Pianos.

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andydeedpoll

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hey there.

i was wondering if anyone had any advice on recording pianos. i've been messing around with my Studio Projects B1 (my only mic), for Hours, in as many different places around my upright piano as i can, and although some results have been better than others, the sound has always been quite 'distant' and 'boxy' sounding. not particularly nice. the sound never felt like the 'main' instrument in the mix, and always tend to sound like some muddy noise in the background.

i was thinking, is the B1 really any good for piano? i'm only using one ... would you suggest maybe getting another, (i'm thinking stereo drum overheads here too). what about a small diaphram condensor? i was thinking the MXL 603S might be good... the Oktava MC012 seems to get a pretty good press too. i've also had a little look at the Rode NT3 and NT5 ... i wouldn't be able to afford a matched pair though. oh! and the SE1A.

to be honest, i'm just rambling. i don't Really have a clue what i'm talking about. any help would be appreciated :).

Andy.
 
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Yeah, whenever you record upright boxiness is always a problem. Try removing front (above the keyboard), and low (between keyboard and pedal) boards. Often it works.
 
The B1 is going to give you a little trouble micing a piano. I'm guessing the Problem is also the room you're recording in. The Oktava MC012 will work if you place it on the back about mid way up and more toward the left side.
You might have to kill the room sound with foam unless it's in a large room. Adding foam on the floor across the front of piano also helps.
 
thanks for the advice.

I'd already tried removing the front sections of the piano, and it did make a big improvement, but it was far from useable.

you mentioned the Oktava - and those things are a Right bugger to find here in Britain. no one seems to sell them. how would the SE1A compare? i'm quite interested in getting that mic anyway (my first SD condensor!)

thanks again,

Andy
 
andydeedpoll said:
thanks for the advice.

I'd already tried removing the front sections of the piano, and it did make a big improvement, but it was far from useable.
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What piano is that? There are some instruments you just cannot record well, reagardless mics you use...
 
I've done a grand piano recording with a pair of SP B1's and the results are very decent.

If you've only got a single B1 try to mic the piano on the back near the soundboard, find the sweet spot.

Most important is the sound of the piano, does is sound good, is it perfectly in tune?
 
it's in tune, but it isn't the 'brightest' sounding instrument, and i think this comes across in the recordings i have done. but it's still a 'nice' sounding instrument (i haven't found an upright piano i prefer actually, both for sound and the way it plays.)

i hadn't actually tried the back of the piano yet - it's difficult to move because of other furniture in the room, and i was thinking the reflections off the wall it's against would be pretty bad... if i found something to absorb the reflections, do you think this might make a difference?

thanks,

Andy
 
In live sound it's common to mic an upright piano with one or two mics on the back of the piano and I've heard some wonderful sounding piano's at the North Sea Jazz Festival.

You might try a search for 'piano' on this forum, as I remember well Harvey's done some posting about the subject here a while ago.
 
One thing you'll probably find is that of all the instruments that can be recorded, pianos seem to be the most picky about what room they are in. My parents have a $60K Kawai baby grand and it's sound is second only to a 9ft Yamaha concert grand I got to play once. However, there was one huge difference I didn't account for. The Kawai was in my parent's living room, and the Yamaha was in a concert hall. Put them in the same room and (except for some of the lower notes) I bet they would be neck-and-neck.

This also applies to recording. The Kawai is an excellent balance between bright and mellow, and should theoretically have an excellent recorded sound. However I have yet to get a good sound down on track yet because of that stupid room. It always ends up sounding just as you have described...distant and boxy.
 
We have at least 20 Kawai pianos at my college.

The 7 foot grand we have is nice if it's in tune. The Baby Grands are very stiff, but sound nice.

The uprights we have, however, are pretty boring sounding. They're all very mellow and boxy sounding as they are.
 
