Micing Acoustic Piano

ChuckU

ChuckU

New member
I recorded a tune a while back. Kind of country with acoustic piano as the feature instrument. I added acoustic guitar, electric guitar and bass. I'm planning to redo the guitars as I have better gear and I'm not happy with my performance. We did the piano via a midi controller into Cakewalk and later triggered a Roland JV-1010.
The piano patch is ok, but the keyboard player would like to take another crack. So we talked about using a real piano.

I probably won't get access to a grand or a baby grand, but I can get to a decent upright.

Questions:
1. Which combination of the following mics will work best and how should they be placed?
-1 Marshall V67
-2 Marshall 603's
-2 Behringer ECM 8000's
-1 Sennheiser 421

The mics will be routed to a Mackie 1202 and into my Delta 1010 or my Roland VS-880 (more likely).
Suggestions regarding eq's compression, panning, preamps, etc are all welcome.

I've been thru a few searches on this and of course Harvey gave out a nice tidbit of advice.
I was trying to be a bit specific with regards to my gear, though.
 
Hi Chuck!

Funny, I just replied to another piano thread just minutes ago. I use an upright studio piano (one of the taller uprights), and what I use is 2 MXL 603s. I heard they have lower self-noise than the Behringers. If you use those you probably won't want/need any other mics. I know I don't.

I pull the piano away from the wall, nearly perpendicular (it's a big room so it's far away from the "parallel" wall now) and as far into the middle of the room as possible. I open the top lid all the way, remove the lower front plate (under the keys) but keep the upper front plate (above keys) on. Then I mic the back using the MLX pair about 4 to 5 feet way in ORTF configuration. You'll have to experiment with height and distance for your piano, but with this I get a great stereo image with little cancellation (I like the sound of ORTF better than true XY for this application for some reason).

For pres I'd go with clean 2-channel rather than colored. The mackie should be fine. I don't EQ or compress on the way in.

I dunno much, but this is what works best for me so far.

Hey, weren't you the guy who figured out how to use the VS880 as a mixer controller for PC-based recording?
 
geekgurl said:
Hey, weren't you the guy who figured out how to use the VS880 as a mixer controller for PC-based recording?
Click to expand...
That was I. In fact, I'll probably do this on the 880 and spdif them into Sonar as I don't have an upright here.

I've seen it, but I forget. What's OTRF stand for?

Thanks for the response. I appreciate it. Hope all is well in the bay area. Congrats to the Giants.
 
Hey geekgurl, what happened with that concert you were going to record a month or so ago?

How did you end up doing it?
 
Hi Senn,

It didn't turn out, because they wouldn't let me record it. I have a VHS because a friend managed to videotape the show, but the sound is crappy. Still, that's my only souvenir of me playing with "the legends" because: 1. some flunky who thinks he's a sound guy/production goo roo (all he ever does is screw things up at every show I've worked with him) didn't want me recording it because of its potential bootleg value (whatevs), and 2. the REAL sound guy, who would've let me plug into the board, couldn't make the time to help me set up because the whole thing was poorly planned and he had no idea the number of musicians/miking needs he had on stage; he said if he had known, he'd have hired help, so he was swamped.

Next time it's a battery-powered boombox with the bult-in mics pointed at an absorbent wall. :D I've had some great recordings of loud band practices that way, hee hee.
 
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ChuckU said:

That was I. In fact, I'll probably do this on the 880 and spdif them into Sonar as I don't have an upright here.

I've seen it, but I forget. What's OTRF stand for?

Thanks for the response. I appreciate it. Hope all is well in the bay area. Congrats to the Giants.
Click to expand...

ChuckU, please share your wisdom with me! I want to use the VS880 as a controller. Did you document it? If you were local I'd buy you lunch or something.

Bay Area is doing great ... yeah, Go Giants! I'm not even much of a baseball fan, but it's hard not to get swept up in it all, not that I'm TRYING to avoid it ...

As for ORTF, I don't know exactly what it stands for -- I think it's French or something anyway -- but it's the technique where you space your mics 17 cm apart, at an angle of 90 degrees (imagine the heads of the mics touching, like at the bottom of the "V": \/ -- but then pulling them apart 17cm, so they look like this: \ /. I may have this wrong, but that's what I THINK it is.). Then you play around with the angle at that distance ever so slightly -- at least I do. At least, that's my understanding of the technique.

In the mic forum, there's a thread called "How does mic diagphram/polar pattern effect sound?" or something like that. Chris F asked the question. Harvey Gerst answered in length. It's a massive thread and worth printing out (taking out all the "bumps" and kissing of Harvey's ass, not that it's not merited to a point, as we're all grateful for the info). I use it as a bible and in fact, before I ORTF my poor piano again I'm going to be checking Harv's instructions to make sure I'm doing it right.

Please PM me with info about the VS if you have anything documented or have time ...

gg
 
I am looking all over for the VS as control surface settings. I sent them to another member a while back and hope he still has it so I don't have to retype it. When I get them I will PM you. Give me a couple of days....
(I may have posted this too...lemme check):rolleyes:
 
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