The Close-Miked Grand
In a world of sampled instruments and midi sequencing, recording an acoustic grand piano is not a task for the faint of heart. Most engineers can rely on an instrument package, like Garritan's Authorized Steinway” or Ivory”, for nice sounds. However, when a piano needs to be the primary focus of a mix, or when you have a very serious player in the studio, you will need a well-maintained acoustic grand to make the best possible recording. Miking a grand can be a daunting task, but in this first of 3 articles, I hope I can ease your mind by explaining a few techniques and tricks that can help you record a great close-miked piano.
The Close-Miked Sound and When To Use It
The piano sound you will most often hear in pop music and in jazz is the close-miked sound. Not only does it help eliminate bleed if the piano is recorded in the live room with the rest of a band, but it also gives the mix engineer a wide range of choices to help what usually is the physically largest instrument fit into the mix. There is very little room in the sound, and the room that does exist is most likely faked with a hardware or software reverb. A variety of miking techniques can be used to achieve different sounds from percussive to balanced, from narrow to wide, and from bright to mellow. The closeness of mikes is what makes the sound both the easiest to achieve, and yet also makes choosing an appropriate technique very difficult. As this sound is the most commonly sought after in the studio, it makes a perfect starting place for us.
A Brief Anatomy of A Piano
Before we begin talking about sound and how to record the sound of a piano, we must first understand how that sound is produced and naturally amplified by the diagram to the left illustrates a few of the most important parts on the inside of a piano.
Depressing the keys of the piano starts a very complex lever in motion, resulting in the hammer striking the string, which in turn results in the sound we hear. Hammers are located below the dampers, as you can see in the diagram. They are covered in a semi-soft felt that provides a variety of tones depending on the speed at which the hammer hits the strings and also the age and use of the instrument. In general, the faster a hammer hits a string, the more its felt is depressed upon contact, creating a harder surface and a brighter and louder tone. That tone then resonates through a precisely crafted soundboard, the wooden bed that runs the entire length and width of the instrument. The bridge, as seen in the diagram, is not just a point at which strings are connected, but on many good instruments, the length of string beyond the bridge is capable of vibrating and can help produce extra overtones and in general a ‘bigger' sound.
There are plenty of resources to learn about the whole mechanism inside the piano , but I think the above points are the most valid for starters. Now let's dig into some more meaty information.
Close Miking Techniques And a Few Pros And Cons of Each
As there are quite a few techniques we will cover here, we will organize them by starting with the techniques that are used nearest to the hammers, moving toward the bridge and tail of the piano as we go. Keep in mind that all of these techniques use microphones ‘under the lid' of the piano, very close to the strings themselves.
1) The Percussive Rock Piano
This technique highlights the percussive nature of the instrument by placing mikes nearly on top of the strings over where the hammers strike. It is useful for very busy rock mixes where the piano needs to be heard but doesn't need much depth. You can place mikes in XY, ORTF, and AB spaced pair (allowing a variety of stereo widths), and you can also feel free to use pretty much any polar pattern, except figure-8. Always keep in mind that a true omni will accurately hear down to the lowest bass the instrument can produce, while many cardioids have some sort of roll-off. Also, true omnis will not exhibit the proximity effect, while cardioids will. The distance from the strings that the mikes are placed will determine how percussive the sound is: the closer, the more percussive; the further, the more balanced. By ‘close' I mean as close as just a few inches from the strings, and moving further away from there.
2) The Wide Stereo, Balanced Piano
This technique can provide a warm yet detailed tone, but will always create a wide stereo image. Again using cardioid or omni mikes, place one mike over the upper treble section of the instrument and place one mike over the lower bass section of the instrument. The mike over the high strings will be closer to the keyboard, while the bass mike will be closer to the tail of the instrument. Again, distance can vary from just a few inches to sometimes as much as a foot from the strings. In this case, the closer the mike the more detailed the sound, while the further the mike the more accurately you can capture the entire range of the instrument.
3) The Mono, Or Small Stereo, Balanced Piano
Working just inside the crook of the piano, (the place where the curve of the frame makes the piano narrower at the tail than at the keyboard) an XY, M and S, or a simple mono mike can be used to get the most balanced representation of the instrument while maintaining a good sum to mono when necessary. In this case, you probably won't want to get too close to the strings so that you can be sure to capture the entire instrument. I suggest using cardioids here to help eliminate unwanted room sound. Try and aim the mike or your array toward the place where the lid connects to the frame while staying at least a good foot or two away from the strings. The sound isn't quite as detailed, but the stereo choices available during mix make this a good ‘go-to' technique.
4) The Mellow Piano
The further you move toward the tail of the instrument, the warmer the tone you can capture off the soundboard. Feel free to experiment with distances and miking techniques; there isn't one I'd necessarily recommend here. For an extremely warm sound, try miking the underside of the soundboard. You might need at least one mike on the upper side to capture enough detail to make the sound useable.
5) The Most Balanced And Natural Piano
If we move our mike arrays just outside of the frame of the piano we can still get a close sound and probably the best natural balance of the instrument. For this technique, I like to use an AB pair, spaced only 1 or 2 feet apart, near the crook of the piano but at least two or three feet away from the frame of the instrument. Be sure to get your array high enough that the microphones can ‘see' all of the strings in the instrument. As this technique captures the most room, it might not fit a busy rock mix, but instead could be better for solo jazz or similar.
As the mikes are moved away from the hammers and toward the tail of the piano, the warmth of tone increases while the percussiveness decreases. Even in the 5th technique I describe, while the crook of the piano might provide the most balanced tone, you may want to move your array toward the keyboard or toward the tail depending on the type of sound you are going for. I almost always use omnis to record a piano due to their ability to accurately capture the entire range of the instrument, but don't be afraid to try and skillfully use the proximity effect of cardioids for some interesting sounds. If you're recording jazz, microphones like Schoeps, DPA, Earthworks, and Sennheiser MKHs are usually the best. They provide great frequency response and transparency, which is expected in the genre. With rock and pop material, feel free to use anything you can dream up to achieve the desired sound. Tube mikes, through a tube pre, and to tape can turn a banging pianist into the perfect fit for a track. Yet, transparent can also still be the way to go. Use your ears to help you determine what technique is best!
If you're very interested in the subject, check out this article at SoundOnSound
Showing posts with label Recording Piano Techniques. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Recording Piano Techniques. Show all posts
Saturday, 13 August 2016
Sunday, 7 August 2016
Miking The Grand Piano
By Nathan Rosenberg
I started recording pianos before recording anything else, probably because I am a pianist. It is a notoriously difficult instrument to record, so when the editors of Recording asked me to write about miking acoustic pianos, I began by asking myself What if I had known then what I know now?”
What's the trouble?
The piano is a complicated contraption consisting of up to 7000 discrete parts. Hundreds of strings resonate sympathetically and then project in unpredictable directions. Challenges include reflections within the case, tuning, leakage from other instruments, and the sheer fact that no two pianos sound exactly alike. Then there's the wide range of pitches, from the lowest A (beneath the lowest E on a bass) to the highest C (which is also the highest note on the piccolo)—your mics have to be able to capture the full spectrum.
Finally, the sheer size of the Grand with its expanse of strings and the two-position lid calls for placement experimentation—too close and you might not capture the full range and miss out on the room sound, too far and you may get less definition and more room than is desirable.
Tone, tuning, placement
Every instrument has registers and dynamics where it sounds the best. Listen, enlist the help of the player or arranger, and get the best result from the instrument and the part. It pays to be flexible.
Piano tuning is an art, not a science. No two tunings sound exactly alike but they can all pretty noticeably change the character of an instrument. Discuss your requirements with all parties involved; a skilled piano tuner can help greatly.
Just because it's big and heavy doesn't mean you shouldn't move the Grand to the location where it sounds best in the room. Moving it gently shouldn't affect the tuning, and finding the right spot will have a profound effect on the piano's tone. Then look for the most balanced sound, in the sense that all notes from high to low have a similar sound, without any notes or note clusters sticking out more prominently than others.
Stereo—what stereo?
Piano lends itself nicely to stereo recording where two signals are split, traditionally with bass on the left and treble on the right which is the way the pianist hears it. This does not restrict you to orthodox, phase-coherent stereo techniques designed to create a strong center image. In fact, many of the techniques that follow will result in a very wide image that may not resolve perfectly to mono. Live with it.
You need to keep an eye and ear out for phase problems, whether you multi-mike and pan or record in true stereo using something like an XY technique. With all the sound bouncing around inside the case of a piano, there can be a lot of stuff out of phase. But before you use the meter, use your ears.
First, sum the mics to mono and note how the sound changes. If you lose a lot of bass or you hear some weird kind of filtering in the midrange, try switching the phase on one mic, or try moving it. A little repositioning goes a long way, and this may be enough to get things into the ballpark.
