Live upright piano test

[Scorge]

Hey,

I was at my friends house and we had a condenser mic kicking around so we set it up and recorded this little diddy on an upright piano. I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on how it sounds/any suggestions for improving the sound.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13786721/Klusterfuck Intro Piano Render #1.wav

The biggest problem right now is that I used a mono-to-stereo plug-in to fill the speakers with piano but at some parts it starts to sound phased and I have no idea why :\

Thanks!

Zac

 

[chuckduffy]

It sounds like an old beat up, out of tune upright in the middle of a huge empty room recorded from far far away. If that sounds like I am knocking the sound, I'm not as I love old beat up out of tune uprights. You noticed that it starts to sound phased, but don't know why - many mono to stereo plugs mess with phase to generate the 'magic' Piano recording is tough and can be complicated, and I find uprights even tougher. There are lots of articles you can read about mic techniques for piano, but I found this one a decent synopsis of some ways I've done it and seen it done:

Recording Real Pianos

Favorite quote from the author "Miking a piano is never easy; I have found it to be the most frustrating, yet rewarding instrument to work with."

Unless you want to put the time and energy into experimenting and learning, I would just go with the stick a mic in front of it and live with it kinda sound.

As far as the practical - you could get rid of the mono to stereo. If the faraway sound is not coming from the piano actually being in the middle of an empty room, but from a big reverb you added you could get rid of it. You could eq out a little bit of mids. Or you could just leave it the heck alone and use it for an intro to another song or a very short song of its own

Either way - sounds like you are enjoying yourself, and that's what it's all about.

 

[Scorge]

Thanks Chuck

I'll definitely give that article a good read-through, SOS have super-helpful articles.

Hmm, ah well I'll just leave it alone. No point, it was just for the fun of it. It is an intro to one of my bands newer songs we're working on so we'll be re-recording it anyway on a tuned grand-piano of some sort, we'll find one haha.

 

[Brenton]

I'm afraid to say that your piano might be at the end of it's life cycle. You should forget that piano and get yeself a keyboard and use your skills to capture something worthwhile. On the other hand, I can think of a use for that piano for a rock song introduction. Just have to change some of the chords up a bit.