AA2 Week 7 Piano

I really enjoy recording piano, the instrument (especially the Steinway) is such a fantastic work of craftsmanship and the resonating sound qualities of the strings and the body come together to make a wonderfully dynamic and versatile sound. It fills the room with its full sound. Trying to capture this is what i enjoy about recording piano. I used 6 mics, 3 pairs. 2 NT5s, 2 NT3s and 2 U87s. I put the NT5s in the open piano pointing towards the high and low strings and panned them left and right in the mix down. The NT3s I put in the corners of the room about 5 or 6 meters away from the piano to create a stereo room sound and panned them left and right in the Mix down. The U87s I put in a MS configuration and did the necessary post production (invert, pan) for this configuration. I know that we didn't cover MS in the lesson, but i believe i haven't had enough practice with MS in the past, in fact i have only observed this technique and not actually done it myself. So i saw this as a good opportunity to get some personal experience. I am quite happy with my final product, i think i captured the sound of the piano pretty well. A small amount of EQ i think is required (which i haven't done to preserve the microphone technique) to make it more tonally dynamic, the highs a little higher and the lows a little lower. Overall Enjoyable.

Check out the Files in the Box widget, the photos Ive taken are in there as well.

References:

Grice, David. "Piano Recording." Lecture. Adelaide University. 1/5/08

Robjohns, Hugh. "Recording Real Pianos" Piano Principles. Sound on Sound Magazine. May 1999.

Stavrou, Michael Paul. "PNO Secrets." Mixing With Your Mind.