Next listen in stereo. With any luck, you will hear a bit of a phantom center image. Flip the phase again to be sure you still have it the best way. Once it sounds good in mono and stereo, you are done. But if you were to look at it with a scope, it will probably still look a mess. Give up. If it sounds fine, it probably is.
In fact, sometimes to accentuate the left-right effect, I will actually delay one channel of the stereo pair by a few hundred samples in my DAW. This purposely destroys the stereo image, making the spacing from left to right seem very wide. Think of it as the bastard child of stereo miking and tight double-tracking. It isn't necessarily a natural sound, but it can often help phase issues and sometimes makes the track hold its place better in a mix.
Leakage
With more than one player in the room, leakage is inevitable. A little bit can help keep things sounding cohesive. But drums next to the piano will bleed too much into the piano mics.
Standard procedure is to stuff mics inside the piano, shut the lid, and use as many moving blankets as you can afford. This will help some. A highpass filter on your mic or preamp can deal with some of the kick drum, but the hi-hat could be enough trouble to make you move the drum kit further away and use baffles or gobos, although they begin to defeat the benefit of recording together in the first place.
With all the sound bouncing around inside the closed box, it may sound muddy, muffled, and boxy. This makes mic choice and placement within a closed piano particularly important.
Unfortunately there is no magic formula for where to stick piano mics. The sound of a piano is too complex. I recommend making a series of test recordings with the mics in different spots to better evaluate how the sound changes from place to place. Use the positions below as a point of departure.
Mic positions—the best seat in the house
Every piano is different. Suggestions for mic positioning are just that—suggestions. Walk around the open instrument while someone is playing, cover up one ear and let the open ear guide you as to where a mic should go. Then make test recordings and evaluate them. Factor this into your time budget—if you don't, you are relying on luck.
For example, on my piano, the best seat in the house is, well, the seat. Even with the lid down, there is a beautifully balanced stereo image right where my ears are while I am playing; not too hyped, percussive or unnaturally close sounding but still not distant.
An XY pair of small-diaphragm condensers about a foot over the player's head, pointing down but not directly at the keys, reveals a great jazz tone. An omni mic a little closer, or a figure-eight, gives the added benefit of allowing you to record a piano/vocalist once you get the balance right. Be careful about player noise such as creaky benches, grunting players, and people with long clicking fingernails. And if leakage from another instrument in the room is to be an issue, then, well, as we say in NYC, fuhgetubattit!
Other sweet spots
There are often a few sweet spots to be found, despite the crazy bouncing around of sound inside the piano. For example, on a well designed Grand piano, there is often a wonderful place at the tail, just about where the back leg is, or often just outside the case. Here, the various registers tend to project in a surprisingly uniform manner. This is a great spot to place a single mic for a well-balanced mono recording.
For this technique, try a large-diaphragm condenser to capture a large full sound from the instrument. This is also a good mic choice outside the piano case because this mic position won't be adversely affected by the off-axis coloration that is often present in many large-diaphragm mics.
A ribbon mic could work well here, too, typically capturing a good deal of room tone from its rear lobe. Another option is an XY pair of small-diaphragm condensers in this same location, although it won't give you the pronounced stereo image that you may be accustomed to; but you may get a natural, balanced and true stereo image if your piano projects here the way many do.
A happy medium is an M-S pair. In some ways this is the best of both worlds, capturing the on-axis mono signal along with the side mic which allows you to adjust the stereo width to taste. But again, if isolation from other instruments in the same room is mission-critical, this would not be my first choice because the mics are outside (or almost outside) the piano.
The missionary position
Two cardioid mics directly over the hammers, pointing down, one for the bass strings, one for the treble, is probably the most common setup that I observe, but it's not my personal favorite for most styles. It can work well for percussive styles such as rock and gospel because of the proximity to the hammers, but watch out for that hole in the middle” of the frequency range which can be a result of close-miking the top and bottom of the range.
The problem may start to go away as the lid is closed (due the many reflections inside of a piano). But these reflections can also be detrimental. A benefit of this technique, however, is that it allows the lid to be placed on the half stick” or, depending on your mic, perhaps even fully closed. With a bunch of blankets, you can get significant isolation, although you will invariably have to dial in some general tone fixes with a good eq to make up for the boxy and muffled sound of the fully enclosed piano. For this setup, check out Slider's Piano Barre (reviewed March 2000), as it can really help with positioning.
Off with your head
A variation of this position involves actually removing the lid of the piano and lifting the mics higher off the strings. This can solve some of the problems inherent with the missionary position.” Removing the lid isn't hard to do, but you will want an extra set of strong arms to make sure you don't hurt the piano or yourself. Pull out the small pins that are set into the hinges that hold the lid in place, and carefully pull the lid off, taking care not to bend the hinges.
Once this is done, you can hang the mics directly over the strings at any height. Remember that the lid is an integral part of the way a piano projects its sound, so this may or may not work for your needs. But this technique often results in a bright, nicely separated and well-balanced piano sound. Try different kinds of mics. Small-diaphragm condensers are a safe pick but if you have a good sounding room, try spaced omnis three or four feet off the strings.
Down the hatch
A lot of people like to stuff mics in and over the metal holes that cover the sound board. I suspect that there are more people that do it that way than pianos that sound good that way.
But there is an exception to every rule.
Sometimes I find this can work as a supplemental mic in setups that use more than two mics. Contrary to what you may have been told, these holes are not where the sound comes out.” But they do tend to focus certain frequencies. Sometimes it's a good place to catch an extra bit of zing,” sometimes it is just resonant and peaky. But people swear by this method so I include it, assuming there are instruments that really sound good this way.
One exception is that a dynamic mic or two (think SM58) can really capture a vintage piano-bar type sound. I suggest a fishbowl placed on top of the piano, as resonance from a glass full of dollar bills is requisite for authenticity.
Boundary mics
Another popular miking technique involves a pair of PZMs placed either along opposite side rails of the piano, pointing in toward the strings, or taped to the lid pointing down. A boundary mic is basically like one half of an omni mic, and because it sits at the far extremity of the piano, it is not subject to reflections from the rear. As is the case with a pair of spaced omnis, the stereo image really depends on how far the mics are spaced apart.
If your piano doesn't happen to sound good at its edges you are out of luck. But if it does, and you can adjust the placement to ensure good phase relationships, you might really like this sound.
Spaced pair” ORTF
Another option, and one of my favorites, is a sort of modified ORTF array. Two cardioids spaced a foot or two apart are placed at or around the unhinged side opening of a grand piano.
The mic closer to the keyboard can be thought of as a treble mic, the other as a bass. In practice, however, what you will most likely be getting is the full balanced sound from the mic near the back of the piano (remember that sweet spot I mentioned) mixed with a slightly more percussive sound from the treble” mic which is closer to the hammers.
The two mics are spaced far enough so that a rich stereo panned effect will be evident, but given their orientation, the phase issues should not be overwhelming. Another benefit of this position is that it will allow you to freely adjust the lid opening to taste: wide for a clearer sound, half stick for a lot more reflection, and there's even the possibility of blanketing the piano to reduce track bleed from other instruments. With an apparatus such as Slider's Piano Barre, you can even close the lid all the way if you have mics that can fit deeper inside. Another benefit of this technique is that, with the exception of an XY pair, it is the best way I have found to capture a true stereo” recording.
This position is a good starting point for classical recordings. With classical music, you typically don't want so much of the sound of the hammers and the inside of the case. The air around the instrument and the tone of the room is paramount. A spaced ORTF pair can be pulled away from the piano a couple of feet (or to taste) to excellent effect.
Another benefit of this setup is that you can be flexible in your choice of mics. While ORTF generally favors a small-diaphragm condenser, I find that sometimes a large-diaphragm pair can help to capture a more broad-shouldered sound. The rear of the mic will be pointing outside the piano (or in some instances the entire mic is outside), which makes the slower response and off-axis coloration, so typical of most large diaphragm condensers, less of an issue.
Many engineers favor an AKG C 12 in this application, but there is really a world of choices these days. Consider ribbons too! One of my favorites is the Beyer M160 because of its unique cardioid pickup pattern. Traditional figure-eight ribbons can also be used here (you might even substitute a Blumlein pair—see Robert Auld's review of the Royer Labs SF-24 in this issue) when the room sound is an asset; one lobe picks up the piano, the other gets the room.
Everything else
You can mix and match the abovementioned techniques to accentuate different aspects of an instrument. I have found that mixing microphone types and placements can sometimes catch elusive qualities that stereo and pseudo-stereo miking can't achieve. For example, you might want to use two different kinds of mics on the hammers. This can start to break down the stereo image, making the piano's width seem wider, like a cousin of the channel-delay technique I mentioned earlier.
