A cajón, pronouced ka-hone, is nothing more than a wooden box. And while a percussionist is whacking away at the exterior, there is a whole lot going on both inside and out. Through the right miking combination, you can create a cajón mix with great mid and high end sounds as well as substantial low end. In the right circumstances, you’ll get the sounds of two instruments.
Cajón Microphone selection
For the outside, I use a Shure PG81. This cardioid condenser is placed about a foot away from the front of the cajón. This enables the capture of the percussionist’s hands slapping the cajón as well as picking up any additional percussion pieces on the floor, such as a foot-tapped tambourine.
For the inside, I use an Audix D6 dynamic cardioid kick drum mic. By placing this on a short mic stand, I can place it well inside the rear sound hole.
Cajón Mixing
The mix is determined largely by the other instruments. For example, if I had a cajón with a full drum set in the song arrangement, I’d have skipped the inside mic altogether. But when you get a stripped down acoustic set, then the fun begins.
Start by rolling off the low end frequencies of the exterior mic. I’ll dial in my high-pass filter to around 200 Hz. The reason is my interior mic is used for the low end and it’s those mids and highs I want from the PG81 mic. From here, modify the sound and make those slaps really pop out.
The interior mic mix is more about sculpting the desired sound. Try a nice 6 dB boost between 40 Hz and 100 Hz until you find the best spot.
It’s all about the bass…
Depending on the instrument arrangement, the cajón can work in different ways. In a set last weekend, it was two singers, one acoustic guitar, and the percussionist. By boosting the volume of the interior microphone, I created a solid bass line in the song that complimented the arrangement. In a way, by using two microphones on the cajón, I’d created another instrument.
The Take Away
For all of the complicated parts of mixing, there are just as many simple tricks. One cajón plus two microphones yields two instruments. That’s math I can use.
P.S. Cajóns come in a variety of shapes with differing sound hole locations. Use the above as a basis for setting up microphones for your situation.
Karim Suleman says
December 30, 2014 at 4:20 pmI need some help with Shure Wireless mics, the SLX series with a SM58 head.
I bought a pair to be used for our church main singers, but over time one of them has started cutting out , checked battery,New, signal strength is good, trim level on mic is good too, gain level on mixer is good too,just wondering if anyone has encountered a problem like this ??
Chris Huff says
December 31, 2014 at 9:02 amTry a different frequency for the transmitter and receiver.
Justin says
December 11, 2014 at 3:23 amI’ve used a single SM81 up the hole. You can actually pick up the slap from behind as well. I find the front mic often gets hit by the hand on the cajon player. I’ve also used an SM57 taped to the floor, PZM style.
John says
October 21, 2014 at 7:57 amSo tried it out this evening at our practice getting ready for Sunday service. Got a nice sound put of the he mic in front using an SM 57, rolled off the low end at 200hz, and a relatively flat EQ.
For the inside mic used a Samson drum mic and put a 7 db boost at 100hz, and applied a low pass filter at 1000hz. After a little experimenting we got a nice tight sound out of the cajon.
However we tried using our mic that we normally use for the kick drum and got a low frequency ring around 82hz – 94hz.
Even with the Samson, we had to apply a high gate at 6 db, and used a .02ms hold and 1ms release to try stop the reverberation ringing through the system.
So, did you find you had to gate it pretty hard to avoid ringing?
Chris Huff says
October 21, 2014 at 8:37 amI didn’t have to gate mine at all.
John says
October 20, 2014 at 12:37 amWow, what good timing. I read this article last week, and just the other day our Worship Pastor said that we are going to use one of these next week doing an acoustic set in the morning service!
We don’t have the same mics, but I think we have something similar which I can play around with.
Anonymous says
October 17, 2014 at 10:05 pmWow. Oddly specific. Oddly enough, actually useful to me. Our drummer sits on one of these and uses it when they’re not beating up the main kit.