micing a cajon?

xusr · Post by **xusr** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 4:03 pm

has anyone ever done this? Any ideas? Thanks a lot in advance.

bluesbaz · Post by **bluesbaz** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 4:37 pm

I have had some success with two mics, a kick mic for the low end and some form of condenser for the High end. I put one on either side and flip phase. The Artist Loved it.

vsr600 · Post by **vsr600** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 4:37 pm

actually just recently saw someone playing one on the KCRW Morning Becomes Eclectic podcast... they just miced it with a 414 about a foot above it pointing about 45 degrees down. It's on the Miho Hatori show (a few episodes back).

bplr · Post by **bplr** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 4:52 pm

i like to use a contact mic when i'm recording cajones. just make sure they shave first and use waterproof tape.

i'm sorry, that was poor taste.

actually, once i had the singer of a metal/doom band ask me to mic his taint ...

carry on

vsr600 · Post by **vsr600** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 7:07 pm

bplr wrote:i like to use a contact mic when i'm recording cajones. just make sure they shave first and use waterproof tape.

i'm sorry, that was poor taste.

actually, once i had the singer of a metal/doom band ask me to mic his taint ...

carry on

hahaha and of course the most important question... DID YOU??
and what mic did you use?

bplr · Post by **bplr** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 8:39 pm

absolutely not. the guy was a bit of a caveman. he went through a case of whippits in the first four hours of recording. the band eventually broke up in an epic fist fight.

maybe i should've tried a shotgun mic ...

Rigsby · Post by **Rigsby** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 1:22 am

LDC round the back, SDC on the front has always sounded good to me. SDC is usually a C451 and the LDC is usually a C4000. I'm sure we've used a 57 at some point but i can't recall what it was in conjunction with.

spankenstein · Post by **spankenstein** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 2:12 pm

Are these people only playing one sideof the cajon? My bass cajon has two playing surfaces. I haven't been happy with any way that I have tried recording it.

sfaudiogeek · Post by **sfaudiogeek** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 4:42 pm

On stage I mic a cajon with a Shure Beta 91. Just slide the mic right through the hole and set it on the floor inside. I definitely noticed changes in the tone by moving the mic around inside the drum as well. Oh! and we had the mic resting on some gummy substance that actually came with a Schertler mic--this stuff helped decouple the mic from the drum, and kepp it in place. Obviously the low end response is pretty hefty, but I got a heck of a lot of slap sound in there too.

madtho · Post by **madtho** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 5:34 pm

bplr wrote:actually, once i had the singer of a metal/doom band ask me to mic his taint ...

I can't even imagine that "dude, mic my taint" would ever bubble up in someone's brain.

back to topic.
Issue #32
Craig Street records Peruvian Susana Baca

...after a good deal of great players/great room/great engineer (Danny Kopelson) Craig Street says: [On] the cajon was a Beyer 160 and the other side a 57. Again, Cajon is a quirky instrument. You have 2 sounds you need to get the total sound of it (describes sound) So it's just a matter of moving the mics around, positioning the instrument so that happens.

There's a photo of the cajon player (cajoner? cajonist?) in a Sean John Tshirt sitting on the box with the Beyer right out in front of his crotch, looks like a couple feet away, pointing slightly down at the front. lots of moving blankets around.

boom bip
-mad

rhythm.method · Post by **rhythm.method** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 10:29 am

I just miced up one last week using an EV RE20 just inside the hole to get the bass, and a 414 a couple feet away from the front pointed down & flipped the phase.
I put a lexicon gated reverb on the bass mic for fun, and it sounded pretty wild. Not 1986 wild though.

rhythm.method · Post by **rhythm.method** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 10:34 am

Shoot, I forgot to mention I put the cajonist(?) on a piece of hardwood 3X4' & got a nice warm reflection. Cajon players/cajonists lean the cajon back on an angle while playing so the sound projects upward from the front. I try to keep that in mind when placing mics, too...

bannerj · Post by **bannerj** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 11:44 am

Funny this is up here. I'd never heard of a cajon until last week. I used two 414s on either side. The one on the back, low end hole, I put just off the edge of the hole kinda in and kinda out. It was about 8-12 inches out. The other was just in front 12-16 inches out. And I did have a nice flat piece of wood (4x8) underneath it.

We ended up stacking his part. Two takes, the slap/snare sound from one take to the right, the other one to the left. I added a little low end from my URS BLT and put that right up the middle. I think I put just a tiny bit of delay on the panned mics too to make a nice, bright, presency smack.

rhythm.method · Post by **rhythm.method** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:36 pm

funny, i just took a masterclass on cajon this past friday with a guy who grew up in Peru. I borrowed a cajon from a friend that had snares in it, but Hector's
(the Peru Guru) didn't.
I found out that the peruvian cajon was the original, and the spanish took & put snares in it & use it for flamenco music. (Both have way different sounds to them)
I also learned much about the instrument, and that i am a white boy sitting on top of a non-white-boy instrument getting way lost in the rhythm... but it was fun!!!

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