Acoustic recording techniques

Where should I put the microphones when recording my acoustic guitar?' ‘What's the best way to record a sax?’ ‘Can you recommend the best mics to use for recording piano?’ These are typical of the queries which pop up in online sound-recording forums. Fellow contributors often provide excellent advice, but what seldom appears in their response is the question: ‘What sort of music are you recording?’ This is important. As listeners, our expectation of what an instrument should sound like on a recording varies depending on the musical genre, and that sound is a consequence of recording technique.

To be fair to the online correspondents, the reason the question of genre doesn't arise is the assumption that everyone in the group is talking about pop or rock music, which they usually are. In school, however, you'll face the challenge of helping students record a wider range of styles, be it for HE or national youth ensemble auditions, or for digital music exam submissions. Thankfully, there's not a radically different way of doing things for each style of music, but rather two distinct approaches. They are commonly referred to by recording engineers as ‘pop’ and ‘classical’ techniques, as they are clearly recognisable in the commercial recording of those two common genres.