Mic for pipes

[simonknight]

So if the one mic was 6 inches from the chanter it should be at least 18" from the one on the drones?

Probably, but then you're not going to get a natural sound from the chanter. I guess I'm not a fan of close micing then using a lot of EQ to create what you think the instrument sounded like.

[Murphdasurf]

search.php?keywords=ksm141&terms=all&au ... mit=Search

I'm still planning on selling this mic if anyone is interested.

[Lorenzo]

EQ and effect is something that is first created in the environment of the room. This is where you want it to happen to avoid too much tinkering by the recording system. Every room has a sweet spot. In my house, it happends to be between the carpet and the hardwood which is also where the walls divide 4 ways and open up into two different rooms. The next two ways EQ and effects are created is in the type of mic and its proximity to the source. You can get too much bass by being to close to a lot of instruments, or voices. Natural is dependent on where you are and what you want it to sound like. If you record in a carpeted small room with blankets on the walls, even a good mic and good proximity won't get you the sound you probably want. So you resort to post EQ and effects to bring it back.

If the two mics are placed appropriately (3:1--depending on the mic pattern), the distance to the source is more a matter of the type of mic used, and gain settings.

When I first recorded with dynamic mics, the different effects on the recorder (there's some really neat ones nowadays) wouldn't work they way they should. Digital recording is all about headroom on the signals (to avoid distortion) as opposed to the old analog systems.

[chris_coreline]

again, my points really only apply to the studio environment.

tbh, i would mike with the chanter as the centre of attention - 'wall of sound' in the drones and regs; - drones sit beneath the melody by a comfortable interval so eq-ing up the base would let you 'boost' the drone in the specturm.
- regs can be back in the mix afik. - there unlikley to need to be the centre of attention.

While im all for close-miking in a rock band where you can afford full seperation - the pipes are such a tambirly diverse instrument, and their tunes are usually so reliant on the artists being able to 'feed back of each other; that they deserve to be tampered with as little as possible...

I would be intrested in hearing the results of miking up a chanter as though it were an oboe.

[Lorenzo]

One of the challenges with miking the chanter out front would seem to be the back D being quieter than the front notes. If the acoustics are good in the room, and one mic is used in the right place, and at a certain distance, that might be the way to go.

Here's an exchange on the Neumann mic forum...

• Can the KMS 105 be used for miking an uilleann pipes chanter (irish bagpipes with a relatively low signal comparable to a violin)? The micro needs to be positioned about 10 cam away from the sound source in order to pick up all notes coming in at different angles. What about feedback rejection under circumstances like that?
  
  ----------
  
  KMS 105 should have no problems with the pipes. KM 185 would be an alternative, unless the "wind" factor coming from the pipes is of importance in the chosen mic position. (Neumann)
  
  ----------
  
  After having used the KMS 105 during about 20 gigs, I can state, that the uilleann pipes chanter sounds absolutely superb with only very little feedback problems and at the same time very little equalizing effort: almost linear treble, some reduction in midrange, preferably around 1000 - 1200 Hz and boost the bass a little, that's it. This has been confirmed by a significant number of live sound engineers. The "wind" factor you mentioned is non-existent with the pipes anyway. I consider the mic as highly recommendable for this purpose!
  
  ------
  
  RTE, the Irish broadcaster (who are of course used to doing this all the time) use the AKG C414 (ULS I think) on the uilleann pipes. I can't say that they don't use anything else. I've noticed on a few occasions that they have used what looks like a TLM-127 in situations where they previously used the U87, so it would be interesting to see if they switch to a new mic for pipes as well.
  
  I'd imagine you're pretty lucky to have found a microphone that you're happy with for the pipes, as I can imagine many mics having difficulties on such an instrument.

[highland-piper]

In a studio setting would XY work for uilleann pipes?

I have used the Zoom H2 and H4 to record myself practicing Scottish Smallpipes from a distance of three or four feet and it sounded really pretty good (enough that if I wanted to make a better quality recording I might try setting up a pair of condensors in an XY pattern). With the SSP the drones and the chanter are pretty much in the same plane and separated by 24" to 36" -- depending on what you measure.

