My kid is:
a) playing Yamaha P115 + singing
b) playing non-digital piano + singing
c) playing piano without singing
d) singing without playing piano
What equipment is needed to be able to record all these situations at home (so not at professional but absolute beginners level)?
Probably microphone, anything else?!
Hi there,
It's very easy to go wrong!
The Yamaha P115 has left and right auxiliary outs, so I'd probably use those.
There's a few reasons...Recording a line out is like recording what you hear through the headphones. It's consistent, sounds good already,
and isn't subject to the sound of your room or any background noise there might be.
Conversely recording a piano with microphones could go wrong or not sound good for numerous reasons.
With the line outputs there's also the benefit of being able to pop on headphones so the piano doesn't actually make any sound in the room.
That means, when you're recording, the vocal microphone won't be 'hearing' any piano, so the vocal is isolated.
With multitrack recording each individual input gets its own track in the software, so isolation is usually desirable.
Recording the way I describe there, you'd be able to listen to the vocal completely isolated, and the piano completely isolated
which means it's very clean and easy to make adjustments or do some processing later.
Even if it's as simple as using an eq to make the vocal a little brighter, being an isolated recording will still make that much easier and nicer.
Recording a piano and vocalist with microphones would result in bleed between the sources/microphones, so you'll never get that degree of isolation,
and then editing/adjusting is made more difficult.
How recording is done actually, which system is doing recording (can it be computer or it should be any other equipment)?
P.S. I understand nothing about this, I am really noob. We do not have microphone yet.
With a modest audio interface you can record directly to more or less any computer.
Free/cheap software like Reaper will do the job just fine.
With multitrack recording, each input is recorded down on its own track, so in your set up you might have
Piano Left -----------
Piano Right ---------
Vocals --------
I'd look for a modest USB audio interface (or thunderbolt, or whatever your preference) with two line inputs and two microphone preamplifiers - Four inputs total.
(You don't generally get 3-input devices with 2x line and 1x mic...).
If you'd definitely prefer to be equipped to record the acoustic piano too please let us know because the requirements will be different.