recording irish flute

[wbajzek]

Hi. I'm going to be doing some home recording projects from time to time including my irish flute, and I am having trouble getting a good recording of it. I spent this evening working on it <a href="http://william.bajzek.com/fluteandguitar.mp3">here's the result.</a>

The microphones on each instrument were a combination of a Shure BG4.1 and an EV967. The pres unfortunately are just the M-Audio 410, which will soon be replaced by a MOTU 8pre, mostly for the convenience factor.

Anyway, I'm really happy with how this mic pair worked for the guitar, but with two hours of mucking around, that's the best I could do with the flute. I tried several different combinations of the mics, positions, distances, etc but it always either sounded muddy or fuzzy.

Can anyone recommend techniques for recording irish flute? At this point I will live with my pres but I am open to mic suggestions.

Thanks

[corworld]

If you have too much breath attack you need to get the mic futher back. wind instruments generally have a lot of unpleasant noise, key clicks and such. I would just use your shure omni but if your room isn't good moving the mic back might make it muddy. Start 3 feet back and adjust from there. Personally I didn't think the sound was all that bad. You must have something different in mind however.

[wbajzek]

Well, key clicks aren't a problem, as this is a wooden flute with open finger holes.

The Shures are cardioids... I think I had them about 10 inches away, pointed down at the flute a bit, at about a 30 degree angle to my left. I tried to angle the whole setup such that the walls weren't bouncing sound directly back at the mics. It is a fairly large room, though, so maybe being more in the middle would let me get away with some more distance?

Listening back to it this morning, it's not as bad as I thought it was. It just sounds a bit canned. And it picked up more room sound than I liked, so I tried to compensate by adding reverb the 'early reflection' settings turned down.

[tINY]

It sounds a lot like a wooden flute to me....

But, the mix is a bit crowded - you may try cutting a bit of the guitar out from 400-1.2kHz (probably a narrower band and move it around until it sounds right in the mix).

The other thing I noticed is that the flute sounds like it isn't in the same reverberant space - this may be due to the slow attack of each note. You may try moving the mic back a few feet. A bit of boost around 1kHz on the flute may help too.



-tINY

[wbajzek]

I'll try the EQ on the guitar. EQ-wide there's just a little treble boost. I think I overcompressed it, though.

I'm wondering if the flute would be better with a mic with a wider pickup pattern. I spent a lot of time trying to find the sweet spot, and maybe that spot's just bigger than my mics could pick up at that distance.

The guitar was very close mic'd to exclude the room sound. I wasn't able to do that with the flute, though, because it sounded to harsh, but maybe I just didn't find the right spot.

[Bob Bickerton]

Sorry I don't have time to listen to your sample, but I've recorded a lot of wooden Irish flute, including myself!

From what others have said, it sounds like the room may be an influence in this recording, in which case you may need to move the mic in closer.

FWIW I generally record wooden flute with a cardioid mic placed 1 foot (30cm) at an angle of 45 degrees above horizontal and pointed at the head joint. As you already know there's no key noise involved and I can achieve a full 'closed-miked' sound this way.

My prefered mic for wooden flute (and indeed many acoustic instruments) is the Neumann TLM193. It's very neutral. I'm not familiar with the mics you currently have but it's important to use a mic which does not have an extended high frequency reponse as this can emphasise too much breath sound.

If you are after a more pronounced high end then I'd recommend an AKG C414 TL-II which I have used to good effect and seems to lift the tops in a silky way rather than a hard way.

As always see if you can trial a mic before purchase as everyone has different tastes!!!!

Cheers

Bob

[wbajzek]

Originally Posted by Bob Bickerton

Sorry I don't have time to listen to your sample, but I've recorded a lot of wooden Irish flute, including myself!

From what others have said, it sounds like the room may be an influence in this recording, in which case you may need to move the mic in closer.

FWIW I generally record wooden flute with a cardioid mic placed 1 foot (30cm) at an angle of 45 degrees above horizontal and pointed at the head joint. As you already know there's no key noise involved and I can achieve a full 'closed-miked' sound this way.

My prefered mic for wooden flute (and indeed many acoustic instruments) is the Neumann TLM193. It's very neutral. I'm not familiar with the mics you currently have but it's important to use a mic which does not have an extended high frequency reponse as this can emphasise too much breath sound.

If you are after a more pronounced high end then I'd recommend an AKG C414 TL-II which I have used to good effect and seems to lift the tops in a silky way rather than a hard way.

