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Laurice Whack
Every engineer has their own idea of what a great sound is, so there's no point trying to tell you which is the 'best' technique: it's far more important to know how different factors in the recording and mixing process can affect the final timbre, so that you can find what you personally are looking for.
One of the principal challenges when recording a given acoustic guitar is to capture a good balance of the different noises it produces. While there's a lot that you can do to modify the sound of the instrument itself, there's also much that can be achieved via careful mic positioning, so it pays to be aware of a few general principles governing the instrument's unique dispersion characteristics.
To state the obvious for a moment, it should be clear that the guitar's body resonates but, crucially, it does this in two main ways: not only do the wooden panels themselves vibrate, but also the body of air that's contained within them. While the panel resonances affect the character of the instrument's sound in extremely complex ways, the impact of the air resonance is a bit simpler, primarily just improving projection and sustain in the guitar's low registers.
Another set of fairly rewarding locations can be found along an arc to the right of the player, centred on the instrument's bridge, particularly where fret noise is more of a concern (for example, if the guitarist is softly finger-picking), as the mic is then placed further away from the source of the unwanted sound. Again, positions above and below the guitar tend to produce the most promising sounds, by avoiding the player's acoustic shadow, and it makes sense to have the mic slightly forward of the plane of the instrument for similar reasons.
By the same token, it makes sense to try to keep the player in as consistent a position as possible both during and between takes. Otherwise, you may find your sound phasing slightly as the distances between the mics and the performer vary. A bit of gaffer tape on the floor can help, by marking the positions of the player's chair and/or feet, but if the player moves around a lot during their performance, there's only so much you can do here. This is another reason why using a second mic in a more subsidiary role makes sense, because any comb filtering will be at its worst if you have both mics at the same level.
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Sir Brian Harold May CBE (born 19 July 1947) is an English musician, songwriter, record producer, animal rights activist and astrophysicist. He achieved worldwide fame as the lead guitarist and backing vocalist of the rock band Queen, which he co-founded with singer Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor. His guitar work and songwriting contributions helped Queen become one of the most successful acts in music history.
May previously performed with Taylor in the progressive rock band Smile, which he had joined while he was at university. After Mercury joined to form Queen in 1970, bass guitarist John Deacon completed the line-up in 1971. They became one of the biggest rock bands in the world with the success of the album A Night at the Opera and its single "Bohemian Rhapsody". From the mid-1970s until 1986, Queen played at some of the biggest venues in the world, including an acclaimed performance at Live Aid in 1985.[3] As a member of Queen, May became regarded as a virtuoso musician and was identified with a distinctive sound created through his layered guitar work, often using a home-built electric guitar called the Red Special.[4] May wrote numerous hits for Queen, including "We Will Rock You", "I Want It All", "Fat Bottomed Girls", "Flash", "Hammer to Fall", "Save Me", "Who Wants to Live Forever" and "The Show Must Go On".