Another valid technique involves using more than two mics. Perhaps the standard, over-the-hammer position works well but there might be a sound hole, where the very high frequencies seem to congregate. (My piano has one that seems to focus all the really high stuff, i.e. 10 kHz and above.) A supplemental mic here may be mixed in to capture this.
Watch out for phase problems and keep the relative distance between mics and the piano in mind when adding mics. The old three-to-one rule” states that the distance between any two mics must be at least three times the distance between the mics and the source to avoid phase problems, but it's a bit more complex than that: see John Shirley's ‘Compleat Recording Musician' on the subject in the October 2004 issue. To make your life a little easier, it might also be worthwhile to eq the stuff you don't need (in my case, everything below 6 kHz) out of the extra mic's track.
Keep in mind that reflections from the case and the lid will be intense here, so choose a mic with good off-axis response and attenuation I use an Electro-Voice RE20, which works well because of its slower response time, excellent rejection and bass response, and unpronounced proximity effect. For whatever reason, however, I have also had good luck with nearly the polar opposite: an AKG C414B-TLII (a predecessor of the C414B-XLII reviewed by Paul Stamler in this issue). Go figure.
Either way, supplement this mic with another one in the treble register, somewhere where you are going to catch that high end and punch that the other mic will miss. I would usually reach for a small-diaphragm condenser. Pan them hard left and right and see how you like it.
Don't forget to have fun
I hope this wide selection of suggestions gets you started and helps you avoid some of the cliches and pitfalls that novices can encounter when recording this big, beautiful, complex instrument. Just remember: if it sounds good, it is good.
I started recording pianos before recording anything else, probably because I am a pianist. It is a notoriously difficult instrument to record, so when the editors of Recording asked me to write about miking acoustic pianos, I began by asking myself What if I had known then what I know now?”
What's the trouble?
The piano is a complicated contraption consisting of up to 7000 discrete parts. Hundreds of strings resonate sympathetically and then project in unpredictable directions. Challenges include reflections within the case, tuning, leakage from other instruments, and the sheer fact that no two pianos sound exactly alike. Then there's the wide range of pitches, from the lowest A (beneath the lowest E on a bass) to the highest C (which is also the highest note on the piccolo)—your mics have to be able to capture the full spectrum.
Finally, the sheer size of the Grand with its expanse of strings and the two-position lid calls for placement experimentation—too close and you might not capture the full range and miss out on the room sound, too far and you may get less definition and more room than is desirable.
Tone, tuning, placement
Every instrument has registers and dynamics where it sounds the best. Listen, enlist the help of the player or arranger, and get the best result from the instrument and the part. It pays to be flexible.
Piano tuning is an art, not a science. No two tunings sound exactly alike but they can all pretty noticeably change the character of an instrument. Discuss your requirements with all parties involved; a skilled piano tuner can help greatly.
Just because it's big and heavy doesn't mean you shouldn't move the Grand to the location where it sounds best in the room. Moving it gently shouldn't affect the tuning, and finding the right spot will have a profound effect on the piano's tone. Then look for the most balanced sound, in the sense that all notes from high to low have a similar sound, without any notes or note clusters sticking out more prominently than others.
Stereo—what stereo?
Piano lends itself nicely to stereo recording where two signals are split, traditionally with bass on the left and treble on the right which is the way the pianist hears it. This does not restrict you to orthodox, phase-coherent stereo techniques designed to create a strong center image. In fact, many of the techniques that follow will result in a very wide image that may not resolve perfectly to mono. Live with it.
You need to keep an eye and ear out for phase problems, whether you multi-mike and pan or record in true stereo using something like an XY technique. With all the sound bouncing around inside the case of a piano, there can be a lot of stuff out of phase. But before you use the meter, use your ears.
First, sum the mics to mono and note how the sound changes. If you lose a lot of bass or you hear some weird kind of filtering in the midrange, try switching the phase on one mic, or try moving it. A little repositioning goes a long way, and this may be enough to get things into the ballpark.
Next listen in stereo. With any luck, you will hear a bit of a phantom center image. Flip the phase again to be sure you still have it the best way. Once it sounds good in mono and stereo, you are done. But if you were to look at it with a scope, it will probably still look a mess. Give up. If it sounds fine, it probably is.
In fact, sometimes to accentuate the left-right effect, I will actually delay one channel of the stereo pair by a few hundred samples in my DAW. This purposely destroys the stereo image, making the spacing from left to right seem very wide. Think of it as the bastard child of stereo miking and tight double-tracking. It isn't necessarily a natural sound, but it can often help phase issues and sometimes makes the track hold its place better in a mix.
Leakage
With more than one player in the room, leakage is inevitable. A little bit can help keep things sounding cohesive. But drums next to the piano will bleed too much into the piano mics.
Standard procedure is to stuff mics inside the piano, shut the lid, and use as many moving blankets as you can afford. This will help some. A highpass filter on your mic or preamp can deal with some of the kick drum, but the hi-hat could be enough trouble to make you move the drum kit further away and use baffles or gobos, although they begin to defeat the benefit of recording together in the first place.
With all the sound bouncing around inside the closed box, it may sound muddy, muffled, and boxy. This makes mic choice and placement within a closed piano particularly important.
Unfortunately there is no magic formula for where to stick piano mics. The sound of a piano is too complex. I recommend making a series of test recordings with the mics in different spots to better evaluate how the sound changes from place to place. Use the positions below as a point of departure.
Mic positions—the best seat in the house
Every piano is different. Suggestions for mic positioning are just that—suggestions. Walk around the open instrument while someone is playing, cover up one ear and let the open ear guide you as to where a mic should go. Then make test recordings and evaluate them. Factor this into your time budget—if you don't, you are relying on luck.
For example, on my piano, the best seat in the house is, well, the seat. Even with the lid down, there is a beautifully balanced stereo image right where my ears are while I am playing; not too hyped, percussive or unnaturally close sounding but still not distant.
An XY pair of small-diaphragm condensers about a foot over the player's head, pointing down but not directly at the keys, reveals a great jazz tone. An omni mic a little closer, or a figure-eight, gives the added benefit of allowing you to record a piano/vocalist once you get the balance right. Be careful about player noise such as creaky benches, grunting players, and people with long clicking fingernails. And if leakage from another instrument in the room is to be an issue, then, well, as we say in NYC, fuhgetubattit!
Other sweet spots
There are often a few sweet spots to be found, despite the crazy bouncing around of sound inside the piano. For example, on a well designed Grand piano, there is often a wonderful place at the tail, just about where the back leg is, or often just outside the case. Here, the various registers tend to project in a surprisingly uniform manner. This is a great spot to place a single mic for a well-balanced mono recording.
For this technique, try a large-diaphragm condenser to capture a large full sound from the instrument. This is also a good mic choice outside the piano case because this mic position won't be adversely affected by the off-axis coloration that is often present in many large-diaphragm mics.
A ribbon mic could work well here, too, typically capturing a good deal of room tone from its rear lobe. Another option is an XY pair of small-diaphragm condensers in this same location, although it won't give you the pronounced stereo image that you may be accustomed to; but you may get a natural, balanced and true stereo image if your piano projects here the way many do.
A happy medium is an M-S pair. In some ways this is the best of both worlds, capturing the on-axis mono signal along with the side mic which allows you to adjust the stereo width to taste. But again, if isolation from other instruments in the same room is mission-critical, this would not be my first choice because the mics are outside (or almost outside) the piano.
The missionary position
Two cardioid mics directly over the hammers, pointing down, one for the bass strings, one for the treble, is probably the most common setup that I observe, but it's not my personal favorite for most styles. It can work well for percussive styles such as rock and gospel because of the proximity to the hammers, but watch out for that hole in the middle” of the frequency range which can be a result of close-miking the top and bottom of the range.
The problem may start to go away as the lid is closed (due the many reflections inside of a piano). But these reflections can also be detrimental. A benefit of this technique, however, is that it allows the lid to be placed on the half stick” or, depending on your mic, perhaps even fully closed. With a bunch of blankets, you can get significant isolation, although you will invariably have to dial in some general tone fixes with a good eq to make up for the boxy and muffled sound of the fully enclosed piano. For this setup, check out Slider's Piano Barre (reviewed March 2000), as it can really help with positioning.
Off with your head
A variation of this position involves actually removing the lid of the piano and lifting the mics higher off the strings. This can solve some of the problems inherent with the missionary position.” Removing the lid isn't hard to do, but you will want an extra set of strong arms to make sure you don't hurt the piano or yourself. Pull out the small pins that are set into the hinges that hold the lid in place, and carefully pull the lid off, taking care not to bend the hinges.
