Recording a pianist (my friend)

[musicsdarkangel]

Even though i'm a pianist myself, i'm not sure how to mic my friend playing his grand and what I should do with the sound when it's recorded.


It's a typical living room, with not much reverb. I can have up to 3 mics to work with

I can also borrow mics, but I'm not sure if I should go Dynamic, Condenser, Shure, Audio Technica etc.


Any help would be much appreciated

[musicsdarkangel]

btw, I'm using Cubase and have Waves Bundle if there are any specific plug-ins to recommend.

[Chibi Nappa]

Well....I'm definatly not the expert here, but my general experiance has taught me to reach for condenser mics when dealing with accoustic instruments.

Check to see if you can find any condensers with an omnidirectional pickup so you can put in right up to the piano without exagerating the lows. Also check for a condenser with a figure 8 pickup for some cool sterio micing techniques.

[In Tune Audio]

I'm not an expert but I have recorded a fair bit of piano in the past ( Mostly uprights). How you record it will depend on what your recording. Classical piano, and pop piano are two totally different sounds.

I've tried lots of different types of mics, but what I found worked best were a pair of pencil condensor mics, with a cardiod pattern. I found omni's just added to much air, and lost some sonic qualities of the pianos, and you definetly won't want that if its a pop sound your after.

Most books will tell you to place the mics above the hammers. That works, but personnally I found that if I put them father down the soundboard the sound wasn't quite as percussive, and I got more tone from the piano. You will also pick up some of the harmonics from the piano, rather than just the fundamental tone where the hammers hit the strings.

When you mix it, run it through a multiband compressor, ( the waves Linear MB will work real well) and then you can clean up any voicing problems with the piano. But of course before you start make the sure piano is tuned, and that the regualtion and voicing of the piano are okay. No matter what equipment you have, and how you record it, it will sound like crap if the piano's not in good shape. So make sure you get a good technician.

Let us know how it goes!

[Michael Jones]

I've done a fair amount of grand piano recording.
In general .small diameter condensors will yield accurate sound reproduction, whereas large diameter condensors will yeild a rich, full tone.

It really depends on the sound you're after.
If any of these sound clips strike your fancy, let me know, and I'll tell you what was used and how.

[fenix]

Originally posted by In Tune Audio

When you mix it, run it through a multiband compressor, ( the waves Linear MB will work real well)

I guess, if you want a large amount of latency and you want your CPU usage to be eaten up.

Linear MB is a mastering comp.

[In Tune Audio]

I didn't say use the multi band during tracking. You use it on the mixdown. It works just fine.

[fenix]

It'll work just fine if piano is the only instrument. Add voice, then there's problems.

[In Tune Audio]

You run the piano tracks through a bus with the multi band compressor, doesn't need to affect the vocals.

But there's no reason you couldn't run the voice through the multi band, you would if you were mastering the song.