Gear Days: Microphones

So, this is the last post of the month.  Instead of going off and talking about yet another pair of heapdhones, I thought I'd leave the month of gear with a note on microphones or mics.  For the starting studio producer/musician, a decent microphone can be more important than great headphones or speakers.  Like headphones however, mics come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and types.  This post is about some of those and what you might want as a starter mic.

To be honest however, I will say that I have much less experience in shopping for and discerning mics since I still only have one mic and have not been in the habit of looking at them like I do with headphones.  Still, I think that this will be an informative and good post for those who are unaware and are interested in recording at some point.

Let's get to it, first up is what different types of mics are there?  I'm just going to cover a couple as I'm sure to miss some but these are the ones I can come up with right now.  Lavalier mics are a really common mic used by singers and speakers around the world.  These are the mics that clip onto a shirt and might also be referred to as lapel mics.  The most obvious use of these is to capture a person's voice and are useful in hands free contexts.  These are also not to be confused with headset mics which are attached to a headset, although they serve a similar purpose.