Once this is done, you can hang the mics directly over the strings at any height. Remember that the lid is an integral part of the way a piano projects its sound, so this may or may not work for your needs. But this technique often results in a bright, nicely separated and well-balanced piano sound. Try different kinds of mics. Small-diaphragm condensers are a safe pick but if you have a good sounding room, try spaced omnis three or four feet off the strings.
Down the hatch
A lot of people like to stuff mics in and over the metal holes that cover the sound board. I suspect that there are more people that do it that way than pianos that sound good that way.
But there is an exception to every rule.
Sometimes I find this can work as a supplemental mic in setups that use more than two mics. Contrary to what you may have been told, these holes are not where the sound comes out.” But they do tend to focus certain frequencies. Sometimes it's a good place to catch an extra bit of zing,” sometimes it is just resonant and peaky. But people swear by this method so I include it, assuming there are instruments that really sound good this way.
One exception is that a dynamic mic or two (think SM58) can really capture a vintage piano-bar type sound. I suggest a fishbowl placed on top of the piano, as resonance from a glass full of dollar bills is requisite for authenticity.
Boundary mics
Another popular miking technique involves a pair of PZMs placed either along opposite side rails of the piano, pointing in toward the strings, or taped to the lid pointing down. A boundary mic is basically like one half of an omni mic, and because it sits at the far extremity of the piano, it is not subject to reflections from the rear. As is the case with a pair of spaced omnis, the stereo image really depends on how far the mics are spaced apart.
If your piano doesn't happen to sound good at its edges you are out of luck. But if it does, and you can adjust the placement to ensure good phase relationships, you might really like this sound.
Spaced pair” ORTF
Another option, and one of my favorites, is a sort of modified ORTF array. Two cardioids spaced a foot or two apart are placed at or around the unhinged side opening of a grand piano.
The mic closer to the keyboard can be thought of as a treble mic, the other as a bass. In practice, however, what you will most likely be getting is the full balanced sound from the mic near the back of the piano (remember that sweet spot I mentioned) mixed with a slightly more percussive sound from the treble” mic which is closer to the hammers.
The two mics are spaced far enough so that a rich stereo panned effect will be evident, but given their orientation, the phase issues should not be overwhelming. Another benefit of this position is that it will allow you to freely adjust the lid opening to taste: wide for a clearer sound, half stick for a lot more reflection, and there's even the possibility of blanketing the piano to reduce track bleed from other instruments. With an apparatus such as Slider's Piano Barre, you can even close the lid all the way if you have mics that can fit deeper inside. Another benefit of this technique is that, with the exception of an XY pair, it is the best way I have found to capture a true stereo” recording.
This position is a good starting point for classical recordings. With classical music, you typically don't want so much of the sound of the hammers and the inside of the case. The air around the instrument and the tone of the room is paramount. A spaced ORTF pair can be pulled away from the piano a couple of feet (or to taste) to excellent effect.
Another benefit of this setup is that you can be flexible in your choice of mics. While ORTF generally favors a small-diaphragm condenser, I find that sometimes a large-diaphragm pair can help to capture a more broad-shouldered sound. The rear of the mic will be pointing outside the piano (or in some instances the entire mic is outside), which makes the slower response and off-axis coloration, so typical of most large diaphragm condensers, less of an issue.
Many engineers favor an AKG C 12 in this application, but there is really a world of choices these days. Consider ribbons too! One of my favorites is the Beyer M160 because of its unique cardioid pickup pattern. Traditional figure-eight ribbons can also be used here (you might even substitute a Blumlein pair—see Robert Auld's review of the Royer Labs SF-24 in this issue) when the room sound is an asset; one lobe picks up the piano, the other gets the room.
Everything else
You can mix and match the abovementioned techniques to accentuate different aspects of an instrument. I have found that mixing microphone types and placements can sometimes catch elusive qualities that stereo and pseudo-stereo miking can't achieve. For example, you might want to use two different kinds of mics on the hammers. This can start to break down the stereo image, making the piano's width seem wider, like a cousin of the channel-delay technique I mentioned earlier.
Another valid technique involves using more than two mics. Perhaps the standard, over-the-hammer position works well but there might be a sound hole, where the very high frequencies seem to congregate. (My piano has one that seems to focus all the really high stuff, i.e. 10 kHz and above.) A supplemental mic here may be mixed in to capture this.
Watch out for phase problems and keep the relative distance between mics and the piano in mind when adding mics. The old three-to-one rule” states that the distance between any two mics must be at least three times the distance between the mics and the source to avoid phase problems, but it's a bit more complex than that: see John Shirley's ‘Compleat Recording Musician' on the subject in the October 2004 issue. To make your life a little easier, it might also be worthwhile to eq the stuff you don't need (in my case, everything below 6 kHz) out of the extra mic's track.
Keep in mind that reflections from the case and the lid will be intense here, so choose a mic with good off-axis response and attenuation I use an Electro-Voice RE20, which works well because of its slower response time, excellent rejection and bass response, and unpronounced proximity effect. For whatever reason, however, I have also had good luck with nearly the polar opposite: an AKG C414B-TLII (a predecessor of the C414B-XLII reviewed by Paul Stamler in this issue). Go figure.
Either way, supplement this mic with another one in the treble register, somewhere where you are going to catch that high end and punch that the other mic will miss. I would usually reach for a small-diaphragm condenser. Pan them hard left and right and see how you like it.
Don't forget to have fun
I hope this wide selection of suggestions gets you started and helps you avoid some of the cliches and pitfalls that novices can encounter when recording this big, beautiful, complex instrument. Just remember: if it sounds good, it is good.
Friday, 5 August 2016
Royer Microphones
The piano can be recorded in a variety of ways, with different miking methods yielding markedly different results. Classical recordings often benefit from some degree of room ambiance, achieved by placing the microphones outside of, or at a distance from, the piano. Pop and rock recordings often call for closer miking of the piano's soundboard to give a tighter, more immediate response. Placing mics over the hammers yields an even brighter, more percussive recording. Removing the piano lid allows for miking the soundboard with no lid "bounce", while opening the lid at full stick and placing mics just outside of the lid can give a fuller bodied, more natural sounding recording. The piano is a wonderfully complex instrument and the possibilities for recording it are endless!
Engineers around the world are using Royer ribbons to record piano, from classical and scoring to rock and country. We've been fortunate to attend a number of sessions where engineers have let us photograph their miking techniques and we share them with you here. As always, these are good starting points, but experimentation is the key to getting the sound you're looking for.
You can also try pulling the mic back further to bring in more of the natural ambience of the room. In this picture, engineer Giovanni Di Simone was beta testing a prototype SF-24V (tube) stereo ribbon microphone for us - it's on the stand next to a stock SF-24 at a live concert.
Meat Loaf - Bat Out of Hell 3 Recording Session
This multiple mic technique is one of the most useful methods for recording rock/pop piano. Here we have a spaced pair of R-122 s alongside a pair of Neumann U-67s, although any quality condenser microphone should yield decent results with this method.
Two R-122s - Spaced Pair
Live piano during a Henry Mancini Orchestra performance.
Open the piano lid to full stick and place one microphone about 12 inches above the hammers, half way between the lowest key and middle C. Place the second microphone at the same height, between the highest key and middle C. This technique gives a brighter, tighter sound which is usually preferable for rock, country, and pop.
Engineers around the world are using Royer ribbons to record piano, from classical and scoring to rock and country. We've been fortunate to attend a number of sessions where engineers have let us photograph their miking techniques and we share them with you here. As always, these are good starting points, but experimentation is the key to getting the sound you're looking for.
You can also try pulling the mic back further to bring in more of the natural ambience of the room. In this picture, engineer Giovanni Di Simone was beta testing a prototype SF-24V (tube) stereo ribbon microphone for us - it's on the stand next to a stock SF-24 at a live concert.
Meat Loaf - Bat Out of Hell 3 Recording Session
This multiple mic technique is one of the most useful methods for recording rock/pop piano. Here we have a spaced pair of R-122 s alongside a pair of Neumann U-67s, although any quality condenser microphone should yield decent results with this method.
Two R-122s - Spaced Pair
Live piano during a Henry Mancini Orchestra performance.
Open the piano lid to full stick and place one microphone about 12 inches above the hammers, half way between the lowest key and middle C. Place the second microphone at the same height, between the highest key and middle C. This technique gives a brighter, tighter sound which is usually preferable for rock, country, and pop.
Saturday, 30 July 2016
How To Mix Piano Keyboard
Piano is one of the most common instruments you can find in pop and in producing country music It is also commonly found in ballads and adult contemporary music.
In this short guide, you will know how to properly mix a piano and apply panning/EQ/reverb techniques. The main objective is to let the piano tracks shine without causing any trouble with the rest of the instruments such as guitar and vocals.
