Recording piano music

  • Thread starter Thread starter Juerg Meyer
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Juerg Meyer

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I own a Grand Piano and play mostly classical music on an advanced amateur level. I would like to do my own recording on CDs, with rented material. I am an absolute "newby" in this field. Has anyone of you recorded his own piano music and can give me some hints about his experiences, used materials (Micros, amplifier...) and computer program for mixing/proecessing?
 
Do you have any gear already? What type of piano? What kind of sound do you want to get? Do you have a good sounding room?

Those are the basics we need to know and we can go on from there.
 
Salut!

just as Tex said...

How would you like to sound?

I mean, do you have anything in mind or it's just a "whatever it comes out" thing?

Peace...

PC
 
If you don't want to use that many mics, you can set up a spaced pair of condensers...one to each side of the piano...1-4 feet above the strings. One aimed over the low strings and one over the high strings. Nothing fancy but it will work.
 
Recording Piano music

TexRoadkill said:
Do you have any gear already? What type of piano? What kind of sound do you want to get? Do you have a good sounding room?

Those are the basics we need to know and we can go on from there.
Click to expand...

Dear TexRoadkill,

No, no equipment so far.
Piano: Steinway Grand Model B
Sounding room: Just the roof room of our house with the piano, 5 to 7 meters
Kind of sound: acceptable on CD's for purely non-commercial amateur purposes (friends, family...).

I just wondere, if its possible today as an amateur musician and an "Nowbody" in recording technique to record piano music with some basic equipment (rented) and proceed it on the own computer and burn it on CD - or if this is still absolutely a field for professionals like you.

Maybe....

thanks for your help so far - I got the www. address of saecollege, which already gives some good information - but on professional level.

bye, Jürg
 
If you just want to make some recordings for you family it isnt all that hard or too expensive.

The most simple method would be 1 or 2 mics (many recomendations in the MIC forum) a mono or stereo preamp (many recomendations in the RACK forum) and a DAT machine or your computer.

Ntracks is a cheap recording software <$50 US I think.

You could buy a decent condensor for about $150+ and if you dont mind mono you only need one.

I wouldnt recomend renting because you wont have much time to really figure out what to do. If you buy the gear you can take your time and not worry about learning everthing and getting perfect takes in a couple days.

You could spend as little $300 to get started or closer to a $1000 if you want to get more professional results. Michael Jones on this forum does a lot of home recording on his steinway (I think) so he can probably give you some good pointers.
 
I was just thinking-

If you have no idea what you are doing there is going to be a pretty steep learning curve right off the bat. Some easier methods of getting a CD together would be:

Buy or rent a digital piano. I know that is sacreligous but unless you can really get a semi decent sound on a quiet day with good equipment it is much easier to get pro sounding results with a good piano sample. I use a Yamaha P80 and if you havent looked at digitals in awhile they have some pretty nice action and sound for less than a $1000 US.

Hire somebody to record it for you. They can come to you or some studio's have pianos and great sounding rooms. You could probably get somebody to record a few songs and give you some CD's for as little as a few hundred US$.
 
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