As always see if you can trial a mic before purchase as everyone has different tastes!!!!

Cheers

Bob

I'm getting lots of recommendations for the 414 and fortunately I think I know someone who has one that I can borrow, so I will give this suggestion a try.

[wbajzek]

the funny sound quality I couldn't pin down was due to phase issues between the two mics. I'll figure out how to avoid that in the future in addition to trying out other suggestions

[wwittman]

My suggestion is a large diaphragm condenser (just like a vocal) placed so that it looks down at your mouth, over the mouthpiec at about a 45 degree angle.. perhaps 8-10" away.
that way you're blowing straight ahead UNDER the capsule but it's pointed at the mouthpiece.

If this were a solo and you wanted a more classical sound, you could back away, in a GOOD sounding room, and get more of the whole body.
But in a pop ensemble context, I think you want it to sound closer and full bodied.

try http://myspace.com/williamwittman and listen to the Largo cut and see if you can get an idea as to what I mean(the flute isn't terribly featured but it's in there).
That's an 87.

[wbajzek]

Originally Posted by wwittman

My suggestion is a large diaphragm condenser (just like a vocal) placed so that it looks down at your mouth, over the mouthpiec at about a 45 degree angle.. perhaps 8-10" away.
that way you're blowing straight ahead UNDER the capsule but it's pointed at the mouthpiece.

I tried this with a borrowed AKG 414 and it sounded excellent. Thanks!

[Crowley]

FWIW I have done quite a bit with wood flute (shakuhachi - the Japanese traditional wooden flute in my case) and various mics. Perhaps this link may have something useful to you.

http://microphonium.blogspot.com/200...prov-with.html



Bob

[Berolzheimer]

10" might well be too close, flutes are made to project up & out. I'd start 2-3 feet over & a bit in front. The main thing, though, as always, is use your ears. Since you're recording yourself it's alightly more complicated but still pretty easy- record a bit in one position, add a slate that describes the position , move the mic, record some more, repeat. then listen back & see what's best.

[robd]

Sweet. I play irish flute too. Thanks for all the great advice. One thing that I have found helps a lot when working on mic position while recording yourself is that I recently got a set of etymotic er4ps. They block out the ambient sound very well, so you can get a pretty good idea of what the mic is hearing while you are playing, and just move around as you play to find the right position.

[sunflute]

To get a full bodied sound out of a flute (wood or otherwise) I recommend recording it in stereo. my preference would be ribbons (C&T Prosceniums are great on flute) but small diaphragm condensers (omnis or cardioids) are the 2nd best choice. Follow the standard stereo microphone techniques to use with the different polar patterns.

When using ribbons get a good preamp (with lots of gain) and place the mics about 2 or 3 feet out and use blumlein technique so that one side is aiming at the body and the other at the mouth of the flutist. The same goes for SMC Omnis and Cardioids, one capsule should be aiming at the body of the instrument and the other at the mouth of the player (spaced omnis or xy techniques). Sennheiser MKH 20 or 40s or Schoeps CMC6s would be my second choice.

peace
marco

[Bob Bickerton]

Originally Posted by wbajzek

Hi. I'm going to be doing some home recording projects from time to time including my irish flute, and I am having trouble getting a good recording of it. I spent this evening working on it <a href="http://william.bajzek.com/fluteandguitar.mp3">here's the result.</a>

The microphones on each instrument were a combination of a Shure BG4.1 and an EV967. The pres unfortunately are just the M-Audio 410, which will soon be replaced by a MOTU 8pre, mostly for the convenience factor.

Anyway, I'm really happy with how this mic pair worked for the guitar, but with two hours of mucking around, that's the best I could do with the flute. I tried several different combinations of the mics, positions, distances, etc but it always either sounded muddy or fuzzy.

Can anyone recommend techniques for recording irish flute? At this point I will live with my pres but I am open to mic suggestions.

Thanks

I finally got round to listening to the sample (must get broad band) and I see what you mean. The main issue for me is that the guitar and flute occupy very different spaces in the acoustic landscape. The guitar has a close miked feel (which I quite like) but the flute feels more distant and indistinct. Hopefully the C414 will have done the trick and, contrary to other opinions here, I would use a close miked position to match the guitar sound. One of your posts implied you were using both mics on the flute, but in my experience one mic is preferable.

It's also a question of taste too! Matt Molloy's first album was not (in my opinion) an engineering masterpiece but who cares, it's fantastic music and on his last album the flute sounds too processed and bright, but who cares, it's still fantastic music!

Cheers

Bob