[Aaron Hagan]

Hi there.
Micing up the pipes is always a task but it can be done well with only a few mics. I usually use two SM58s or 57s and have one pointing upwads from the base drone towards the regs. This is enough to cath the drones ant the regs. For the chanter I usually have the mic pointing towards the middle of the chanter and also offset at an angle so that the back D isn't lost.

All the best

Aaron

[bradhurley]

While I understand that close miking is needed in stage situations and when you're playing with others, the big problem is that the drones are a moving target for any piper who plays the regulators. We've all heard it: the piper shifts positions to get at a chord and it moves the drones suddenly right up against the mic so they overpower the chanter in the mix, and then they shift to get at another chord and the drones move farther away.

For solo studio recordings, I really think the nicest sound is that of a couple of omnis placed 6-8 feet away in a room with good acoustics; you get a nice blend of direct and indirect sound and you don't get those proximity effects; it's the closest thing to what a person in the room would actually hear.

That said, whoever recorded Liam O'Flynn on the early Planxty albums (particularly Well Below the Valley) really knew what he or she was doing. I still don't think anyone has ever made the pipes sound better and more real than that.

[Lorenzo]

That kinda makes sense Brad. An omni directional mic may be similar to what we hear in the whole room. It would be fun to experiment...to walk around in a studio and listen for the best all around location, and then try setting up there to see if we could capture the whole instrument's sound the way we heard it. The further away the mic from the source, the less the need for adjustments.

I suppose that could be done with any instrument, and perhaps should be done with certain instruments.

I wonder if what you'd gain would outweigh what you'd lose. Some pipes, when heard from a distance in certain rooms, don't give much drone sound at all, and the regs seem too loud. But, that's the way the reeds are made, I suppose, so why adjust the levels of the instrument and make it sound even when it's not. Hopefully, the reeds are balanced in a set worth recording. If you stand behind a piper, you can get a whole different perspective, or to the side by the drones.

I've been in some studios where the recording engineer will set up mics both close and further away...like up higher and towards the back of the room. This could allow for a blend of the roomy sound, and closer up, w/o losing control over the individual parts of the instrumrnt.

Interesting discussion.

[highland-piper]

When I recorded a small string ensemble I spent some time doing just what you suggest -- moving around the room with the microphone to see where it sounded best. I found that the best sounding spot in my room was on the other side of the room, near the wall, and six inches down from the ceiling. It wasn't was I was expecting at all. I put a stereo pair up there and the resulting recording sounds nice. If I had had a way to record more than two channels at once, I probably would have automatically put a mic close to each instrument.

[Lorenzo]

I listened to a few pro pipers CDs through a good set of headphones and learned something worth sharing.

On May Morning Dew, Mick uses a lot of reverb, but on Kitty Lie Over, he doesn't. On both albums, he uses more than one mic--the way he centers the drones and pans the chanter right or left gives it away. Also, the mic sounds quite close to the drones...the sound is very rich and perhaps EQ'd with more bass at times, and loud. On the last track of one of these albums, Mick places the drones to the left with the chanter and has the fiddle to the right. Other times the fiddle is left (10 o'clock), chanter right (2 o'clock) while drones are center.

Paddy Keenan, on The Bunch of Keys (Keenan/Glackin album) uses three mics. He centers the chanter, pans the drones left, and pans the regs right. That can only be done using three mics.

Brian McNmara, on A Piper's Dream album uses a lot of reverb. He fades in and out at the beginning and end on all the tracks. Reverb would linger after the song stops otherwise. On Fort of Jewels, in the sleeve notes, Brian says he used one mic only, and says he tried to capture the natural sound, "free of any artificial sound engineering treatment" but reverb lingers on after the songs stop, so that's a little hard to square. He uses a very nice mic though, a very crisp sound.

Jimmy O'brien-Moran centers everything and uses only a little reverb if any. If he only uses one mic, it must be somewhere close enough to the drones to pick them up in a balanced way.

