Different types of microphones for guitar and common combinations among them

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

This time we're going to check out the various types of microphones we can use to mic a guitar amp, and this article can be considered as a supplement to the basic one "how to mic a guitar amp".

Assuming that you have read our basic article and you are familiar with how the horizontal distance from the dustcap of the speaker can make the tone brighter or darker, here are 3 common mic combinations that you can try, it doesn't matter the exact microphone model you have (for example whether the condenser one is small or large diaphragm: the sound will be different, but the basic concept stays the same). 

First off: why to combine two microphones? Because every type of microphone has a different eq curve, curve that changes also according to the position from the speaker, so it happens often that one single microphone is not capable of capturing a tone that is full and has for example a detailed high end and a full low-mid area: most of the times trying to make everything with one mike leads to a compromise that can be good, but that rarely can be perfect in every aspect.
Using two microphones therefore allows us to use one for the low-mid area and one for the high end, and we can also use the faders in the DAW to choose the right balance.

Second note: every microphone type has different requirements, for example a ribbon microphone is fragile if left in front of high sound pressure, the ribbon can bend or break due to the air movement, so you need to use a volume that is not too high if you are using it for close miking, or a condenser microphone needs phantom power, but you need to make sure that the phantom is deactivated in the channel of the ribbon one, otherwise the ribbon microphone will break.
It's a good idea in the studio, when using condenser and/or ribbon microphones not to crank the amp volume too much, it's sufficient to arrive to see a little bit of movement in the speaker.

Dynamic + Condenser = this is a popular choice both in modern music and in the '70s one: the dynamic microphone should be placed straight or angled, mid way between the dustcap and the edge of the speaker and its role is to pick up the mids and low-end: the more it's pointed towards the edge of the speaker, the darker it will get. The distance should be a couple of centimeters from the grill cloth. 
The Condenser microphone instead will take high end, so it should be pointing towards the center of the dustcap, and its distance should be regulated according to the mic sensitivity: if it's very sensitive it's better to keep it 20-30cm from the speaker, maybe even 50, while if it sounds too thin or you hear that there is too much room in the track (and if the amp volume is not too high), it can be put as close as 5-10cm. If you feel like the tone capture by the condenser mic is clipping, lower the gain in the audio interface and/or back it off a few cm. 

Dynamic + Ribbon = this tone was used a lot in the '80s and produces a warm tone with a nasal mid-range (for example imagine a Guns'n Roses type of mid-range), the most classic technique is to put the ribbon microphone 2 to 10cm from the grill cloth pointing towards the dust cap, and the dynamic one right on the side, so that it points towards the edge of the dustcap, at around 2 cm from the grill cloth. This will create 2 complementary tones, with the ribbon microphone that is more dark and nasal to provide the body (but also part of the high end) and the dynamic one to bring more detail in the high end. 

Condenser + Ribbon = this is a less used technique but it's pretty interesting: the ribbon microphone placed as in the Dynamic + Ribbon technique, but pointing a bit more towards the edge of the dustcap (so the sound is even meatier), and the condenser one placed like described in the Dynamic + Condenser technique, to take all the detail in the top end. This technique is a bit more complicated but if handled well it can create very good results.

Finally, it's important when doing mic placement to check the phase coherence in order to avoid cancellations! Click here for a dedicated article.

And you? Do you know other good microphoning techniques? Let us know in the comments!

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Ribbon microphones: what are they and how they work

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today were going to talk about ribbon microphones.
Ribbon microphones are a a particular type of microphone that use a thin ribbon of a conductive material (for example aluminum) between the poles of a magnet to record the sound, and this particular construction allows it to sound very pleasant, round and sensitive to certain frequencies, but at the same time makes it quite fragile, therefore it needs to be handled with more attention than a regular dynamic mike.

