trying to record a grand piano

[ramjet]

Thanks

God, you never know how stupid you are until you talk to someone with some brains. You guys know more about this stuff than I ever even expected existed. I didn't even know my tube preamp would sound like ass. I'm not exactly sure what ass sounds like but I suspect it's not a good thing and I'll listen for it .

I think I'm going to make a list of some of these microphone options and try to find a/some dealers somewhere near here and see if they can demo some of these for me or when it gets pinned down to a couple maybe I could work out a deal to try a couple for a weekend.

Thanks a lot. This is all extremely interesting and I'm going to study on it some more too so I understand it all better.

Thanks a LOT for getting me started!!

 

[Richard Monroe]

Yo Brad! You asked me above if I had trouble with mics with different sonic profiles in this application. Answer- if I stay out of phase trouble, it's just a mixing problem. A Decca tree is not really stereo recording, unless you've got 3 ears. I usually pan the bass and treble sides very soft left and right, and the soundboard tip mic down the middle. If you pan the bass and treble mics too hard, yes, you can run into trouble due to output variances from the mismatched mics. Then you just play with levels until the balance is right. In the end, you wind up with almost, but not quite, mono, as if you put one huge ear over the piano.

 

[giraffe]

(keeping this thread up for another day or two)

 

[Bassman Brad]

Yo Brad! You asked me above if I had trouble with mics with different sonic profiles in this application. Answer- if I stay out of phase trouble, it's just a mixing problem. A Decca tree is not really stereo recording, unless you've got 3 ears. I usually pan the bass and treble sides very soft left and right, and the soundboard tip mic down the middle. If you pan the bass and treble mics too hard, yes, you can run into trouble due to output variances from the mismatched mics. Then you just play with levels until the balance is right. In the end, you wind up with almost, but not quite, mono, as if you put one huge ear over the piano.

O.K. That makes sense. (Although I must confess that I don't actually remember off the top of my head how to set up a Decca tree. You have to keep in mind that it's been about two decades or so since I was hanging out in a professional studio on a regular basis. So, sometimes I still have to pull out reference books to refresh my memory.) It's really cool that you have the piano set up in a nice sounding room. That really makes a world of difference with a piano. Like you, I like to have some room sound on a piano track, if the room is good enough to use for that purpose. Whenever we did use close micing (with PZM's or SM81's or whatever), I would always put up an ambience mic to capture the room sound.

And it's also interesting that you use the C414 as one of the mics. I remember the first time I saw somebody use a pair of 414's on a grand piano. (The old ones, before the BULS version came along.) At the time, I thought that was a terrible idea. I just didn't think they were neutral enough for a piano. However, on some tracks, they sounded pretty darned good! Like any other instrument, it was just a matter of finding a place where the piano sound would set in the mix.

Brad