Robbie Hannan centers the chanter and it feels as though the drones and regs are panned slightly left. He use no reverb as far as I could detect.

[bradhurley]

It would be fun to experiment...to walk around in a studio and listen for the best all around location, and then try setting up there to see if we could capture the whole instrument's sound the way we heard it.

The problem is that so many studios are set up to minimize sound reflections, so the room sounds dead.

I'm decades away from being good enough on the pipes to want to record myself, but I have been recording a couple of singers and a flute/fiddle duo, and I've settled on a very portable minimalist setup that so far has blown me away with its sound quality: a matched pair of Earthworks QTC-40 omnis set up AB style on a stereo bar, plugged directly into a Korg MR-1000 1-bit digital recorder (all these specs make me think of the scene in Gregory's Girl where Susan asks Gregory why boys are so fascinated with numbers). The only thing I might add to this setup is a better preamp than the ones built into the Korg, but those are quite good as it is.

Due to its portability, I can take the system to a room with good acoustics (luckily for me my own living room fits the bill quite nicely) and record there. It really does capture the sound pretty much exactly as a listener would hear it. I love how simple it is: two mics, a stereo bar, one mic stand, two XLR cables, and the Korg.

One of the other nice things about getting some distance from the pipes is that it seems to avoid the dreaded "ducky" effect where the chanter sounds very nasal. I've heard that a lot on close-miked recordings of chanters and am not sure why it happens, but I really hate that sound.

[highland-piper]

Robbie Hannan centers the chanter and it feels as though the drones and regs are panned slightly left. He use no reverb as far as I could detect.

That could be a stereo pair, could it not?

[Lorenzo]

That could be a stereo pair, could it not?

I haven't used one of these, so not sure how the result would be. It could be two mics...one centered on the chanter the other panned slightly left. This might be to duplicate the instrument the way it might sound if you were right in front of it.

The problem is that so many studios are set up to minimize sound reflections, so the room sounds dead.

I read the specs on your machine at zzounds. Sound like a good one. The Korg D16XD I'm using has the same 40GB hard drive, but has the 96kHz/24-bit resolution option with several lower settings...depending on the quality desired. It also has a mastering program and internal CD burner. Comes with all kinds of editing features and multilayered effects. Any time a CD says "mastered" it means it has probably been through a lot of artificial processing to enhance the quaility of a recording....like limiters, gates, compressors, and expanders, etc. It's also portable, but quite a bit biggers than yours (approx 20 x 30 inches).

At first, from reading the Korg forum, I was (mis)led to believe a dead environment was preferable, but then I started reading around and many of the articles (and books I was given by a friend) kept saying to get in the right spot that has the natural effect and EQ you are looking for. I have a friend, in the next town over, who has a recording studio and lots of albums under his belt. When he came over and saw what I was trying to do, he said, "get out of that room." He's the one who found the "sweet spot" in the house.

Emusicians has some good articles on all this...
http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_finding_sweet_spot/
http://emusician.com/tutorials/emusic_s ... trategies/
http://emusician.com/mics/emusic_mics_mix/

[highland-piper]

That could be a stereo pair, could it not?

I haven't used one of these, so not sure how the result would be. It could be two mics...one centered on the chanter the other panned slightly left. This might be to duplicate the instrument the way it might sound if you were right in front of it.

If you put cardioids overtop of each other, the left one pointed right, and the right one pointed left, kind of like this ^ where each line is a microphone, and the diaphrams are at the top, then it will record stereo. Since the centers of the diaphragms are in a straight line, it eliminates phase distortion. If you pointed that pair straight at the chanter, then the chanter would be centered, and the drones and the regulators would be slightly off to the left (more or less, depending on how far away it was).

Personally, I find recordings made that way to sound really great on headphones, but not as dramatic on speakers. Another common patter is to put the bases of the microphones together like V (where the diaphragms are on top (110 degrees is the "standard", developed by French television). I don't think a pattern like that would lend itself to pipes, but it might be good for a small group, if you didn't have enough microphones for each musician. The drawback is obviously that it limits editing possibilities.