The Beatles' Recording Technology - Close Micing of Acoustic Instruments

Close Micing of Acoustic Instruments

During the recording of "Eleanor Rigby" on 28 April 1966, McCartney said he wanted to avoid "Mancini" strings. (It is possible that Mantovani was actually the style that McCartney wanted to avoid.) To fulfil this brief, Geoff Emerick close-miked the strings—the microphones were almost touching the strings. George Martin had to instruct the players not to back away from the microphones.

Microphones began to be placed closer to the instruments in order to produce a fuller sound. Ringo's drums had a large sweater stuffed in the bass drum to 'deaden' the sound while the bass drum microphone was positioned very close which resulted in the being more prominent in the mix. "Eleanor Rigby" features just Paul and a double string quartet that has the instruments miked so close to the string that 'the musicians were in horror'. In "Got to Get You into My Life", the brass were miked in the bells of their instruments then put through a Fairchild limiter.

In 1966, this was considered a radically new way of recording strings; nowadays it is common practice.