I've played a lot of Kawai baby grands, and none of them would ever compare to a Yamaha 9ft. grand, unless the Yamaha had fallen off a truck. I practiced every day on a Yamaha 9ft in university, I got my music degree there in piano performance, and all the Kawai's were shit in comparison. I agree that the room has A LOT to do with piano sound though. The best sound I've got recording piano has been using two small diaphragm mics, so Andy if you have the opportunity, that might be the way to go.

However, it will also really depend on the style of music. What are you recording for, Andy? I've heard really "crappy" sounding pianos sound perfect in the right context.
 
corban said:
I've played a lot of Kawai baby grands, and none of them would ever compare to a Yamaha 9ft. grand, unless the Yamaha had fallen off a truck. I practiced every day on a Yamaha 9ft in university, I got my music degree there in piano performance, and all the Kawai's were shit in comparison. I agree that the room has A LOT to do with piano sound though.
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I'll agree with you on a lot of Kawai's lower-end baby grands, like what most university music departments would purchase. The tendency I've seen at universities is to spend a lot on the 9ft performance grands (like the Yamahas and Steinways and whatnot), but then buy the lower end of the baby grands and uprights for practice rooms and classrooms.

HOWEVER....have you ever played a Kawai KG-2A? The KG-2A's were acclaimed for the fact that they sound like much larger pianos than they actually are. One of our neighbors had a friend who was a world-renowned concert pianist and she came over for a visit. The pianist sat down, played for a few minutes, and then started asking all kinds of questions about where we had gotten it and what conditions it had been kept in, how much it was played, etc... Turns out she thought it was one of the better pianos she had played in her career, ranking up with $100K concert grands.

It all comes down to opinions, but don't automatically discount smaller pianos...
 
:) A good point. Not that I discount small pianos, I love the sound of certain uprights and baby grands. But I've never personally played a Kawai I've enjoyed. HOWEVER, you are correct that they were always practice room pianos and I was comparing them to the Yamaha, a 6 ft Steinway, and even a couple of Boesendorfers I got to perform on occasionally. And no, I haven't played the KG-2A, so I can't reference to it. If it's as good as it seems, that's quite the bang for the buck, and for the space as well.
 
The only good Kawai I ever played was a Shigeru edition.
Some older concert 9ft Yamahas are good. The newer ones are very inconsistent, and have something in sound I don't like. Besides, their keys look kinda weird, and at first you feel disoriented.

I never seen really good baby grands for a recording. You can do some tricks and make them sound OK, but they will never sound like a real 9footer.

Practice rooms pianos are always junkie everywhere in the world. Part of the reason is that piano techs are always overwhelmed with amount of work they need to do, but the salaries in institutions are low.

Steinways are good for recordings, however it also depends on a model and condition, providing the room is good.

Boesendorfers have very distinct sound, which often sounds funny on a recording. The only good recording of Boesendorfer I ever heard is Oscar Peterson on Telarc. It was made with B&K 4011, IIRC.

Then there are Mason and Hamlins. Some of them are really nice.

Bechshteins also ones were nice, but the quality deteriorated very much, lately.
 
corban said:
:) A good point. Not that I discount small pianos, I love the sound of certain uprights and baby grands. But I've never personally played a Kawai I've enjoyed. HOWEVER, you are correct that they were always practice room pianos and I was comparing them to the Yamaha, a 6 ft Steinway, and even a couple of Boesendorfers I got to perform on occasionally. And no, I haven't played the KG-2A, so I can't reference to it. If it's as good as it seems, that's quite the bang for the buck, and for the space as well.
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So now that we've totally hijacked this thread :D . What did you think of the Bosendorfers? I've never actually gotten to play one or knowingly hear one, so I'm curious about their timbre, action, etc...
 