This needs careful listening and adjustments of the most commonly used effects in audio mixing which are:
1.) EQ
2.) Compression
3.) Reverb
4.) Panning
Grand piano
EQ Tips on mixing piano
Piano is a wide range sounding instrument that spans from very low bass to very high frequencies. In most piano pieces used in country and pop music, it can be found somewhere in the middle frequencies.
If the piano is being used as an accompaniment, it can harder to mix that piano with vocals together and these two occupy the same frequency spectrum.
If you are planning to produce a song with piano, it would be much better to use chords than an arpeggio accompaniment. Chords are easier to deal with in the mix because the sound is played together. This is quite a common technique Let it be” by Beatles.
To EQ the piano for best results:
a.) Cut -6dB 2000Hz or 3000Hz Q=1.4 (this will reduce frequency masking problems with the vocal and guitar frequencies)
You can cut up to -9dB if you find out that the piano piece is making the vocals unclear in the mix.
These EQ settings are not permanent for all piano mixing scenarios. They only serve as a starting guide in the EQ settings. It would be highly advisable to use a parametric EQ to find the sweet spot” of any musical instruments
b.) Apply a low shelf (cut) at 200Hz (this roll-off /attenuate all the frequencies below 200Hz while passing all piano frequencies above 200Hz)
The overall objective of this setting is to prevent the low piano bass frequencies from masking bass guitar and kick drum frequencies. So if you have a bass guitar and kick drums in your mix, this is an important setting.
This 200Hz can be adjusted between 100Hz and 250Hz depending on the piano track. Cutting much higher than 200Hz removes a lot of bass in the piano; which can be detrimental to the track especially if the piano has a lot of bass.
Otherwise if the mix consists of only a piano and vocals (from start to finish), then this is not necessary because you need the bass from the piano to support the song.
c.) Boost +2dB 6000Hz Q=1.0 - this EQ setting will add more gloss/shine to the piano tracks particularly in the intro and piano solo sections.
But if the entire piece of music is a piano solo (such as classical piano music pieces); there is no need to apply any EQ. If you find some tonal quality problems with a solo piano, do not fix it with EQ instead fix it during the recording of the solo piano. A lot of factors can influence the sound of the piano during recording:
1.) The size of the live room where the piano has been recorded. Larger rooms add more reverb. Smaller rooms have warmer sound.
2.) Microphone placement on the piano. Even specific microphone models can have a big impact on the sound of the recording.
3.) Acoustic room treatment of the room where the piano has been recorded. For example, if you place the piano at the corner of the room, it will tend to have more bass” sound than if the piano would be recorded in the center of the room.
In this short guide, you will know how to properly mix a piano and apply panning/EQ/reverb techniques. The main objective is to let the piano tracks shine without causing any trouble with the rest of the instruments such as guitar and vocals.
This needs careful listening and adjustments of the most commonly used effects in audio mixing which are:
1.) EQ
2.) Compression
3.) Reverb
4.) Panning
Grand piano
EQ Tips on mixing piano
Piano is a wide range sounding instrument that spans from very low bass to very high frequencies. In most piano pieces used in country and pop music, it can be found somewhere in the middle frequencies.
If the piano is being used as an accompaniment, it can harder to mix that piano with vocals together and these two occupy the same frequency spectrum.
If you are planning to produce a song with piano, it would be much better to use chords than an arpeggio accompaniment. Chords are easier to deal with in the mix because the sound is played together. This is quite a common technique Let it be” by Beatles.
To EQ the piano for best results:
a.) Cut -6dB 2000Hz or 3000Hz Q=1.4 (this will reduce frequency masking problems with the vocal and guitar frequencies)
You can cut up to -9dB if you find out that the piano piece is making the vocals unclear in the mix.
These EQ settings are not permanent for all piano mixing scenarios. They only serve as a starting guide in the EQ settings. It would be highly advisable to use a parametric EQ to find the sweet spot” of any musical instruments
b.) Apply a low shelf (cut) at 200Hz (this roll-off /attenuate all the frequencies below 200Hz while passing all piano frequencies above 200Hz)
The overall objective of this setting is to prevent the low piano bass frequencies from masking bass guitar and kick drum frequencies. So if you have a bass guitar and kick drums in your mix, this is an important setting.
This 200Hz can be adjusted between 100Hz and 250Hz depending on the piano track. Cutting much higher than 200Hz removes a lot of bass in the piano; which can be detrimental to the track especially if the piano has a lot of bass.
Otherwise if the mix consists of only a piano and vocals (from start to finish), then this is not necessary because you need the bass from the piano to support the song.
c.) Boost +2dB 6000Hz Q=1.0 - this EQ setting will add more gloss/shine to the piano tracks particularly in the intro and piano solo sections.
But if the entire piece of music is a piano solo (such as classical piano music pieces); there is no need to apply any EQ. If you find some tonal quality problems with a solo piano, do not fix it with EQ instead fix it during the recording of the solo piano. A lot of factors can influence the sound of the piano during recording:
1.) The size of the live room where the piano has been recorded. Larger rooms add more reverb. Smaller rooms have warmer sound.
2.) Microphone placement on the piano. Even specific microphone models can have a big impact on the sound of the recording.
3.) Acoustic room treatment of the room where the piano has been recorded. For example, if you place the piano at the corner of the room, it will tend to have more bass” sound than if the piano would be recorded in the center of the room.
Sunday, 17 July 2016
Recording Piano
Recording piano can be one of the trickier things to get right in the studio. Different microphone positions and techniques can produce wildly different results, and the recording environment can have a large effect on the sound as well.
So my goal is always to keep things as simple as possible when it comes to recording a piano. Sticking to a few core techniques can help you capture solid recordings and record the take you want.
The Piano
One of the reasons for the difficulty in recording piano is due to the sound being produced by the whole body of the instrument. Sound waves emerge from all over a piano, and different parts of the instrument's wooden body resonate at different frequencies. It makes the positioning of your microphones very important to get right.
There are two main types of acoustic piano:
Upright pianos are similar to grand pianos in that the whole of the instrument's body emits sound when the piano is played. But uprights weren't really designed with recording in mind (they were mainly built to be played for entertainment in the home), so capturing a nice tone can be just as difficult.
Grand pianos are usually recorded in large live rooms in commercial studios. The size of the instrument means that there's a lot going on acoustically - different parts of the instrument will resonate with different frequencies, so your microphone placement can have a big impact on the sound of the recording.
Upright pianos are similar to grand pianos in that the whole of the instrument's body emits sound when the piano is played. But uprights weren't really designed with recording in mind (they were mainly built for use in the home), so capturing a nice tone can be just as difficult.
A piano will go out of tune at some point, and the only way around it is to get a professional piano tuner to re-tune it. It goes without saying that if you want a quality recording, the piano has to be in tune.
Before recording begins, it's worth checking that the pianist's seat doesn't squeak or make any unwanted noises as it will be easily picked up by the microphones. Noise from the piano's pedals can also be an issue - WD-40 can usually sort this out though.
If you're unable to use a real piano in your own studio (and I'd predict that most home studio owners are in this position), or if your room acoustics cause too many issues, there are a couple of alternatives:
Digital piano
Digital piano
Recording Piano Mic Placement
As with any instrument, the microphones you use and where you place them can have a big impact on the recorded sound. A few things to keep in mind when you recording piano are:
Direct vs ambient sound
Stereo width
Recording in mono with one mic or in stereo with two mics are both good options for recording piano. Recording in mono is definitely the easiest choice, but the sound can be narrow and a bit flat - it won't reflect the real way that we hear the instrument (in stereo), with the lower frequencies panned to one side and the higher frequencies panned to the other side.
Recording piano in stereo mirrors our real-world experience of listening to a piano, as it allows you to pan one mic to the left and one to the right - the amount of pan you use will control how wide the stereo image is. The mic used for the lower notes is usually panned to the left and the mic for higher notes panned to the right, reflecting how a pianist would hear the instrument when playing.
Home studios are usually restricted in the space available, which makes a piano perfect for close micing. It cuts down on unwanted ambience from the room, and you can then add reverb during mixing to help blend the piano with the other instruments in your production.
Microphone Techniques - Grand Piano
There are lots of different ways to record piano, and each technique will produce its own kind of tone. It's pretty unlikely that you'll have a grand piano as a home studio owner (uprights and digital pianos will be more common), which is why I'm going to keep it simple.
Basic stereo mic techniques , like AB or XY, can easily be used. It's always worth trying a few different positions out before committing to your choice - grand pianos are big instruments, so it's natural that there may be different 'sweet spots' around the piano that will give you a nicer tone.
The XY technique can be seen above, with the AB technique below.
Basic stereo mic techniques , like AB or XY, can easily be used. It's always worth trying a few different positions out before committing to your choice - grand pianos are big instruments, so it's natural that there may be different 'sweet spots' around the piano that will give you a nicer tone.
The XY technique can be seen on the left, with the AB technique above.