Ribbon microphones were first introduced in the early '20s of the past century, and they were praised to be the type of microphone more suited to reproduce the whole spectrum of human hearing (20hz to 20khz), and with the time, as per the other types of microphones, technology evolved and today we can count on microphones that are less fragile than before (although it's still importato to observe caution when handling them), made with more solid and durable materials, with various types of sensitivity pattern (cardioid, hypercardioid, variable, uni-directional, bi-directional and so on), active and passive.

The active ones work more like condenser microphones, meaning that they need an energy source in order to work (never use the phantom power on a passive ribbon microphone or some internal component will break!!), while the passive ones work like dynamic mikes, and are used often to microphone brass instruments and guitar amplifiers.

Speaking of guitar amplifiers, there are 2 main techniques which are very popular in recording studios, and that involve both a ribbon microphone (such as the famous Royer R-121) and the omnipresent Shure SM57: the most famous is the one in which the ribbon microphone is in vertical in front of the center of the dustcap, next to the speaker grill (to take the high end of the tone, since it doesn't sound too brittle or harsh), and with the SM57 pointing towards the edge of the dustcap, so it's slightly off the center and this way it captures a bit more the body of the tone.

The second technique is the other way around: the SM57 points towards the center of the speaker, essentially capturing the high end of the amp, and the ribbon mike is slightly away from the speaker grill (we're talking around 15cm) and off-center, so it will take more the low-mids part of the guitar tone.

Either way, it's essential to check out the position between the two microphones to minimize phase cancellation, so if you notice there are a lot of phase issues try moving one of the 2 microphones in order to align the phase, plus if the guitar amp volume is extremely high, it could be also a good idea to tilt slightly the ribbon mike off axis in order to prevent the sound pressure to hit the ribbon too frontally.

Obviously these are just a couple of the thousands of possible mic placements, but they are a good starting point when trying out a ribbon microphone.

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How to randomize the velocity of a drum sampler to make it more realistic

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're talking a bit more in depth about a topic we have already mentioned in our article about MIDI dynamics: the fastest way to make more realistic a MIDI drum track, by randomizing the velocity.

One of the many parameters you can assign to a MIDI note is the Velocity: it's a value from 0 to 127 (like the other MIDI parameters) and it is meant to mimic the natural strength variations in our playing; 
basically it represents how soft or hard we hit a note, that can be a keyboard or any other instrument.

Now, when talking about virtual drumkits, nowadays there are on the market very extensive drum libraries, that arrive to dozens of Gb in size, and the larger is the library the more samples there are, also for a single drum part: a single snare, for example, can have 15, or even 25 velocity layers, that represent various intensities a drummer can hit it.

The more the velocity layers the more the sampler will sound realistic when playing it live, but even if we are writing down the drum MIDI parts note by note with the mouse, modifying the velocity it's quite important to make the drums sound less robotic, to the point that some drum sampler have also a "humanizer" function inside that randomizes a bit the dynamic variations in strenght of the hits.

Some DAW have directly the humanize function, for example in Studio One you just highlight the MIDI part you want to make more realistic, right click and you can choose "Humanize" or "Humanize Less" to reduce the effect, but the humanize function will also slightly move the MIDI notes in timing, so if you want only to randomize the velocity you need, while the same notes are still selected, to pull down the Action menu again and select Restore Timing.

In other DAW, where no humanize function is available instead, you can usually choose the MIDI part and under the Velocity section there should be a randomize velocity function that lets you dial in a minimum and maximum value, and the notes will be with a randomized velocity within that range.
What range to choose? It depends on 2 things: the genre (if the dynamic excursion is huge, like there are press roll parts, it's better to randomize them separately or write them note by note) and the number of velocity layers in the sampler. If you have some pre-made MIDI groove for that specific sampler you can load some and take note of the minimum and maximum velocity of each drum part, so you can be sure that the range you enter will have samples available, otherwise you can be conservative and choose quite a narrow range, in the area that sounds better to your ears (for example 70 to 90, or 80 to 100).

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Review: Audio Assault Blacksun (with video sample)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're going to review an amp sim from Audio Assault that is currently free if you are member of the AA mailing list: the BlackSun!

