yo
I have been having some trouble correctly balancing a singing cellist.
anyone got advice?
She is a friend of mine, so I am taking some opportunities to get it right!
I was using Schoeps MK22/MK8 at around the join to the neck and body, 2 foot out and pointing up at her head, but now have migrated to MK4 ORTF about 4 foot out and at her head height to increase spaciousness, but this is too close for the cello and too far for the voice. The overall sound is much more pleasant, but certain harmonics drown her out. I want to spend a little bit more time finding a good main pair, but im increasingly feeling like I might just have to spot the voice and predominately go for a beautiful cello pickup from the main pair.

Any advice?

You might try the old singing guitarist trick of 2 fig-8 mics, each placed in the null of the other, to give you maximal separation between voice and instrument.

Here are a few examples, first link has a video by Fran Guidry who contributes here sometimes, where he solo's the mic output from each after recording.

I think you'll be impressed by the 'iso-booth' capacity of both mics, when used in this way !

Vocal – Guitar Separation with Figure 8 Mics | Homebrewed Music

Recording A*Singing Guitarist |

Q. What is the best way to record Guitar and Vocals at the same time? |

Expect to be required to do some fine-grain twisting of each mic in its holder, ideally by an assistant, while you monitor the playing with headphones on....so you get maximum of what you want (and minimum of what you don't want) from each mic.

Also keep in mind that this is a relatively close miking technique...the 'iso-ability' drains away the further back you get and the propagation of each "voice" starts to merge. So you could add an overall more distant ambience pair for room tone, or use in the box reverb after to wetten it up some...

I would suggest exactly what studer58 says. This basically works well in most situations singer/instrumentalist situation (maybe not on a singing bagpiper ;-) ).

bojan_1

This sounds great, I have tried something similar before, my only concern is how do you treat it? As a summed mono? as a slightly left-right thing, or hard-panned?

If you add a third fig-8 mic, you can do the cello in m/s stereo to get a sense of space while having both voice and cello centered.

EDIT:
Just to be clear, I'm talking about the version of m/s that uses a fig-8 for the mid, sometimes referred to as Blumlein m/s around here.

You seem to be having some success with your main pair placement, so keep working on that

With the 2 fig 8 mics you'll get 2 mono signals, so you could simply treat them as a pair of individual spot mics, with reasonable isolation.

Sink them into the overall stereo picture panning wise, then add some reverb and perhaps a little HPF...so they give a little more definition/differentiation than you'd otherwise get with your main pair alone.

You could also treat the fig 8's with a little M-S processing to reduce the 'pasted-on mono' sense that such spots give

I btw have attempted this a couple of times, not very succesfully I might add. One decision is if it's "ok" to have the bow breathing sound intermix with the singers (the bow sounds a bit like breathing, I like this but some people want a "clean" cello sound). My previous attempts were with schoeps and m149. My next attempt is kind of giving up on a recording that can be mixed with multiple takes. This "make no mistakes" performance approach is going to be a ku4 ribbon near the bottom right of the cello and a u47 up near the singer and just let everything bleed/resonate together.

There's some inherent conflict in a simultaneous playing of cello and singing, as the voice and cello occupy a lot of the same range.

Another option is to record the cello first, then overdub the singing onto the cello track...if there's any chance that she might deliver a better performance on both instruments (cello and voice) by this approach ?

You could get the background acoustic tuned ideally for the cello only...and then come in a little closer for the vocal take, to give a more intimate "studio" vocal sound. Different (optimal) mic pairs could also be employed for each take.

This eliminates all of the compromising in mic placement and balance that you seem to be wrestling with at the moment

So many choices in approach now for you, lucky fellow ! Why not simply try all... and see which gives you the best result ?

I think what I will try is a move the ortf further back out, and spot her voice with either a mk41/mk8 combo or just the mk8 and see how that goes. Even a dynamic up close just to capture a bit of more presence/clarity in the voice, mixed low.
I wanted to try a guitar that was in the room (its a guitar shop the rest of the week that I'm allowed to use) and see if it sounded any good on record, so we had an impromptu, tired jam and I didn't have a chance to position stuff right, but check ça...
Playing: ORTF in Curvy.mp3 - picosong

Try a headworn mic on the voice?

I would suggest trying the XY pattern and experimenting, on your own with the angle of the microphones, as well as the distance from the vocalist's mouth. I think if you get the mics close enough to the singer's mouth you will start to have a more balanced mix only using two channels.

When I started my own experiments with recording my voice and acoustics guitar I began with a 90 degree angle but after a while, at the expense of stereo reproduction, I decreased the angle to say 60 degrees, the better to address the singer to mic (but with a poorer stereo image).

If you are open-minded you can also try a spaced pair, with one mic picking up the singer directly, and the second mic behind the singer, essentially picking up the room including the cello. Without looking too far, I remembered that the Sound Pure dealership has several videos where they demonstrate mic positioning. Here's one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnwklTUWPsY

I don't know exactly what your tastes are but mine lean toward trying to pick up a choral or acoustic interaction between the singer and the instrument. If you close-mic each of them I can't see how you will get it. My own belief is that there is a detectable acoustic artifact that happens through close-miking and then mixing the separate tracks. If you can record a decent stereo mix, and and have the talent adjust the relative balance of the voice and cello it will be great.

Ultimately I discovered a dual monaural mic -- the Josephson C700A -- and I am happy with it (but I also have a few other options).