For the past few years I’ve been doing sound for the concerts at the Northeast Tionól (Catskills, New York), and every year I mean to post a question here on the forum about microphone placement. I finally remembered to do it!
The challenge I’ve found with the pipes is that there’s a row of regulators sitting directly behind the chanter, and those regs often overpower the sound of the chanter if I place the mic in front of the chanter.
I usually use two mics: one in front of the chanter and one up above the drones, pointing down. I’m using cardioid condenser mics (Earthworks SR 30), and they don’t have to be very close to the instrument (except for very quiet flat sets). I like this because the drones are a moving target and I want to avoid the wah-wah effect you often get when stationary mics are placed very close to the drones…the drones get closer and farther away from the mic and it’s distracting to listeners. I’ve had good luck placing the mic about a foot above the bass or tenor drone, pointing down or angled slightly toward the rest of the drones.
But I still haven’t figured out how to mic the chanter without having the regulators come in way too loud when the rows directly behind the chanter are played. Has anyone found a solution to this problem? Should I mic the chanter from the side? I’m not sure how well that would work because the chanter typically moves around too, especially when playing the lower regs. I’ve experimented with a few different positions but haven’t found the right one yet…I’m hoping someone here might have some advice to share. Thanks.
Thanks – this is actually pretty much how I place the mics now; it works fine except when the regulators immediately behind the chanter are played. Tim Britton has some ideas on mic placement in this comment that I’ve linked to below, which I’ll experiment with next time I do this:
I think putting the mic to the player’s right should help avoid the regs overpowering the chanter. If I move the mic farther away I get a much more natural sound from the pipes, but also a much bigger risk of feedback, which is a challenge in the room where we have the concert (low ceilings, tiny stage, lots of mics too close together).
Just a thought, but you could also try picking up both the chanter and (the natural loudness of) the top rows of the regs with one mic not being afraid of the regs volume, and capture the lower reg rows and the drones with the other mic. Adjust the level of the drones mic so that its reg volume is similar to that of the chanter mic’s reg volume. Doing it this way seems simpler than trying to avoid the regs behind the chanter, which is the natural balance of the set anyway. If the regs are too loud to the piper’s liking and s/he can’t rebalance them at the source (the reeds), then it’s of course good to avoid aiming at the regs.
The problem is that when you’ve got a mic pointed directly at the chanter, it’s also going to pick up whatever’s right behind the chanter, and if you’ve got a full set of pipes with the player hitting all three regulators in the row directly behind the chanter, the regs are going to sound unnaturally loud compared with other chords (and they can even overpower the sound of the chanter.
I really think Tim Britton’s solution is probably the best – moving the mic to the side of the chanter and pointing at it from the side, which avoids the regs problem and also avoids any “disappearing back D” problem, which sometimes happens when the mic is placed directly in front of the chanter.
Good! Hopefully it’ll work for you I personally like to have the top notes of the regs leak into the chanter mic if only going with 2 mics because the drones/bottom reg rows mic is too far away to capture them.
Oh, that’ll still happen. I’m using condenser mics that are quite sensitive; the mic I use for the chanter even picks up some of the sound of the bass drone on pipes that have straight bass tubes (no u-turn and puck). And the mic i have over the drones picks up quite a bit of the chanter as well. I’m just trying to achieve a natural balance that comes close to what the pipes would sound like unamplified, which is challenging in the pub where we have the concerts.
Not that I’m biased or anything, but … I have had the pleasure hearing your work at a bunch of Northeast Tionol concerts, and I’m always struck by how good everything sounds – better than most live sound I hear anywhere!
Don’t know if this is germane to your situ or not, but I recently came across an interesting idea – a friend and I were recording a couple of tunes a while back and the engineer, also a piper, placed my hypercardioid chanter mic to the side of the chanter “to get more back D,” he said. It made a HUGE difference in how the chanter came across. So much more dimension than when it’s been miked from the front. He similarly placed the second mic (my SM 57) – slightly farther out and toward the back side of the drones and regs – and again, the sound that came through was so much fatter. Plus, there didn’t seem to be much bleed-through at all.
Thanks, Cathy! That is exactly what I plan to do next time. When we did our sound check this year I did hear the complaint that the back D was disappearing, and I think moving the mic to the side will solve that problem AND the too-loud regulators problem. We’ll find out next year if it works.
To avoid left and right confusions, since “to the right” from the audience perspective is the opposite to the piper perspective. (And then there are left-handed pipers to think of !)…
If you describe laterality in terms of the bag side and bellows side of the piper then…
I think Brad et al mean one mic is placed to the bag side of the chanter pointing in the way.
This is the mic which will assist back D and will control overbearing higher reg chords.
I personally like to have the top notes of the regs leak into the chanter mic if only going with 2 mics because the drones/bottom reg rows mic is too far away to capture them.