{"items": [{"author": "Danner", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367740759954648", "anchor": "fb-367740759954648", "service": "fb", "text": "nice list - usually you just need to pick this stuff up on the job. you might want to mention that pianos can really benefit from two mics, for highs and lows. they can be eq'd separately, and provide clarity to dancers.", "timestamp": "1337644564"}, {"author": "Allison", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/113296633271046993086", "anchor": "gp-1337644857845", "service": "gp", "text": "This is what I have always believed about where the most important sound comes out of a flute, and yet people always want to put the microphone at the bottom end of the flute, and argue with me that that's actually where the sound is coming out. Can you tell me anything more about this?", "timestamp": 1337644857}, {"author": "BDan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367752996620091", "anchor": "fb-367752996620091", "service": "fb", "text": "Your second footnote is incorrect, unless you're using some weird definition of loudness: sound obeys the inverse square law, so if you double the distance to the mic it will only be 1/4 as loud.", "timestamp": "1337646346"}, {"author": "Danner", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367761076619283", "anchor": "fb-367761076619283", "service": "fb", "text": "BDan: you're correct about the law, but luckily the example is still correct, the ratio from .5\":1\" is the same as 5\":10\".", "timestamp": "1337647379"}, {"author": "Richard", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367764566618934", "anchor": "fb-367764566618934", "service": "fb", "text": "Have you seen Bob Mills' booklet All Mixed Up, which is carried by CDSS, I believe? I found it very helpful when I first started volunteering to help with sound at my local dance.", "timestamp": "1337647816"}, {"author": "Scott", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367767779951946", "anchor": "fb-367767779951946", "service": "fb", "text": "Agree with Danner about two mics for a piano. Accordion is trouble also because it's actually two instruments in one, and the mic tends to go on the piano side because that side doesn't move. As a result, you can almost never hear the bass side of an accordion unless it's one with microphones already inside the instrument.", "timestamp": "1337648212"}, {"author": "Danner", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367770823284975", "anchor": "fb-367770823284975", "service": "fb", "text": "Scott: I'll double mic an accordion, but some players only need one, depending on what they are playing. Best case on accordion, you'll have tom pixton, and you'll give him 110v and an XLR, and you're all set :-)", "timestamp": "1337648568"}, {"author": "Scott", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367775773284480", "anchor": "fb-367775773284480", "service": "fb", "text": "I will defer to your judgement. I've never mic'd an accordion, but I've been to many shows where the accordion sound has been unbalanced, for whatever reason, and generally favoring the piano side.", "timestamp": "1337649175"}, {"author": "BDan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367791056616285", "anchor": "fb-367791056616285", "service": "fb", "text": "Danner: Yeah, and Tom has five or ten other instruments stuck in there too, so you also save the trouble of having to mic a bunch of other people. :-)", "timestamp": "1337651061"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1337651067434", "service": "gp", "text": "@Allison\n I'm pretty sure they're wrong and that if you mic a flute at the end you'll get good sound for the notes that use the whole tube and bad for the ones that have most of the holes open. But I haven't done a blind test. It wouldn't be hard to do one, though, and I would like to at some point. When I get back from Ecuador I'll try and enlist a flute player to test.", "timestamp": 1337651067}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367796646615726", "anchor": "fb-367796646615726", "service": "fb", "text": "@BDan: Loudness isn't the same as sound intensity. Sound intensity, a measure of energy, does drop by 3/4 when you double the distance. But loudness is about human perception and is logarithmic. My understanding is that this just about cancels out the square and it takes about four times as much sound energy to make something sound twice as loud, or four fiddles to sound twice as loud as one. Perceived loudness is roughly inversely proportional to distance.", "timestamp": "1337651721"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367801083281949", "anchor": "fb-367801083281949", "service": "fb", "text": "@Richard: All Mixed Up is online: http://www.bobmills.org/amu/ His section on mic placement (and eq) is http://bobmills.org/amu/microphones.shtml
@Danner: he suggests not using two mics on the piano: \"It's much easier to make a piano sound bad with two mics than to make it sound any better than it does with one, due to phase cancellation, the added background noise, and potential feedback problems with extra mics.\" Which matches my experience.
He also says \"Don't ever put bass in the monitor. Its low tones spread very well on stage without it, and the typical monitor setup can't handle its low notes.\" This seems bizarre to me. Whenever I've played with a standup bass it's been hard to hear them unless they've been in the monitor. I understand if the monitors aren't up to it (in which case the bass player might want to bring their own monitor) but most of the time when I've run sound we've had the same monitors as mains and they're definitely up for it. It looks like the guide was written in 1994; maybe people were using less capable monitors then?", "timestamp": "1337652221"}, {"author": "Hollis", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367803486615042", "anchor": "fb-367803486615042", "service": "fb", "text": "@Richard: All Mixed Up is great, and it's also available free from http://www.bobmills.org/amu/ .
