof that there are
risks to experimentation. — M M