For something like a recorder, I would be thinking in terms of a small mic stand on the floor with a cardioid pattern mic pointing upward. Then I would probably use a small boom to place another cardioid mic near the recorder's window. If you move around a lot, jumping, etc. not swaying in a chair, then you are almost required to look at that mics attached to the instrument's body.
The mics don't have to identical, remember that you are picking up two different types of sound. Also, the slight phase differences that you saw are important. When I mic hand drums (congas, whatever...) I have been known to hang a condenser pointing down at the drum heads and place something like an SM57 under & pointing up. That way, I get the hand slaps, and the first sound from the heads, and the very slightly out of phase beefier sound from the drum body.
Something that you might think about for your gear for PA use & recording is to get a small 4 to 8 channel "sub-mixer" and put together a small mic snake with your mics, etc. That way, you can quickly mute & unmute various instruments, and feed one consistent signal to the house mixer (something sound guys like :) ).
When a) the hall is really good to begin with, b) the amplification is subtle, c) there are no monitors, and d) the sound is "pre-balanced" perfectly by the performers, then you have an exception to the "Wide pattern mics on stage... bad" rule. But since most of aren't micing symphony orchestras in the Meyerhoff or choirs in someplace similar, I'm only noting the exception for the sake of completeness. For pretty much everything else (okay, there are some applications for area mics in theatre as well, but ...) yeah, the rule is "don't use wide pattern mics on stage," maybe with some exclamation points.
I want identical mics specifically for the purpose of comparing the two sounds in tests like this. I agree that they don't have to be (and possibly shouldn't be) identical in actual use as opposed to "the lab". Though if I were to try to build a dual-attached-mic rig, I'd probably wind up using identical or nearly identical mics anyhow: tiny cardioid condensers -- lavalier or mini-gooseneck style -- for weight reasons.
The info about how you mic your drum (and why) is a great example here. Thanks!
I was thinking about just a two-channel, belt-mounted mixer for attached recorder mics, though if that winds up being expensive or needs to be custom-built, then yah, it'd be easier to build a custom two-channel snake to a small stage mixer. (Hmm. Just how bad an idea would it be to convert the mic signals to unbalanced so they can share a single standard XLR cable for the short distance from the instrument to the stage submixer?)
But I've definitely thought about submixers before, either a drum mixer ifwhen I ever need to mic my drum kit, or just a "tie up fewer channels at the console with all the instruments I use" mixer.
Re: Miking recorders
For something like a recorder, I would be thinking in terms of a small mic stand on the floor with a cardioid pattern mic pointing upward. Then I would probably use a small boom to place another cardioid mic near the recorder's window. If you move around a lot, jumping, etc. not swaying in a chair, then you are almost required to look at that mics attached to the instrument's body.
The mics don't have to identical, remember that you are picking up two different types of sound. Also, the slight phase differences that you saw are important. When I mic hand drums (congas, whatever...) I have been known to hang a condenser pointing down at the drum heads and place something like an SM57 under & pointing up. That way, I get the hand slaps, and the first sound from the heads, and the very slightly out of phase beefier sound from the drum body.
Something that you might think about for your gear for PA use & recording is to get a small 4 to 8 channel "sub-mixer" and put together a small mic snake with your mics, etc. That way, you can quickly mute & unmute various instruments, and feed one consistent signal to the house mixer (something sound guys like :) ).
Janice
Re: Miking recorders
I want identical mics specifically for the purpose of comparing the two sounds in tests like this. I agree that they don't have to be (and possibly shouldn't be) identical in actual use as opposed to "the lab". Though if I were to try to build a dual-attached-mic rig, I'd probably wind up using identical or nearly identical mics anyhow: tiny cardioid condensers -- lavalier or mini-gooseneck style -- for weight reasons.
The info about how you mic your drum (and why) is a great example here. Thanks!
I was thinking about just a two-channel, belt-mounted mixer for attached recorder mics, though if that winds up being expensive or needs to be custom-built, then yah, it'd be easier to build a custom two-channel snake to a small stage mixer. (Hmm. Just how bad an idea would it be to convert the mic signals to unbalanced so they can share a single standard XLR cable for the short distance from the instrument to the stage submixer?)
But I've definitely thought about submixers before, either a drum mixer ifwhen I ever need to mic my drum kit, or just a "tie up fewer channels at the console with all the instruments I use" mixer.