PZMs and upright pianos

A

Aren

New member
Hi,

I was wondering about common PZM mic placements when recording an upright piano. I want to mount two electret capsules PZM style on my piano for a semi-permanent quick-and-dirty way to record it.
Should I tape them to the lid, the back, anywhere else?
How about the spacing between the two?

Any thoughts?

Oren
 
Of course many engineers know, perhaps you've put this question on the wrong forum. Try it on musicplayer.com gearslutz.com prosoundweb.com or recording.org to mention a couple.

As for PZM's for recording (grand) piano: tape them to the lid and experiment. Find the best place, depending the sound you're after. Check phase by listening mono to both mics.

I have a grand with PZM's permanently fitted to the inside of the lid in order to have a decent sound quickly.

Cheers, Han
 
Ya know, I've tried PZM's under the lid on a grand, and I never liked the way it sounded. I could never achieve a good stereo image, and the mics seemed to lack depth and clarity. But that's just me, I could be doing it all wrong.

I've always had much better results using 2 SD condender mics set up in a wide stereo pattern.

Ocassionally I'll use 2 LD condensors if I want a richer tone, but the trade off is less detail. The LD's seem to work well only in certain keys too.
That kind of makes sense if you think about matching a condenser to a vocalist.
A piano has a certian voice to it, and that voice is going to vary from key sig. to key sig. What works with one "voice" of the piano may not work well with another "voice", even though its the same piano.

Anyway... back to the topic:
PZM's on an upright. Only thing I can contribute is to say pull it out away from the wall. Maybe even turn it around so that the bench and keys are set "catty-corner" to the wallls. Think about where the sound comes from and experiment until you get the sound you're after.
 
For upright piano, I'd tape them to the wall behind the piano, 2 to 3 feet apart about half way up - and I'd make sure the piano is a foot to 18" from the wall.

Scott
 
Interesting...

Digit--I never thought of that one...may try that sometime, if I ever get ahold of some PZMs.

Michael--when you say catty corner to the walls, are you thinking so your back is to the wall, or so your front is to the wall, if you were sitting on the piano? Does it matter? Probably you'll tell me it has everything to do with the room. But I wondered if there was a "general rule" with this aspect.

-Kirstin
 
Han -

I don't have any. My idea is to mount Panasonic electret capsules (powered with a little 9V power supply, like the tape-op mics) facing down in a piece of plexiglass, and use it as a PZM element. I might stick a very thin piece of open-cell foam on the bottom of the plexiglass to provide the gap necessary for the PZM effect.
I got the idea from this article about using these mic elements to amplify an accoustic guitar (works pretty damn good, by the way).

Oren
 
Re: Interesting...

kgirl72 said:
...Michael--when you say catty corner to the walls, are you thinking so your back is to the wall, or so your front is to the wall, if you were sitting on the piano? Does it matter? Probably you'll tell me it has everything to do with the room. But I wondered if there was a "general rule" with this aspect.

-Kirstin
Click to expand...
On an upright piano, the soundboard is on the back of it. So that's what you want to keep away from the wall.
Given that, I'd say you'd be sitting with you back in the corner.
That gives you the open room for the soundboard of the piano. Putting the soundboard of an upright against the wall, while it may look nice in your living room that way, trying to record it that way is likely to yield some nasty reflections.
 
I kind of figured that. Thanks Michael.

Yeah, my upright is an old Steinway, and it's tall enough, that I wouldn't be able to see over it, and being a woman, the "not looking good in the living room" thing will tend to bother me a bit, but oh well...I may just have to spend a lot of time re-locating that thing. I'm going to have some monster muscles, I suppose. I can barely get it started moving, but once I do, it goes okay.

Or, I'll just keep plugging in that old keyboard.

:D

-Kirstin
 
kgirl72 said:
I kind of figured that. Thanks Michael.

Yeah, my upright is an old Steinway, and it's tall enough, that I wouldn't be able to see over it, and being a woman, the "not looking good in the living room" thing will tend to bother me a bit, but oh well...I may just have to spend a lot of time re-locating that thing. I'm going to have some monster muscles, I suppose. I can barely get it started moving, but once I do, it goes okay.

Or, I'll just keep plugging in that old keyboard.

:D

-Kirstin
Click to expand...
Well, if you're worried about how it looks in the living room, (and believe me, I understand that!! :) ) then you need to get one of these:
ei_rose.jpg


:) :) :)
 
All kidding/wishing aside though.
You say you can't see over the top of it; is a studio grand? Or, you know, a REAL tall upright?

You may be able to get away with opening the lid and miking it that way....
 
Well,

I don't know if it's a studio grand or not. Aren't there a couple of different types of uprights? I acquired the piano last year, as a gift, after selling my much smaller upright seven years ago so that I could move a little more easily. I suppose, I can say it this way...I'm almost 5'7" tall, and my head is just slightly higher than the top of the piano, and when I say slightly, I am guessing at the most 6 inches or so. The lid folds back, you can take the front panel off, and it does have a soundboard on the back. I tried micing the top, and while it worked, I have a pedal prob. So, I heard that the soundboard might lessen that...is that possible?

I also tried taking the front panel off and pointing two mics at that...frankly I don't remember how well that worked, I got irritable with all the setting up and moving of mics/stands. I'm not one who enjoys moving things around so much, unless I have an entire row of days to do nothing but experiment, which I NEVER do.

So, maybe it's a studio grand, you would probably know better than I based on this post.

And, do you know, a mid-sized grand was one of my options of pianos to choose from for my "gift". The deal was, my ex, who owns a blues club here in town, was buying a piano from his friend, who owned a jazz club here at the time. The friend wanted to move his family soon, to retire off to Florida, so he decided to sell the club, and was also selling lots of audio equipment and the upright piano in his home. They wanted to lighten their load. Inside the club, though, was a mid-sized black grand piano. Both pianos were old pianos.

Of course, I was salivating at the thought of the grand. We went to the club first. I saw it was black, and knew it would match my living room set, but the damn thing was huge...I knew it wouldn't fit in my house. So, I played it, and several keys had no action. The last thing I wanted to do was pay to have that fixed before I could really play it, so we checked out the other one. It was such a dark wood, it's almost black as well, and it looks great in my house. Plus, his friend had just spent a bunch of cash on the hammer action on that thing, so all the keys worked beautifully. It had only been owned by himself and his aunt who used to be his piano teacher. So, we picked that one.

But, yours looks good. Can I borrow it for a little while?
:)

-Kirstin
 
erichenryus said:
I have radio shack pzm's. Can you explain why I want to connect a 9 volt instead of the AA's? I know mine require quite a bit of gain.
Click to expand...

If you use them with 9 volt they can handle much higher dynamics.
And a piano has quite some.

There are or were special batteries with the size of AA, but 23 volts, that were recommended in the RS manual.
 
Re: Well,

kgirl72 said:
I don't know if it's a studio grand or not.

But, yours looks good. Can I borrow it for a little while?
:)

-Kirstin
Click to expand...

Got a model number on yours?

This one's mine:
gp_218.jpg

(not the other pic...)

But, yeah, you can use it ANY time!
Ya just gotta get to Austin. :)
 
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