You can also use the M/S technique to great effect if you're recording piano at home. Raising the level of the side microphone will widen the stereo image, giving you great control of the stereo width during the mixing stage.
So my goal is always to keep things as simple as possible when it comes to recording a piano. Sticking to a few core techniques can help you capture solid recordings and record the take you want.
The Piano
One of the reasons for the difficulty in recording piano is due to the sound being produced by the whole body of the instrument. Sound waves emerge from all over a piano, and different parts of the instrument's wooden body resonate at different frequencies. It makes the positioning of your microphones very important to get right.
There are two main types of acoustic piano:
Upright pianos are similar to grand pianos in that the whole of the instrument's body emits sound when the piano is played. But uprights weren't really designed with recording in mind (they were mainly built to be played for entertainment in the home), so capturing a nice tone can be just as difficult.
Grand pianos are usually recorded in large live rooms in commercial studios. The size of the instrument means that there's a lot going on acoustically - different parts of the instrument will resonate with different frequencies, so your microphone placement can have a big impact on the sound of the recording.
Upright pianos are similar to grand pianos in that the whole of the instrument's body emits sound when the piano is played. But uprights weren't really designed with recording in mind (they were mainly built for use in the home), so capturing a nice tone can be just as difficult.
A piano will go out of tune at some point, and the only way around it is to get a professional piano tuner to re-tune it. It goes without saying that if you want a quality recording, the piano has to be in tune.
Before recording begins, it's worth checking that the pianist's seat doesn't squeak or make any unwanted noises as it will be easily picked up by the microphones. Noise from the piano's pedals can also be an issue - WD-40 can usually sort this out though.
If you're unable to use a real piano in your own studio (and I'd predict that most home studio owners are in this position), or if your room acoustics cause too many issues, there are a couple of alternatives:
Digital piano
Digital piano
Recording Piano Mic Placement
As with any instrument, the microphones you use and where you place them can have a big impact on the recorded sound. A few things to keep in mind when you recording piano are:
Direct vs ambient sound
Stereo width
Recording in mono with one mic or in stereo with two mics are both good options for recording piano. Recording in mono is definitely the easiest choice, but the sound can be narrow and a bit flat - it won't reflect the real way that we hear the instrument (in stereo), with the lower frequencies panned to one side and the higher frequencies panned to the other side.
Recording piano in stereo mirrors our real-world experience of listening to a piano, as it allows you to pan one mic to the left and one to the right - the amount of pan you use will control how wide the stereo image is. The mic used for the lower notes is usually panned to the left and the mic for higher notes panned to the right, reflecting how a pianist would hear the instrument when playing.
Home studios are usually restricted in the space available, which makes a piano perfect for close micing. It cuts down on unwanted ambience from the room, and you can then add reverb during mixing to help blend the piano with the other instruments in your production.
Microphone Techniques - Grand Piano
There are lots of different ways to record piano, and each technique will produce its own kind of tone. It's pretty unlikely that you'll have a grand piano as a home studio owner (uprights and digital pianos will be more common), which is why I'm going to keep it simple.
Basic stereo mic techniques , like AB or XY, can easily be used. It's always worth trying a few different positions out before committing to your choice - grand pianos are big instruments, so it's natural that there may be different 'sweet spots' around the piano that will give you a nicer tone.
The XY technique can be seen above, with the AB technique below.
Basic stereo mic techniques , like AB or XY, can easily be used. It's always worth trying a few different positions out before committing to your choice - grand pianos are big instruments, so it's natural that there may be different 'sweet spots' around the piano that will give you a nicer tone.
The XY technique can be seen on the left, with the AB technique above.
You can also use the M/S technique to great effect if you're recording piano at home. Raising the level of the side microphone will widen the stereo image, giving you great control of the stereo width during the mixing stage.
Monday, 11 July 2016
Miking A Piano
With some basic understanding of how a piano works and sounds , the mammoth task of recording one is much simpler. Choosing microphones and positioning them for a piano is something of an art, but it's really enjoyable to learn as there are so many opportunities to experiment and play around.
Recording with an stereo pair
Rigging a simple stereo pair is probably the most reliable way to get a decent piano sound, as it will force you find the spot where the piano sounds best. Since you only have two mics to listen to, you will find yourself asking a lot of questions: Does it sound bright enough? Is the stereo image well defined? Can you hear the full range of the piano clearly? Does the direct sound balance against the reverb? All you need to do to answer these is listen to what you have, move the mics, then listen again and ask yourself if it's better or worse. You might need to move the stereo pair a foot or two, or even just a couple of inches to get the balance right so don't be afraid to experiment.
Setting up an omni pair
Omnidirectional microphones are a good choice when you want to record the piano as a whole because they naturally have a better low frequency response than cardioid mics, which you will notice on a piano. To get started put up a pair of omni mics at shoulder height, about two feet in front of the piano and two feet apart, then aim them towards where the lid joins the piano body. If you don't have any omni mics, cardioids will do fine but rig them closer together. Now, go and listen to the pair panned hard left and right.
Important: Keep in mind that this is only a rough starting point and is unlikely to be perfect first time, and there are a lot of things you can change. Even if it is perfect, you should still try a couple of mic moves to see what else you can get.
Changing mic position
By moving the pair closer into the piano you can pick up more of the direct string sound, and by moving further back you will get a more blended sound reflected from the lid.
To alter the balance of the high and low end you don't need any eq, just move the mics closer to the keyboard end for more top or towards the tail for more bass.
Stereo width can be tricky to judge on headphones, so if at all possible try and stick to speakers. If the piano sounds like it's coming out of the two speakers independently with a ‘hole in the middle' rather than a nice spread between the two, your mics are probably too far apart. Mics that are too close together (especially omnis) will collapse to mono and just sound flat and dull. If you can't get the stereo width just right, you can angle the mics away from each other slightly. This will increase the stereo width, even with omnis as they are not truly ‘omni-directional'. (proof is in the response patterns here )
How does it sound?
This technique will capture the sound reflected off the lid of the piano, which will be smooth and rich with some of the direct string sound to add some brightness. It will give you a natural sounding stereo image, with an impression of high frequencies on the left and lows on the right, rather than a spread of individual notes across the image as with closer miking techniques.
This technique may not suit pianos with noisy pedals, as the mics are outside the body of the piano so they are more prone to picking up pedal noise.
Recording with an stereo pair
Rigging a simple stereo pair is probably the most reliable way to get a decent piano sound, as it will force you find the spot where the piano sounds best. Since you only have two mics to listen to, you will find yourself asking a lot of questions: Does it sound bright enough? Is the stereo image well defined? Can you hear the full range of the piano clearly? Does the direct sound balance against the reverb? All you need to do to answer these is listen to what you have, move the mics, then listen again and ask yourself if it's better or worse. You might need to move the stereo pair a foot or two, or even just a couple of inches to get the balance right so don't be afraid to experiment.
Setting up an omni pair
Omnidirectional microphones are a good choice when you want to record the piano as a whole because they naturally have a better low frequency response than cardioid mics, which you will notice on a piano. To get started put up a pair of omni mics at shoulder height, about two feet in front of the piano and two feet apart, then aim them towards where the lid joins the piano body. If you don't have any omni mics, cardioids will do fine but rig them closer together. Now, go and listen to the pair panned hard left and right.
Important: Keep in mind that this is only a rough starting point and is unlikely to be perfect first time, and there are a lot of things you can change. Even if it is perfect, you should still try a couple of mic moves to see what else you can get.
Changing mic position
By moving the pair closer into the piano you can pick up more of the direct string sound, and by moving further back you will get a more blended sound reflected from the lid.
To alter the balance of the high and low end you don't need any eq, just move the mics closer to the keyboard end for more top or towards the tail for more bass.
Stereo width can be tricky to judge on headphones, so if at all possible try and stick to speakers. If the piano sounds like it's coming out of the two speakers independently with a ‘hole in the middle' rather than a nice spread between the two, your mics are probably too far apart. Mics that are too close together (especially omnis) will collapse to mono and just sound flat and dull. If you can't get the stereo width just right, you can angle the mics away from each other slightly. This will increase the stereo width, even with omnis as they are not truly ‘omni-directional'. (proof is in the response patterns here )
How does it sound?
This technique will capture the sound reflected off the lid of the piano, which will be smooth and rich with some of the direct string sound to add some brightness. It will give you a natural sounding stereo image, with an impression of high frequencies on the left and lows on the right, rather than a spread of individual notes across the image as with closer miking techniques.
This technique may not suit pianos with noisy pedals, as the mics are outside the body of the piano so they are more prone to picking up pedal noise.
Tuesday, 5 July 2016
Paul Cantrells Piano Recording Method
Experiment, experiment, experiment.