@Danner and BDan: two mics on pianos can work, although you then can run into phase cancellation issues, especially if you're using a mono feed for your house main speakers or monitors. Given that we're usually having to close-mic pianos, though, it's often the best option since dancers typically need to rely on the piano bass for the steady beat (in most piano-based bands) and you also want the mids and highs for melody.
@Scott and Danner: I agree about double-mic setup for accordions being desirable for some players, unnecessary for other players, and frustrating for nearly all players. To me, accordions/concertinae cry out for instrument-mounted mics.
@Jeff and Allison (from jefftk.com comments): I will gladly be the flute player for this experiment, either using my own recording gear or someone else's. Part of the issue is that, contrary to popular opinion, a relatively small portion of the air supplied by the player actually goes \"into\" the flute. Much of it goes over the top of the chimney (that hole), which has a sharp edge that channels a thin ribbon of air down into the flute and sets it to vibrating. There's a bunch of fairly complicated stuff about standing waves, venting, wavefront propagation, etc., that I used to think I understood and now largely don't remember. Suffice it to say that if you want to mic a flute for live sound, nearly everyone agrees that you need to mic it from the headjoint end.
Personally, as a flute player: I think that the *best* sound comes from a fairly wide-pattern mic about three feet above and in front of the player's right shoulder. That way you get some of the chimney sound, some of the tone-hole sound, and some of the overall blend. However, for dances and live sound reinforcement, that's completely impractical and leads to major feedback problems. I used to play into a stand-mounted mic, but these days I much prefer my headjoint-mounted electret condenser mic. (The K&K Silver Bullet, http://www.kksound.com/silverbullet.html . I made a much-lighter elastic mount for it, saving something like 3.5 oz of headjoint weight.) I played around with it, when I got it, for a position that gets good flute tone with relatively little wind noise. I sacrifice a little tone with this mic, but it means I can move around, turn and look at other musicians, etc. Someday I'll either buy, make, or convince K&K to make me a similar mic using an omnidirectional capsule. (See Terry McGee's excellent article at http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/flutemic.html )
@Jeff: We haven't talked about percussion instruments, be they bodhrans, djembes, dumbeks, foot percussion, jaw harps, etc. My preference is to use a dynamic mic (important because drums generate high sound pressure) fairly close-miked, preferably outside the resonant chamber of the drum (i.e., above the head and a little to the side). I like to mic drums slightly even if they seem plenty loud acoustically during the sound check--it gives me options later when the room fills up with dancers that absorb high frequencies so well. With drums, it's especially important to watch the drummer playing before selecting a mic position, so you don't put your mics in the impact path.", "timestamp": "1337652472"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367803649948359", "anchor": "fb-367803649948359", "service": "fb", "text": "@Scott: to really fix the accordion problem you need to have a pair of mics mounted on the accordion itself, or at least one clipped on to the button end. The problem is that while the piano end stays still the button end has to move around a lot.", "timestamp": "1337652495"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367805253281532", "anchor": "fb-367805253281532", "service": "fb", "text": "@Hollis: if you do a blind test with flute I'd love it if you'd post the recordings. (See http://www.jefftk.com/news/2011-09-11.html for how I did this for mandolin.)", "timestamp": "1337652702"}, {"author": "Hollis", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367807119948012", "anchor": "fb-367807119948012", "service": "fb", "text": "@Jeff: If I do it, I want to borrow a few more SM57s and stands from friends so that I can do concurrent (parallel) recording from multiple positions. In this kind of thing, I want to make sure we're not just comparing apples to apples, but fresh-picked Red Astrakhans to fresh-picked Red Astrakhans. Since flute tone can be so variable from performance to performance, I want to isolate that variable as much as possible.
