Equipment to record Grand Piano

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Hi Guys, I need your help to do a demo of myself playing the piano. I need to submit this to be accepted in a competition, so it has to be good!

I need to record Kawai RX3 1.80m grand piano in my 6m x 6m living room which has decent acoustics. I play classical music, mainly from the Romanticism period, such as Chopin, Rachmaninov, etc.

I'm looking at inexpensive equipment but any recommendations will be welcome.

Since it's difficult to describe music with words and since I'm new to this field, I'm specifically looking for samples of piano recordings made with different equipment so I can decide what I should get according to my budget.

So, could you please upload samples of recordings you've made yourself, stating which equipment you used, and post the links?

Any help would be much appreciated.
 
That's a nice piano. My wife has an RX-2. :cool:

There are a bunch of grand piano micing techniques, but I'd try this first. Try a couple of small mic booms / small condenser mics over the strings and about midway down the length of the piano. Have the top partway up and let the mics sit a few inches above the strings. A third, large diaphragm mic can be at the foot of the piano as well, just above the rim. Capture into a 24 bit recording interface - if you don't have one, look at Tascam's portable units. One can record four tracks. By mixing the three signals you should have a full and pretty accurate representation.

Here's a photo of a four way mic arrangement. I'd try 3/4 of this - the two mics up front and perhaps a bit closer to the strings (watch out for hammer noise) and the single LDC at the foot, near where this one is. Move the mics around to taste. This pic is from a Gearslutz board contributor.
piano3.jpg
 
Thanks, Treeline.
The mic positioning is certainly a very important issue, but I'm afraid first I'll have to decide which mics to buy. Then I'll be able to experiment with the positioning. Also, would prefer to use 2 mics at most to keep costs low. A third point is that the piano which is shown in the image is in a very small room for its size, so maybe so many mics were needed to compensate for that problem. My room at home is pretty large so I may not need that.

Could you recommend any specific microphone models, and if could you post a link to some audio samples that would be great.

Thanks for your input!
 
recording grand piano

I've recorded several concerts, classical to "contemporary classical", over the last couple of years where a grand piano has been involved. So I've created a recordings page to provide quick links to these various recordings; the only mics used on the piano were a couple of Sennheiser e914 mics.

The oldest recording Diffractions was done with a Tascam US 122 interface, economical, but quite thin sounding compared to the MOTU interface that I've used since. I also own a couple of well looked-after 20 year-old Shure SM81 mics, but I don't use them anymore as the Sennheisers out-perform them in every way.

All recordings made in "Grand Salon, Fondation des États-Unis" are of the Steinway D. The hall is lively & rectangular (lots of wood surface), seats about 200 people.

There's some recordings that I've made that I'd love to put extracts of on my site, but the repertoire is protected and I live in France which is where my site is also hosted, so the authorizations become complicated.... One such recording of a contemporary piece I made using x-y configuration taught me that it's easily possible to end up with too much stereo separation/effect if using a stereo track; with one mic aimed at the high pitched strings and the other aimed down at the tail, that translated into to much left-right sweep on a run from high to low, that would not normally sound natural to someone listening to the actual piano.

A useful tip I picked up out of a Sound on Sound article was about positioning the couple relative to the lid ie. midway down, or more to the right is less bright than further to the left, or out from the widest part of the lid that is going to reflect more high frequency. I recorded the piano trio with the couple halfway down but after that went for a position closer to the keyboard end of the piano.
 
Thanks violist. Very nice recordings. It seems I'll have to go for two small diaphragm cardiod condenser microphones then. Can you recommend any others like the sennheiser e914 but slightly more economical?
 
Here is a recording I did in May of 2004 of Mary Jane Reynolds (faculty, Monteverdi Music School, Montpelier Vermont) playing the Nocturne in Db by Chopin using a matched pair of Crown CM-700s in the primary position over the strings. Piano was a Steinway Model C (7.5 ft) in a large, live room. Tracks were captured to an AKAI DPS16 recorder in 24 bit, 48 kHz sampling rate, and mixed down on the computer using n-track without compression. Click on the pic for an instant download and skip the ads - go to the lower part of the page for the download.



I'm using a pair of MXL 603s small diaphragm mics presently - the Crowns were borrowed.
 
Hi Treeline, thanks for the sample. Was really useful.
Although I generally liked the recording, I felt it sounded a little bit too "jazzy" and lacking space/atmosphere/air, hope you understand what I mean. Maybe it's not the sound I'm looking for. I'm looking for a more classical sound, where you can feel the player and appreciate how he/she plays. Hope it's clear what I'm saying. Cheers!
 
Hi Treeline, thanks for the sample. Was really useful.
Although I generally liked the recording, I felt it sounded a little bit too "jazzy" and lacking space/atmosphere/air, hope you understand what I mean. Maybe it's not the sound I'm looking for. I'm looking for a more classical sound, where you can feel the player and appreciate how he/she plays. Hope it's clear what I'm saying. Cheers!


I know nothing about tracking a grand piano, but.... if you have a large, good sounding room, you'll want to capture that also. You really owe it to yourself to have a room mic to record that space/atmosphere/air. You hear it as you play and it's what makes the piano sound nice. Your mic's won't capture it if they are close to the strings.

Seriously... beg, borrow or steal... Buy one and then return it the next day. You'll want a large diaphram condensor mic in addition to the others recommended already.

imho
 
I know nothing about tracking a grand piano, but.... if you have a large, good sounding room, you'll want to capture that also. You really owe it to yourself to have a room mic to record that space/atmosphere/air. You hear it as you play and it's what makes the piano sound nice. Your mic's won't capture it if they are close to the strings.

imho

They will capture the feel of the room if they are omni.
 
Mk-012

Here's another link to a recording of my piece the dancer leads the procession, a performance in Salle Gaveau, Paris (a celebrated 1200-seat concert hall) on 14th Feb 2007. On this occasion I had a recording engineer come in and record the concert. He used a couple of MK-012 mics into a Lexicon Omega interface. The mics were some distance back from the piano; the first half of the concert was solo piano and the second half was violin/cello/piano trio, all recorded with just the two mics.
 
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