:D Well, if Andy gets back and tells us what kind of music he's doing we can get back on track. Those boesendorfers are definitely in a class of their own. One I played in casual rock-type settings (in my high-school auditorium, it must have been donated) and really loved it. Beautiful. The other I played classical on a few times in a music festival with a good deal of pressure, and it was a little disconcerting because it was so different. The extra keys at the bottom completely disoriented me the first time, I couldn't find middle C! I think if I got used to it though, I would love it. The action is great, the sound is big and rich. There's nothing quite like them, although I'm sure some more knowledgable people like other pianos better. Like you say, a lot of it is a matter of taste. For my taste, the Yamaha grands are pretty much the best I've played, second only to the Boesendorfers if I had the chance to get used to them.
 
Boesendorfer is one of a very few remaining piano companies, who cares and still has an excellent QC. As a result, the prices are... premium.

I played and tried a lot of Boesendorfers. Unlike Steinway, straight from the factory all of them had very nice and very well regulated mechanics.

One of the main distinctions of design phylosophy is that unlike many other pianos, its outer rim made out of soft wood. So what happens is that the main sounds projection is coming from the sound board. Depending on the taste and musical aesthetics, that can be a good or not good thing. But for sure, unlike Steinway it is not a universal piano. It is very well (and probably best) suited for Vienna's Classics and especially Schubert.

I have a close friend, classical pianist, who became a Boesendorfer artist a couple years ago. Now he needs to record a CD. Of course he can use Boesendorfer, only. We made a few trial recordings and he just does not know what to do as nothing sounds right.
 
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sorry!! i've been a way this weekend playing trombone with a concert band... not much sleeping, lots of drinking... what more can you expect from a load of teenagers stuck in a pub 20 miles from any other form of civilization? :rolleyes: :p

what type of music? well... i suppose quite rocky stuff generally - very chordal and 'heavy' sounding piano parts - lots of texture... always an accompaniment to other instrument or voice parts. think Radiohead, that's the kinda sound we're going for. but with some tenor sax solos :p.

thanks for the advice, i think i'm gonna order the SE1A today, so it arrives for my birthday on tuesday :p :)

Andy.
 
I got to try a Bosendorfer a couple months ago at a Jazz festival in northwestern Mass. It was my first time, and I really liked it. I knew they had the extra keys at the bottom, but there was nothing I really could use them on. I think I may have used them at the end of a big song, but I don't remember. Hopefully I'll get the recording one of these days.

It had a nice sound to it. I wish I had gotten more time alone with it, rather in just the pathetic sound check. It's really hard to describe. It had a bright characteristic to it, but not too bright. Very well rounded. Very cool to play. Certainly better than the Kawai pianos I usually play at school.

I don't think I've ever played a Yamaha grand before. I know they're pretty well acclaimed. I have this natural tendancy not to like Yamaha for some reason, though the first 2 keyboards I ever played were Yamahas, the old organ I have is Yamaha, and my TX7 is of course, a Yamaha. I've never been happy with the sounds on their digital keyboards, I guess. I tried a P90 at Guitar Center, and wasn't very thrilled.

I'm a Kurzweil guy and I've already been wooed over by Clavia.
 
hmm, yes, I can't think of any time I would actually play the extra notes on a Boesendorfer. They're there more for the characteristics and sympathetic harmonics they add, I believe. But it's a good point about Yamaha digital keyboards, they suck. I've never played a keyboard of theirs I liked too much, except possibly the Motif. In my experience their grands are a different story though.

Andy if you're recording in a decent room and your piano sounds nice in it, maybe try sticking a couple of mics up high and at least a good 5-6 feet away from the piano. You'll get the most natural sound of the piano that way. Something to try. Also, depending on what else is going on in your mix, like if your guitars are doing some higher radiohead-type things and not filling up the bottom end of your mix, you can actually afford to try using a slightly muddy piano sound. Obviously it depends on the situation, but I've heard pianos in those situations that just fill in the mix nicely and sound rich and... authentic, as opposed to bright, poppy, and processed. It's gotta be your taste though, some people might not like it. Listen to the Arcade Fire for an idea of what I mean.
 
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