Guzheng is a Chinese traditional instrument with a long history. It has wonderful sound and a cool appearance. As a Guzheng player, I always need to record it in order to contribute in original songs or cover the pieces I love. Therefore, find out the best way to record Guzheng is an very important thing.
how to choose a microphone
As known to all, a suitable microphone is essential in recording. There are different kinds of microphones in different use. The most common one is the built-in microphone. It exists in various electronic devices such as mobile phones and cameras, small and easy to use. Handheld microphones are mainly used for program hosting and karaoke singing, head-mounted microphones always show up in television programs and gooseneck microphones are mainly used for meetings or presentations. For recording, studio microphones are the best choices, and almost of them are condenser microphones.
The condenser microphone uses a very thin metal diaphragm as the first stage of the capacitor, and the other close to the metal back plate (a few millimeters or so) acts as the other pole, so that the vibration of the diaphragm causes the capacitance capacity to change. Therefore, an electrical signal is formed. A diaphragm is like an eardrum, positioning at the end of the microphone. Because the diaphragm is very thin, very small sound can also make it vibrate, so the condenser microphone is very sensitive. The biggest characteristic of the condenser microphone is the high sensitivity and the rich details of the pickup, so it performs well in the recording studio. However, in the normal environment, it is easy to pick up the noise.
The last one is for instrument and looks very different with the other two, like a pencil. It is a small diaphragm microphone, while the other two are large diaphragm microphone. The large diaphragm is more capable of picking up low frequencies, which makes voice sound softer and more beautiful, while the small diaphragm picks up all frequencies equally. To record the purest and most original sound of instruments, small diaphragms can help.
Where to place the microphone
When place the microphone at different positions, the sound are also different. To find out a best position for recording Guzheng, Yongfei Zhang et. al. did an experiment in 2017. They placed a microphone every 15° and every 50 centimeters. Then they analyzed the spectrogram at every point and drew the energy distribution map of Guzheng to get the best position. The results showed that the best two positions are right in front of the Guzheng and under the Guzheng to get the clearest and purest sound.