Every instrument, every room, and every taste is different, so my setup may not work for you. Try lots of mics before you buy. (If an audio dealer won't let you take a mic home overnight and give it a whirl, they're not worth dealing with.) Experiment with positioning. (Placement is huge. A $200 mic in the right place can sound worlds better than a $3000 mic in the wrong one.) Be methodical, daring, and extremely persistent.
If you can find somebody with excellent ears and a knowledge of audio technology to help you experiment, it makes all the difference in the world. I had the great luck of finding several such people, Matthew Smith , Mike Olson , and Greg Reierson , whose help has been invalvuable.
That said, here's what my own experiments lead me to. A diagram is at right.
Litany of Complaints
There is a huge variety of approaches to recording piano, and mine is a bit unusual. (Typical techniques look more like this) The thing is, I often dislike the results of the usual techniques. Even many very high-quality piano recordings from reputable big-name studios sound terrible to my ears. They just don't capture the lush, massive, enveloping sound world of an actual piano. In particular:
The low notes are brassy and anemic. It's as if the warm, singing core of the sound has been surgically scooped out. Go find a recording — any recording — of the first Chopin ballade, and listen to just the first note. Now walk up to a good piano and play that same C octave. You will be stunned at the difference.
The attacks are tinkly and harsh. It's a sound that's good at showing off how many notes a virtuosic player can rattle off, but it's the death of anything lyrical. This is due in part to the hard voicing I complained about on the previous page, but recording techniques are also to blame.
The resonance is one-dimensional and weak. If you strike a huge chord on a real piano and leave the pedal down, it creates an incredibly complex sound that develops constantly as it fades away — and it takes a long time to fade away. Very little of this ever makes it into recordings.
The imaging is, well, boring. Pianos create an incredibly three-dimensional sound: the whole body of the massive instrument vibrates, every part of it producing a different aspect of the sound. It creates a magnificent spatial acoustic illusion. Pianos on recordings generally sound like a single object sitting straight in front of you in a resonant space. It's an approximation of the sound of a piano in a concert hall heard ten or twenty rows back — a sound which is itself just a poor approximation of the right way to hear a piano: up close!
Strong statement? Keep in mind that most of the solo piano repertoire was created for spaces much more intimate than the modern concert hall. If my recordings depart from the natural sound of a piano, I want it to be in the other direction: a sound where the piano isn't in a space, but is the space, an enveloping world of sound coming from every direction.
The reverb … oh, heavens, the reverb. Recordings profit from it in moderation, but most piano recordings are awash in it. Perhaps it's the "simulate the concert hall" aesthetic. Perhaps it's countering the tendency of players to use less and less pedal, forming a vicious circle. Perhaps it's just a way of masking all these other problems I'm griping about. Regardless, the result is a mess. Pianos have a built-in reverb, of course: it's called the "damper pedal," and the player can change it at will, making the reverberations it creates part of the musical idea. Instead, we get a perfectly even (and thus musically blind) reverb smeared across the whole piece, drowning nuance in a homogenous wash of sound. Many players are fond of saying that the pedal is a crutch. The pedal is part of the music. Reverb is a crutch.
What I Want in a Recording
The root of many of my complaints is the dominant traditional aesthetic of classical music recording: reproduce the concert hall. The thing is, recordings aren't live performances — the most successful art embraces its medium, and recordings should work as recordings, not as imitation concerts.
Yet even leaving that aside, the concert hall isn't the thing to reproduce. The music I play — Chopin, Brahms, Bach, Schumann, Beethoven — is made not for the modern concert hall, but for more intimate spaces. (Piano concerti are meant for large halls, and composers write very differently for the piano in that setting!) This music is meant to be heard close up, not from row 30 of a space that seats 5000. So, at best, a traditional classical recording is a good imitation of the wrong live experience.
I'm not necessarily after a recorded sound that reproduces the live sound of my piano — but it does need to capture the intimacy of the space, and the powerful, enveloping quality of a piano up close. My goal in recording is not to reproduce any live experience, but to create a whole new experience in which the music's nuances, its shapes, its essential spirit are alive and immediate. It should sound good from the inside
OK, I am done with the complaining and philosophizing. Here are the details of how I create the recorded sound I like.
GT66
The first mic I use is a Groove Tubes GT66 large-diaphragm condenser (now apparently reincarnated as the Sterling Audio ST66 ). It captures the sparkling quality of my piano I was praising on the previous page, and does wonderful things for the imaging. (Oddly, it almost seemed to create a three-dimensional image when I made mono recordings with it during testing.)
The mic sits about 30cm away from the piano body, right in the "bend" of the instrument. I found that, both to my ears and in recording tests, there is a sweet spot extending outward about a meter from the bend. I experimented with different distances in that sweet spot, and liked the increasing presence and energy as the mic got closer — but found that getting any closer than this quickly bogged the sound down in proximity effect. At right are two top-down shots showing the position, one with the lid down (as it actually is during recording), and the second with the lid up to better illustrate the positioning.
The GT66 is a cardioid (that is, directional) microphone, and I found that pointing it in different directions made a tremendous difference. It points roughly toward middle C's tuning peg. Turning it more to the left emphasizes the treble, and more to the right emphasizes the bass.
The microphone peers just over the edge of the rim of the instrument. I don't have the lid open far (more on this later), and I have the actual condensor disc of the mic centered on that narrow opening. I found that even minor departures from the opening muffled the sound.
In my tests, the less-expensive GT55 gave a very similar (and almost as pleasing) sound. The Rode NTK was also a promising contendor, with a sound that really captured the singing part of the piano, but was somehow a bit off the true sound ("nasal" was how Matthew put it). The GT66 together with the NTK was a promising combination — one I almost went with, before a very unusual dark horse entered the picture.
M40
That dark horse is the Applied Microphone Technology M40 boundary mic, a tiny little fellow whose manufacturer apparently designed it specifically for piano. It has an incredibly natural sound — just sitting around in the room, it seems to capture the actual character of all the sounds it picks up, piano included. They recommend placing it on the plate, toward the end of the strings (as in their publicity photo ). I tried it that way, and found it impossibly muddy with the lid low, but decent enough with the lid up all the way.
I also tried it sitting on the rim (promising, but ultimately weird), and underneath the piano, about 40cm below the soundboard, sitting on top the accordion case (which was surprisingly good). But the location that gave the best results — much to my surprise! — was sitting on the rear ledge of the music desk.
This presents a problem if you want to try this setup with a different piano: music desks are all shaped differently, and don't always present a similar home for the mic.
Experimentation thus reigns surpreme. It produces a similar sound, if not quite as nice, sitting on the side of the music desk (where the sheet music is in the photo). I also tried taping it to the back of the music desk pointing in various directions, without much luck.
In this position, it sits parallel to and about 12cm above the strings, pointing straight back into the long end of the piano. It captures that big, warm core of the sound that's missing for me in most recordings.
Sitting over the bass strings, it does pick up just slightly more bass than treble — but it's surprisingly little more, and this is largely balanced by the GT66's positioning and bright character. Still, it needs a bit of correction in the mastering phase. The two of them together in this configuration hint at the spatial experience of sitting at the keyboard: low left, right high. It's not a very pronounced effect, but it is sometimes there if you listen for it.
Pay Attention to the Lid!
One observation from my experiments bears special mention: the position of the lid makes a tremendous difference in the sound of the recording. This seems an obvious statement, but for some reason, recording engineers tend to take it for granted that the lid should be propped all the way.
I tried a series of recordings with just the GT66, in its current position, and a variety of different lid heights. With the lid completely shut, the sound is a muddy mess (no surprise). An opening of even just a couple of centimeters makes a tremendous difference; as the lid opens more, the muddiness dissipates. And — this is where it gets interesting — the sound keeps on changing in that direction as the lid opens more and more, becoming thinner and thinner until, at full stick, it has that anemic and brassy sound that I dislike so much.
My piano sounds best live with the lid open 20-30cm (it's a small room), but I found the recorded sound best with an opening of only 7-16cm.
Here's my theory, formed with my rather rudimentary understanding of acoustics: when the lid is open all the way, the sound dissipates in all directions, and the mic only gets a thin little slice of it direct from the instrument. What does reach the mic is either coming straight off the soundboard with no reflections at all, or is arriving as undesirable room reflection; the bulk of the good stuff is lost to the mic completely. With the lid open just a bit, the sound bounces between the lid and the soundboard, not merely reflecting, but resonating. This creates a more complex and interesting resonance than the room.
All of this is, of course, speculation. I'd be curious what somebody who really understands acoustics has to say about my findings. Whatever the physics at work, the perceptual difference in the results is hard to deny.
To open the lid this unusually small amount, I use a handy little prop my technician built for me. It's a felt-covered block of wood which sits over the rim — a nice little shop project for recording engineers to consider!
