This is my latest video featuring a simple yet technically quite demanding fingerstyle piece by Rick Ruskin called Microphone Fever. Besides playing classical music, I’ve always enjoyed exploring fingerstyle, pop, world and jazz music as well. Luckily, I’ve been involved in a project for the past two years which is a fusion of every possible musical genre, but nevertheless I try to dedicate some time to learn new popular pieces for solo guitar as well.
I learned Microphone Fever while studying at Universität für Musik u.d. Kunst in Vienna and haven’t really played it since, except twice as an encore I think. Yesterday, though, I relearned it and tried hard to produce a solid single take – every guitarist can relate to that as it’s very hard to play a good, usable 2-minute take.
The video was recorded in my home studio with a simple five-microphone setup (see the image below).
90% of the sound comes from my Oktava Mk-012 Joly mods with MJE K47H capsules, placed in a standard AB configuration (distance between the mics is roughly 45 cm while they’re both about 120 cm away from the guitar).
To add some ambience, I used a pair of Samson C02 that I’m currently testing, placed further back and closer to the ceiling. Normally I would simply use a reverb plugin with shorter reverb time for ambience, but having an extra pair of mics on hand allowed me to do it with microphones alone.
The last microphone is a modded Rode NT1A and I used just a touch of that signal to add some attack as it was positioned really close to the sound source.
If you want to read more about recording classical guitar, check my other two posts: How to record classical guitar part 1: Stereo techniques explained / How to record classical guitar part 2: Choosing microphones.
In case you wonder about the video camera – it’s a Canon 600D.
Microphone positioning while recording “Microphone Fever”.