Quick tip 1: multimic phasing tip

Many of us enjoy the versatility and added character that comes from recording a source, let's say a guitar amp such as my ever faithful Deluxe Reverb, with more than one mic. Personally I like using a 57 at the grill and a condenser of some sort at a distance. The 57 adds mid range fullness, and sounds pretty good on its own, but a well placed condensor can add fullness and just the right amount of high end sparkle to make the track sit well in the mix without getting lost. Of course, the pitfall of multi-micing - especially with an amp that has only one speaker such as my Deluxe - is phasing issues. Two out of phase mics may weaken your signal and defeat the purpose of using two mics in the first place ( getting a fatter sound with more depth.) Sometimes this phase cancellation is ok, but often it's subtle yet problematic, and many people's home recording monitoring environment isn't sensitive enough to reveal the phase issues. The result: an instrument that sounds fine in your control room, but on other speaker systems sounds oddly thin or even filtered in an unpleasing way. If this has happened to you, chances are that your multimic set up is causing small phasing problems that comb out a few select, yet audible frequencies in your sound. This is bad, of course, only when you don't like the resulting sound. If you like it, then fine, but how do we check while tracking to make sure that we're avoiding inadvertant phase cancelation? Well, here's my solution. I record in protools, so what I do is bring up my master fader and open a phase scope on it. If you don't have a phase scope (the new protools 8 comes with one!!) you should be able to download a free version with little dificulty. I then pan my tracks (the one's I'm tracking with multiple mics of course) to the center, and solo the close mic (in my case this will generally be the 57). I then bring the distant mic track down, solo it and bring it up with the 57, all the while watching the phase scope. If the scope stays straight up and down, you're in business, however, if the scope begins lurching and jumping to the side, you know that you have phase issues. If it turns out that you do, experiment with moving your distant mic around until you find a spot where you like the sound and you have little phase canellation. The one problem with this method is that one runs the risk of becoming stupidly anal about phase. Don't let this happen to you - if you like the sound, and it's a bit out of phase, track it. However, keep an ear on it in diferent speakers - in your car, and over the ipod, and make sure that the set up produces good results on multiple sets of speakers. If it doesn't sound as good as it did in your control room, work on getting that phase under control! Good luck!