Every instrument, every room, and every taste is different, so my setup may not work for you. Try lots of mics before you buy. (If an audio dealer won't let you take a mic home overnight and give it a whirl, they're not worth dealing with.) Experiment with positioning. (Placement is huge. A $200 mic in the right place can sound worlds better than a $3000 mic in the wrong one.) Be methodical, daring, and extremely persistent.
If you can find somebody with excellent ears and a knowledge of audio technology to help you experiment, it makes all the difference in the world. I had the great luck of finding several such people, Matthew Smith , Mike Olson , and Greg Reierson , whose help has been invalvuable.
That said, here's what my own experiments lead me to. A diagram is at right.
Litany of Complaints
There is a huge variety of approaches to recording piano, and mine is a bit unusual. (Typical techniques look more like this) The thing is, I often dislike the results of the usual techniques. Even many very high-quality piano recordings from reputable big-name studios sound terrible to my ears. They just don't capture the lush, massive, enveloping sound world of an actual piano. In particular:
The low notes are brassy and anemic. It's as if the warm, singing core of the sound has been surgically scooped out. Go find a recording — any recording — of the first Chopin ballade, and listen to just the first note. Now walk up to a good piano and play that same C octave. You will be stunned at the difference.
The attacks are tinkly and harsh. It's a sound that's good at showing off how many notes a virtuosic player can rattle off, but it's the death of anything lyrical. This is due in part to the hard voicing I complained about on the previous page, but recording techniques are also to blame.
The resonance is one-dimensional and weak. If you strike a huge chord on a real piano and leave the pedal down, it creates an incredibly complex sound that develops constantly as it fades away — and it takes a long time to fade away. Very little of this ever makes it into recordings.
The imaging is, well, boring. Pianos create an incredibly three-dimensional sound: the whole body of the massive instrument vibrates, every part of it producing a different aspect of the sound. It creates a magnificent spatial acoustic illusion. Pianos on recordings generally sound like a single object sitting straight in front of you in a resonant space. It's an approximation of the sound of a piano in a concert hall heard ten or twenty rows back — a sound which is itself just a poor approximation of the right way to hear a piano: up close!
Strong statement? Keep in mind that most of the solo piano repertoire was created for spaces much more intimate than the modern concert hall. If my recordings depart from the natural sound of a piano, I want it to be in the other direction: a sound where the piano isn't in a space, but is the space, an enveloping world of sound coming from every direction.
The reverb … oh, heavens, the reverb. Recordings profit from it in moderation, but most piano recordings are awash in it. Perhaps it's the "simulate the concert hall" aesthetic. Perhaps it's countering the tendency of players to use less and less pedal, forming a vicious circle. Perhaps it's just a way of masking all these other problems I'm griping about. Regardless, the result is a mess. Pianos have a built-in reverb, of course: it's called the "damper pedal," and the player can change it at will, making the reverberations it creates part of the musical idea. Instead, we get a perfectly even (and thus musically blind) reverb smeared across the whole piece, drowning nuance in a homogenous wash of sound. Many players are fond of saying that the pedal is a crutch. The pedal is part of the music. Reverb is a crutch.
What I Want in a Recording
The root of many of my complaints is the dominant traditional aesthetic of classical music recording: reproduce the concert hall. The thing is, recordings aren't live performances — the most successful art embraces its medium, and recordings should work as recordings, not as imitation concerts.
Yet even leaving that aside, the concert hall isn't the thing to reproduce. The music I play — Chopin, Brahms, Bach, Schumann, Beethoven — is made not for the modern concert hall, but for more intimate spaces. (Piano concerti are meant for large halls, and composers write very differently for the piano in that setting!) This music is meant to be heard close up, not from row 30 of a space that seats 5000. So, at best, a traditional classical recording is a good imitation of the wrong live experience.
I'm not necessarily after a recorded sound that reproduces the live sound of my piano — but it does need to capture the intimacy of the space, and the powerful, enveloping quality of a piano up close. My goal in recording is not to reproduce any live experience, but to create a whole new experience in which the music's nuances, its shapes, its essential spirit are alive and immediate. It should sound good from the inside
OK, I am done with the complaining and philosophizing. Here are the details of how I create the recorded sound I like.
GT66
The first mic I use is a Groove Tubes GT66 large-diaphragm condenser (now apparently reincarnated as the Sterling Audio ST66 ). It captures the sparkling quality of my piano I was praising on the previous page, and does wonderful things for the imaging. (Oddly, it almost seemed to create a three-dimensional image when I made mono recordings with it during testing.)
The mic sits about 30cm away from the piano body, right in the "bend" of the instrument. I found that, both to my ears and in recording tests, there is a sweet spot extending outward about a meter from the bend. I experimented with different distances in that sweet spot, and liked the increasing presence and energy as the mic got closer — but found that getting any closer than this quickly bogged the sound down in proximity effect. At right are two top-down shots showing the position, one with the lid down (as it actually is during recording), and the second with the lid up to better illustrate the positioning.
The GT66 is a cardioid (that is, directional) microphone, and I found that pointing it in different directions made a tremendous difference. It points roughly toward middle C's tuning peg. Turning it more to the left emphasizes the treble, and more to the right emphasizes the bass.
The microphone peers just over the edge of the rim of the instrument. I don't have the lid open far (more on this later), and I have the actual condensor disc of the mic centered on that narrow opening. I found that even minor departures from the opening muffled the sound.
In my tests, the less-expensive GT55 gave a very similar (and almost as pleasing) sound. The Rode NTK was also a promising contendor, with a sound that really captured the singing part of the piano, but was somehow a bit off the true sound ("nasal" was how Matthew put it). The GT66 together with the NTK was a promising combination — one I almost went with, before a very unusual dark horse entered the picture.
M40
That dark horse is the Applied Microphone Technology M40 boundary mic, a tiny little fellow whose manufacturer apparently designed it specifically for piano. It has an incredibly natural sound — just sitting around in the room, it seems to capture the actual character of all the sounds it picks up, piano included. They recommend placing it on the plate, toward the end of the strings (as in their publicity photo ). I tried it that way, and found it impossibly muddy with the lid low, but decent enough with the lid up all the way.
I also tried it sitting on the rim (promising, but ultimately weird), and underneath the piano, about 40cm below the soundboard, sitting on top the accordion case (which was surprisingly good). But the location that gave the best results — much to my surprise! — was sitting on the rear ledge of the music desk.
This presents a problem if you want to try this setup with a different piano: music desks are all shaped differently, and don't always present a similar home for the mic.
Experimentation thus reigns surpreme. It produces a similar sound, if not quite as nice, sitting on the side of the music desk (where the sheet music is in the photo). I also tried taping it to the back of the music desk pointing in various directions, without much luck.
In this position, it sits parallel to and about 12cm above the strings, pointing straight back into the long end of the piano. It captures that big, warm core of the sound that's missing for me in most recordings.
Sitting over the bass strings, it does pick up just slightly more bass than treble — but it's surprisingly little more, and this is largely balanced by the GT66's positioning and bright character. Still, it needs a bit of correction in the mastering phase. The two of them together in this configuration hint at the spatial experience of sitting at the keyboard: low left, right high. It's not a very pronounced effect, but it is sometimes there if you listen for it.
Pay Attention to the Lid!
One observation from my experiments bears special mention: the position of the lid makes a tremendous difference in the sound of the recording. This seems an obvious statement, but for some reason, recording engineers tend to take it for granted that the lid should be propped all the way.
I tried a series of recordings with just the GT66, in its current position, and a variety of different lid heights. With the lid completely shut, the sound is a muddy mess (no surprise). An opening of even just a couple of centimeters makes a tremendous difference; as the lid opens more, the muddiness dissipates. And — this is where it gets interesting — the sound keeps on changing in that direction as the lid opens more and more, becoming thinner and thinner until, at full stick, it has that anemic and brassy sound that I dislike so much.
My piano sounds best live with the lid open 20-30cm (it's a small room), but I found the recorded sound best with an opening of only 7-16cm.
Here's my theory, formed with my rather rudimentary understanding of acoustics: when the lid is open all the way, the sound dissipates in all directions, and the mic only gets a thin little slice of it direct from the instrument. What does reach the mic is either coming straight off the soundboard with no reflections at all, or is arriving as undesirable room reflection; the bulk of the good stuff is lost to the mic completely. With the lid open just a bit, the sound bounces between the lid and the soundboard, not merely reflecting, but resonating. This creates a more complex and interesting resonance than the room.
All of this is, of course, speculation. I'd be curious what somebody who really understands acoustics has to say about my findings. Whatever the physics at work, the perceptual difference in the results is hard to deny.
To open the lid this unusually small amount, I use a handy little prop my technician built for me. It's a felt-covered block of wood which sits over the rim — a nice little shop project for recording engineers to consider!
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