Following the death of Mercury in 1991, aside from the 1992 tribute concert, the release of Made in Heaven (1995) and the 1997 tribute single to Mercury, "No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)" (written by May), Queen were put on hiatus for several years but were eventually reconvened by May and Taylor for further performances featuring other vocalists. In 2005, a Planet Rock poll saw May voted the seventh-greatest guitarist of all time.[5] He was ranked at No. 33 on Rolling Stone's 2023 list of 250 greatest guitarists of all time.[6] In 2012, he was further ranked the second-greatest guitarist in a Guitar World magazine readers poll.[7] In 2001, May was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Queen and, in 2018, the band received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.[8]
May was appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2005 for services to the music industry and for charity work.[9] May earned a PhD degree in astrophysics from Imperial College London in 2007,[1][2] and was Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University from 2008 to 2013.[10] He was a "science team collaborator" with NASA's New Horizons Pluto mission.[11][12] He is also a co-founder of the awareness campaign Asteroid Day.[13] Asteroid 52665 Brianmay was named after him. In 2023, May contributed to NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, the agency's first successful collection and earth delivery of samples directly from an asteroid (the asteroid Bennu).[14] May is also an animal rights activist, campaigning against fox hunting and the culling of badgers in the UK.[15] May was knighted by King Charles III in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to music and charity.[16]
Brian Harold May was born in 19 July 1947[17] at Gloucester House Nursing Home in Hampton Hill, near Twickenham, Middlesex.[18][19][20] He is only child of Ruth Irving (ne Fletcher) and Harold May, who worked as a draughtsman at the Ministry of Aviation.[21][22] His mother, who was Scottish, married his father, who was English, at Moulin in Perthshire, Scotland in 1946.[23] May attended the local Hanworth Road state primary school, and at the age of 11 won a scholarship to Hampton Grammar School,[19] then a voluntary aided school.[18][21][24] During this time, he formed his first band, named 1984 after George Orwell's novel of the same name, with vocalist and bassist Tim Staffell.[25]
At Hampton Grammar School, May attained ten GCE Ordinary Levels and three GCE Advanced Levels in physics, mathematics, and applied mathematics.[25] He studied mathematics and physics at Imperial College London, graduating with a BSc degree in physics in 1968 with honours.[26] Following his graduation, May received a personal invitation from Sir Bernard Lovell to work at the Jodrell Bank Observatory while continuing to prepare his doctorate. He declined, choosing instead to remain at Imperial College to avoid breaking from Smile, the London-based band he was in at the time.[27]
May formed the band Smile in 1968. The group included Tim Staffell as the lead singer and bassist, and later, drummer Roger Taylor, who also went on to play for Queen. The band lasted for only two years, from 1968 to 1970, as Staffell departed in 1970, leaving the band with a catalogue of nine songs. Smile would reunite for several songs on 22 December 1992. Taylor's band The Cross were headliners, and he brought May and Staffell on to play "Earth" and "If I Were a Carpenter".[30] May also performed several other songs that night.
In Queen's three-part vocal harmonies, May was generally the lower-range backing vocalist. On some of his songs, he sings the lead vocals, most notably the first verse of "Who Wants to Live Forever", the final verse of "Mother Love", the middle eight on "I Want It All" and "Flash's Theme", and full lead vocals on "Some Day One Day", "She Makes Me (Stormtrooper in Stilettoes)", "'39", "Good Company", "Long Away", "All Dead, All Dead", "Sleeping on the Sidewalk", "
May frequently wrote songs for the band and has composed many hits such as "We Will Rock You", "Tie Your Mother Down", "I Want It All", "Fat Bottomed Girls", "Who Wants to Live Forever" and "The Show Must Go On" as well as "Hammer to Fall", "Flash", "Now I'm Here", "Brighton Rock", "The Prophet's Song", "Las Palabras de Amor", "No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)" and "Save Me".[32]
After the Live Aid concert in 1985, Mercury rang his band members and proposed writing a song together. The result was "One Vision", which was basically May on music (the Magic Years documentary shows how he came up with the opening section and the basic guitar riff); the lyrics were co-written by the four band members.[33]
For their 1989 release album, The Miracle, the band had decided that all of the tracks would be credited to the entire band, no matter who had been the main writer.[34] Interviews and musical analyses tend to help identify the input of each member on each track. May composed "I Want It All" for that album, as well as "Scandal" (based on his problems with the British press). For the rest of the album, he did not contribute much creatively. However, he helped in building the basis of "Party" and "Was It All Worth It" (both being predominantly Mercury's pieces) and created the "Chinese Torture" guitar riff.[34]
Queen's subsequent album was Innuendo. May's contributions increased, although more in terms of arranging than actual writing in most cases. He did some of the arrangement for the heavy solo on the title track. He added vocal harmonies to "I'm Going Slightly Mad" and composed the solo for "These Are the Days of Our Lives", a song for which the four of them decided the keyboard parts together.[35]
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