Recording harp with vocals

[cale w]

A friend brought her harp around and I recorded her playing a song the other day. here's the tune: http://soundcloud.com/calewilcox/i-aim-too-low

I set up a bunch of mics because I didn't really know how to approach it. What you hear there is mostly an ORTF LDC pair looking at the harp like it was a piano, so the voice is mostly in the right channel. There's a little bit of room mic and DI off the harp also. I had a close mic on her voice but it wasn't jiving at all being so close to the instrument also, so I left it out of the mix. Also, her voice was a lot louder than the harp, which is why I ended up sneaking some DI in there.

How have other people recorded a harpist singing?
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-Cale


low-fi dub! http://soundcloud.com/calewilcox/sets/district-dubs#

[Gregg Juke]

Never had to (other than once live; I think I only had one mike and one channel left, so that was it).

Your concept sounds like a great starting point though.

GJ

[A.David.MacKinnon]

Isn't the soundboard/chamber on the back (the player side)? That would be the wider side on the right in the main picture here -

I'd start by pointing my mics there and then maybe do a stereo set up out front.
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Dave

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[Adam Chesi]

If you want isolation from a vocal mic in that situation, your best bet is a figure 8 pattern. I doubt it will prevent all bleed, but it should help with it, just make sure the soundboard (as mentioned by A.David.MacKinnon) is in the null of the 8. I've used an SM81 on the soundboard before and gotten good results, but that was without vocals.

Are you just recording vocals and harp, or are you trying to put this in a track with other instruments as well? If I were to record a harpist/vocalist just for that purpose, I'd treat it more orchestral (if I had a good room) and just have the ORTF about 5-8 feet away and then have 2 close mics, maybe 3. One on vox, one on the center of the soundboard or maybe 2 on the soundboard spread out.
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[betamatt]

Never recorded a singing harpist, but I can imagine I'd approach it like many situations where you have a singer simultaneously playing an acoustic instrument. Balance is a big problem. If someone sings much louder than she plays, the vocal sound will be negatively affected (because you hear so much vocal in the instrument mics). If she plays much louder than she sings, the instrument sound will be negatively affected for the same, but reversed, reasons. If you are standing in the room listening, and you can primarily only hear the voice, my first choice would be to not track her live. If overdubbing isn't an option for performance reasons, and the musical balance you want to hear isn't actually happening in the room, whatever you choose is going to be a compromise.

First, I'm going to start with the vocal sound, and pick a vocal mic that both complements the singer's voice and sounds good on what you hear of the harp (ie, the off-axis sound is nice and balanced). Because the voice is so much louder than the instrument, the harp bleed won't be an issue.

Now for the harp, I would go for the most rejection of the voice as possible, because you are trying to bring up the level of the harp to be in musical balance with the voice (based on the assumption that in the room, it is lower than the ideal musical balance). For me this means a tight cardioid pattern or properly angled figure-8 pattern, and this means getting close. You will probably want two mics, though I may not use them for stereo, simply to get a balanced picture of the harp's range from up close. Whenever I mic an instrument in stereo in this situation, I want the vocal bleed to be up the middle, so it doesn't pull the vocal off to one side. If I cannot place the 2 mics to pick up the instrument in the way I want and still have the vocal in the middle, I will pan the instrument mics in such a way that the vocal is in the middle, or just go straight mono. If the arrangement involves more instruments, a mono harp will be fine, and if it's solo harp/vocal and you end up with mono close mics, a stereo room will give nice perspective and spread.

Hope this is useful.

[losthighway]

I recorded harp without vocals and found it to be one of the hardest instruments to get a satisfying sound with..... that's all I got. Good luck.
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[mindsound]

As harp is a complex instrument on an harmonic standpoint, I'll definitely suggest you to overdub the voice.
But if I had to do that I'll put an Sm7 close on the voice and a ribbon pointing at the harp so the null of the figure-8 would be in the axis of the singer.
And if I'm not satisfied, instead of the ribbon I would put a pair of condenser in xy position a few feet from the harp.

with that said, I had great results with a condenser pair in xy (2-3 feet from the harp) and a ribbon somewhat close to the upper range of the instrument to get a more focused sound. But....the harpist wasn't singing!
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Etienne P.
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[bobschwenkler]

I've done it once with pretty good results. Mono harp mic up a foot or so from the soundboard and positioned to get some attack from the strings and a mic up at her mouth.

Figure 8s can work well but take care, some can have nasty responses near the null that can be harder to work with than he bleed in a smooth sounding cardioid.

The Little Labs IBP (I use the UA plugin) is a dream come true for this sort of stuff. Plus, the large majority of the time I easily prefer the sound of the modeled hardware unit to the straight digital delay option available on it.
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[bobschwenkler]

I checked out the sample and heard a bit of what's the reason I tend to stick to mono instrument mics when recording live vocals: An off-center vocal sound that has a propensity to wander in unnatural ways around the stereo image.

Can I recommend you give (more?) pre-compression automation and parallel compression a try on this vocal track?
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[bobschwenkler]