Topic: House concert - acoustic singer-songwriter

[vanark]

We are having a house concert on Monday.  Singer-songwriter (Ernie Halter) with acoustic guitar, small amp I expect.  The only times I've taped in a situation like this, I ran right in front of the artist X-Y with cards and was very happy with the results. I've only got cards & hypers.  If the weather is not bad, we will probably do it outside.

I tend to do what I know has worked okay in the past, esp. when I'd like to preserve the performance.  But, I might run a second rig to experiment a little.  Thoughts?

[rhinowing]

I really like running hung mics at house shows for the ambience

[vanark]

Not sure that is going to work for me this time around.

[audBall]

How about one mic for vocals and one mic on the amp, mixed in post?

[page]

How about one mic for vocals and one mic on the amp, mixed in post?

and the second pair in a traditional spacing about 4' back from the artist.

Then mix in post.

Not sure I have a preference on which pair to run the hypers as though, probably the close-mic set.

[danlynch]

It depends upon how many channels you have available, but for the backyard brunch shows we tend to mic as close to the band as possible with one mic for vocals, at least one on each amp, and one or more on the unamped instruments (violin, horns, banjo, harp, etc.).  There will be enough audience noise as it is that you won't need any "room" mic for ambient sound anyway.

[vanark]

My gear is in my sig.  I could run two pairs of cards, but I'd rather simply do the second pair as a comparison rather than as another two channels to mix.  I'm likely going to try to stream the show as well, so my hands will be full on top of simply trying to enjoy myself at my own home and be a good host.

I would prefer to find the best stereo pair configuration.

[kirk97132]

Paging Mark B.

[newplanet7]

I have done this two times. Once it was a string trio all playing around 1 mic/stand.
It doesn't really apply here as much but I clamped to the stand had one mic above belly level and another on the t-bar used for vocals. Came out nice.

For the solo artist I again clamped to the mic stand. Had one mic primarily focused on the hole in the guitar and the other clamped off to the right, focused on the mid neck of the guitar. Picked up the vocals quite nicely.
I would do that with the first pair.

The second pair I would run a little farther back and split them  3ft AB style.

[acidjack]

I'd join Dan in advising using one of your two sets to do spot micing on vocals.  Then just run some ORTF or your pattern of choice cards.  If you have enough mics to mic instruments individually, do that, but really, just plain old nice wide pattern will do it, plus some reinforcement on vox if there is going to be anything remotely loud.

Oh yeah, omnis are also not a bad move here.

Examples:
http://www.nyctaper.com/?p=6756 (omnis split + cards DIN) - outdoors

http://www.nyctaper.com/?p=6478 (6 channel mix of spot mics on vox, one omni, a hyper on one instrument, cards on others) - outdoors

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=teletextile+nyctaper (one 414 card on harp/vox, other 414 card on guitar/backup vox, 1 mk41 on drums, 1 mk41 on bass) - indoors

http://www.nyctaper.com/?p=3888 (hypers + cards)

all of the examples have streaming samples to listen to.  As I think you'll see, even a pretty straightforward setup not micing each thing can sound good, but 4 mics is way better than two.

If I *had* to only run two mics, I'd probably go split omnis or ORTF cards.