The BlackSun is an emulation of a Blackstar head, probably an HT Club 50 (even if it's not explicitly stated), which is a 2 channel tube head with EL34 tubes.
Among the other features, this plugin has a preset manager with several presets ranging from clean to hi gain, a "double track sim" which emulates recording 2 layers of the same riff, the "my amp" function which generates some slight hardware variation unique for every registered plugin, and it has a knob that is typical for Blackstar amps, (in the original amps is called ISF, in this plugin it's called Mode), which lets you choose between a "Marshall" and a "Mesa Boogie" voicing and all the gradients in between;
a "Marshall" voicing will mean a tone with more pronounced upper mid range, slightly more nasal and twangy, while a "Mesa Boogie" one will be a with a stronger low-end and more scooped mids, that lets out more high end than upper mids.

As per the other recent Audio Assault amp sims, also this one features a very nice, resizable GUI, 3 stompboxes (Gate, Booster and Tube Screamer), an FX Rack in the loop with Graphic EQ, Delay, Reverb and Chorus, a Dual Cab Loader which lets you also move around the microphones with any ir (thanks to a system of eq and envelope filters I imagine), and many other features.

How does it sound? It sounds very well, in my opinion, especially with the "mode" knob in the "Marshall" side, because a problem that I have found in some Audio Assault amp sim is the fact that they are all very "American sounding", for modern metal, while this one can replicate very well a British tone that is also hi-gain, tight and defined, and that it has that nice clear upper midrange.

This makes Blacksun one of the most versatile Audio Assault amp simulators, because the original head itself is extremely versatile, it has a lot of gain and tonal possibilities and I think anyone should definitely try it, also because they just released a pack with '80s style presets which adds a lot of fun to this amp.

Thumbs up!

Specs:

- 2 channels

- 3 stompboxes (gate, boost and screamer)

- Dual Cab loader with IRs created by Seacow cabs

- FX rack with eq, delay, reverb and chorus

- preset manager

- mode knob to change the flavor of the amp

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Using a wah in fixed position to boost a solo

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to talk about a particular way to make a solo cut through, which is used by many musicians: to emphasize only a certain mid range area which is obtained by using a wah in fixed position.

Let's start by reminding what is a wah (click here for a dedicated article with free vst plugins): it's an envelope filter, which means basically an equalization filter that can be fixed or controllable in real time via a pedal control and that according to its settings will emphasize a certain area of the midrange of the guitar tone adding gain and harmonics.

A wah boosts and cuts a certain area of the midrange of a guitar to make it cut more through the mix, and when it's used with the foot control in a tasteful way it can really make the guitar almost talk, or cry like a baby (the famous Dunlop CryBaby is called like that for this reason).
This mid range boost, which is usually a rather narrow range between the 300 and the 3000hz makes the sound from dark to very bright and harmonic rich, but the most usual application when doing distorted solos is usually when it's kept around the central position, which means a boost around 1000-1500hz, which makes the tone very honky and recognizable.

This nasal tone is the core of the solos of many famous guitarists, which sometimes just set the wah in a certain way without even moving it, just to have that distincitve mid range, boxy boost when doing solos, and the tone obtained can be heard for example in many Queen, In Flames or Blind Guardian songs, bands very different among themselves which make extensive use of the wah both moving the filter in real time or leaving it in a fixed position according to the song, and this use of the wah also just in a fixed position as mid boost has led to the creation of several stompboxes which replicate just that: a wah with a fixed setting (for example the Dunlop CryBaby Q-Zone or the Magnetic Effects Midphoria).

When trying to recreate this type of effect in the studio when we don't have a wah at hand we can start with a not too steep high pass and low pass filter, between 300 and 3000hz, then we can draw a bell quite wide, around 1200hz and add some db in this area according to taste.
Obviously these settings are just a starting point, feel free to play with the filters amplitude and the position of the bell according to the tone you are looking for, and if you feel like you lose a bit too much sparkle try to be less aggressive with the high end roll-off or maybe to add a harmonic exciter.

I hope this was helpful!

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