I've done the experiment with sequential recording in the past, and I bet I have the files somewhere but I have no idea which computer I did it on.", "timestamp": "1337652952"}, {"author": "BDan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367808209947903", "anchor": "fb-367808209947903", "service": "fb", "text": "@Hollis: the bigger problem with some percussion instruments, like snare drums and cymbals, is that they tend to get picked up by every mic on stage, which doesn't really let you turn them down relative to the other instruments even if you do mic them. Unfortunately the only solution to this problem that I know of is a good plexiglass shield between them and the rest of the band, which is an annoying object to carry around with your sound kit.", "timestamp": "1337653091"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367809893281068", "anchor": "fb-367809893281068", "service": "fb", "text": "@Hollis: parallel recording would be ideal if tone is that variable. One nice thing about testing this on mandolin was that tone is pretty consistent.", "timestamp": "1337653292"}, {"author": "Hollis", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367810759947648", "anchor": "fb-367810759947648", "service": "fb", "text": "@Jeff re: monitors: I think it's partly a difference in monitor quality, but I also think it's music physics. Bass spreads pretty well on-stage, as Bob points out, but it also takes a lot of energy to produce and seems to contribute to a muddy sound on stage. I think that might be what Bob's going for--that if you put bass in the monitors, you'll have to turn up the monitors for the musicians to be able to hear what they're doing, which raises the noise floor, contributes to ear fatigue, and generally stresses people out.
Of course, the expectations are somewhat different depending on what you're talking about: Giant Robot Dance and Raz de Maree may have different on-stage bass preferences than, say, Swallowtail.
@BDan re: percussion sound bleed: Yup. That's one of the reasons that sound guys mostly tend to go for very close miking when working with bands that include percussion--it allows you to use low-enough gain that the bleed from instrument to instrument becomes less of a problem. Yes, the touring-with-roadies solution is the Plexiglass shield.", "timestamp": "1337653389"}, {"author": "Hollis", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367812459947478", "anchor": "fb-367812459947478", "service": "fb", "text": "@Jeff re: parallel recording: I think it's that with flute, small variations in position and technique make big differences in amplified sound, so I'd want to isolate them as much as possible. If you're playing flute into a mic and you change the direction you're facing (rotation) by 15 degrees in any axis, you'll hear a difference; you'll also hear position (translation) changes of an inch or two.", "timestamp": "1337653586"}, {"author": "Scott", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=367890256606365", "anchor": "fb-367890256606365", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff and BDan, to do this truly academically, sound pressure level falloff goes as 1/r^2 for a point source in an anechoic chamber. Although not 1 for 1, SPL is at least a proxy for perceived loudness, although there is also a frequency dependence. Of course, real instruments are not point sources, real halls are not anechoic, and further, real musicians don't hold their instruments in precisely the same spot for all time. In performing Jeff's microphone placement experiment, one should put the microphone at real micing distances to give yourself some room to move while playing.", "timestamp": "1337664065"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=368039469924777", "anchor": "fb-368039469924777", "service": "fb", "text": "@Scott: while sound pressure falls off as 1/r^2, sound pressure level (SPL) is logarithmic and so falls of as 1/r. Any good proxy for loudness will be logarithmic and so diminish more slowly than actual sound energy in the air. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure", "timestamp": "1337692932"}, {"author": "Scott", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=368133813248676", "anchor": "fb-368133813248676", "service": "fb", "text": "sorry, got it now...sound intensity (power) falls as 1/r^2. From physics (and ignoring constants, eg acoustic impedance) intensity ~ pressure^2. So, to get SPL, one takes 10*log10(intensity ratio) or 20*log10(pressure ratio). The log is not the reason for the 1/r^2 vs 1/r confusion, it's simply the difference between pressure and intensity. According to this chart (http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/2004-About-dB/), our hearing is also somewhat logarithmic, in which a 10dB gain (3x increase) in SPL results in a doubling of perceived loudness.", "timestamp": "1337705015"}, {"author": "Jerome", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=368393056556085", "anchor": "fb-368393056556085", "service": "fb", "text": "While the challenges of miking an acoustic piano are real (I may have to try double-miking myself sometime), I must disagree with your statement that an electronic keyboard usually sounds better. I don't think ever heard a keyboard, through a sound system, that I could have fooled myself into thinking was a real piano, particularly if it's played across the compass with a wide range of tone colors. As a pianist, while I've encountered many out-of-tune or poorly-regulated acoustic pianos, there is simply no contest in terms of touch and subtlety of sound between a keyboard and a good piano.", "timestamp": "1337736133"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=368640676531323", "anchor": "fb-368640676531323", "service": "fb", "text": "@Jerome: Listen to these two: http://www.jefftk.com/fr-samples/20010.mp3 http://www.jefftk.com/fr-samples/20095.mp3 Which piano sounds better? One is the excellent grand piano in the Glen Echo ballroom and the other is my relatively low end Yamah p85.", "timestamp": "1337777667"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/367733683288689?comment_id=368664186528972", "anchor": "fb-368664186528972", "service": "fb", "text": "@Jerome: turned that comment into a post: http://www.jefftk.com/news/2012-05-23.html", "timestamp": "1337780754"}]}