How to record cello and piano in a too bright and live room

gongli

New member
I am recording cello and piano in a small-medium size room that is too bright and live acoustically - I can't really treat it except to put a blanket under the piano.

What mic setup would you all recommend? I always used X-Y stereo on 2 small diaphragm cardoid mics and a large diaphram cardoid as spot mic up close (6 inches).

Would that work or the room work against me being too live? How to tame the room - only close mics, or putting the X-Y much closer like 2 ft high and far?

Please help me as I have to record a good cello student for his College resume next week...

Thanks in advance and stay safe everyone.
 
When the room is very live, I find that closer is better. Once the reverberation is recorded, removing it is a chore and usually unsatifactory in the end.

I'm assuming a grand piano (hard to put a blanket under an upright) With a grand, you have several options, including right over the strings for a very immediate sound. You can always add reverberation if needed. Likewise, you can darken the EQ if the close in micing is too crisp. I would start with the X/Y close in, or even as a spaced pair over the strings, and use the spot mic to add a bit of room ambience.

There are several good demonstration videos on Youtube on recording piano. Look at Audio Technica, Sweetwater, Produce Like A Pro videos.

Will you be recording both at the same time? Will bleed into the cello be an issue? The recording you did of the Hymns should be ok, although I would lean more heavily on the close mic.
 
I'd probably try the SDC (maybe even a narrow, vertical XY?) on the cello and the LDC on the piano, not too far from the open lid. You may have to compromise how the sound is in the room when listening vs. what the mics pick up, i.e., you want to set up for the best recorded sound. And, there will be bleed, but I wouldn't worry about it if the cello capture is good.

Maybe a blanket on the lid can't hurt, either, as it's a large, reflective surface, and you don't really need any more piano case resonance recorded.
 
When the room is very live, I find that closer is better. Once the reverberation is recorded, removing it is a chore and usually unsatifactory in the end.

I'm assuming a grand piano (hard to put a blanket under an upright) With a grand, you have several options, including right over the strings for a very immediate sound. You can always add reverberation if needed. Likewise, you can darken the EQ if the close in micing is too crisp. I would start with the X/Y close in, or even as a spaced pair over the strings, and use the spot mic to add a bit of room ambience.

There are several good demonstration videos on Youtube on recording piano. Look at Audio Technica, Sweetwater, Produce Like A Pro videos.

Will you be recording both at the same time? Will bleed into the cello be an issue? The recording you did of the Hymns should be ok, although I would lean more heavily on the close mic.

Yes I will be recording them at the same time, so bleed will be an issue (I can't fix intonation I guess).

This is a much bigger room that's much brighter and livelier than the previous Hymns room.

You mentioned adding spot mic for ambience - exactly where can I put the mic to do that?

Thank you again so very much for your input on this!
 
There is NO ambience in a room that already has problems. You can capture ambience, preferably in stereo inn a gorgeous space, but a room mic in your room would sound pretty horrible - you wouldn't want to use this at all, so add some good quality artificial reverb, so much better. If the room means close mics are needed, forget any chance of using that sound, but even further away from the sound sources - you'll get a great recording of a bad room. If you have loads of early reflections , then time aligning anything to anything will be fruitless.
 
Thank you so much for that Rob!

I have 2 good sounding reverb plugins and I will experiment with them - Fabfilter and Lexicon.
 
I would be looking at either ORTF over the hammers, or X/Y over the center of the soundboard for the piano. It should give you good balanced sound without too much of the room to interfere. You can then use the 3rd mic on the cello, somewhat like what you did in the Hymn, perhaps a few inches further away that in the Hymn recordings.

Is the X/Y pair SDC or LDC?
 
Rich's suggestion is a good one - X/Y or ORTF or some practical bending of both to make the piano sound 'real'. I think that's the trouble with most grands - the mic placement has to be right. The lid position, the mic position and angles always need experimenting with. Some Yamahas have a very strange metallic sound if you get the mic(s) in the opposite of the sweet spot. There's a sort of black hole and while it looks right, it sounds yucky. If you have a couple of omni, they're worth trying too, to catch the bounce from the lid. One of my best recordings was a happy accident - Two cardioid mics new to me and in their suspension mounts, I had them pointing up at the lid, 180 degrees wrong in the mounts. Sounded really nice but a mistake! Never had the courage to do it again, but it worked really well!
 
I would be looking at either ORTF over the hammers, or X/Y over the center of the soundboard for the piano. It should give you good balanced sound without too much of the room to interfere. You can then use the 3rd mic on the cello, somewhat like what you did in the Hymn, perhaps a few inches further away that in the Hymn recordings.

Is the X/Y pair SDC or LDC?

It's Oktava SDC MC-012.

I will try about 10 inches to 12 for spot cello mic.

Thanks a lot everyone who helped me out!
 
Plug headphones in.
Hold mic in your hand and get the cellist to play.
I've the mic around and hear the instrument loudly in your ears.
Repeat and adjust to taste.

Works every time. You also end up with some very strange positions!
 
Thank you so much for that Rob!

I have 2 good sounding reverb plugins and I will experiment with them - Fabfilter and Lexicon.
If this is just for a résumé then plug-in away but if it's for an admission evaluation (probably not at this date) be sure to read guidelines. Some (many, all? - been a few years since we did our son's) conservatories will specify no FX.
 
The nice thing about doing the recording for an admission would be that you can actually prepare TWO mixes, one with mixing and fx, one without. Send one to the committee and keep the other for your portfolio.

I would suspect that most admissions committees would be listening more to the playing technique than to that recording techniques. It would simply be unfair to base a judgement on how well the performance was recorded. If daddy is a billionaire and can afford to hire out Abbey Road Studios and an full engineering staff to produce an admissions tape, should that be an advantage over a student who can only afford to set up in his apartment, or maybe his church to make the recording?
 
Thank you for letting me know about no fx on it - I will make two versions, as he is going to upload it to spotify, youtube, amazon music, etc...
 
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