is there a formula for phased recording

[krissy longfella]

i was recording a band in the studio and made a school boy error we left the backing vocal mic on which was placed by the amp we were recoding a semi accoustic on. we had a happy accident the sound was great and we used both the original track and the happy accident track together which gave it a brilliant texture. now this has lead me to think about an idea which is plaguing me, i dont have access to a studio or i would try this myself.

the idea:

what would happen if i made a row of mics spaced every to foot apart, then the second mic back a foot higher and so on, also if the mics were place in a diagnal line and again each one back a foot higher, would the out of phase thing work with, and would it give texture variation because of the mics getting higher and loseing some of the bass frequencies. i just wondered weather there was a formula for this that was related the angles of incidence and the amplitude.

i also wanted to know basically wheather we could track a frequncy band predict its reflection. im not trying to be smart i dont know the answer, i have listened the second coming where john squar's guitar sound like something out of a scifi film, the production on this album was superb and im trying to broaden my ideas, researching some of phil spectres miking techniques.

[brandondrury]

Damn it I wrote a huge post on this like a week ago. It appears it must not have went through. That was 20 minutes pissed away. Maybe I can write a blog on it.

Brandon

[richiebee]

The obvious one that springs to mind is the 3:1 rule. Say you have one microphone 1 foot from the source its picking up. Make sure all other mics are at least 3 feet from the same source. This can get complicated if you're recording a lot of sources at the same time! You also need to take into account reflections from walls, floor and ceiling if there are any when utilizing this rule.

If you want to read a more thorough or better explanation, try googling 'microphone phasing 3 to 1'