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Post by stormymondays on Nov 12, 2017 6:33:04 GMT -6
I got a really nice Yamaha U1 upright piano for the studio. It's from '83, refurbished by a specialized company here in Spain. It looks like new (every single part) and it sounds amazing. What do you guys prefer for recording upright? I'll be taking the front upper panel off and sticking every mic I got in there until I find some favorites, that's for sure. I don't think taking off the lower panel is worth it, since sticking mics down there will pick a lot of pedal noise. It's cool to use as a reverb though! I'll definitely experiment with putting a brick on top of the sustain pedal and place a speaker on the floor. For reference, here's a couple of nice articles on the subject: www.soundonsound.com/techniques/recording-techniques-upright-pianowww.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-how-do-you-record-upright-pianoAny go-to mic/preamps? The musical context is classic rock/folk/americana. |
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Post by Bender on Nov 12, 2017 8:52:48 GMT -6
Depends on the song naturally but I love recording an upright, particularly if it’s in a decent room! I opt to open everything up, bottom , top, and even the wood beam covering the keys that tuners generally take off. Sure a little more mechanical noise but it makes the piano breath which can help tremendously on uprights. After that I’ll throw a stereo spacedpair up top usually ribbons and a room pair of sdc’s XY below, at the players ears, or if the room/piano location permits it, then pointing right at the front of the soundboard. Usually opting for stereo if it’s more piano centric but sometimes a nice ribbon or LDC in mono is all you need.
Heck Depending on vibe you can even try throwing in a 57 and blending in to taste.
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Post by rowmat on Nov 12, 2017 9:19:20 GMT -6
Here's our 'loaner' upright with the upper front panel removed and a pair of AEA N22's modified to essentially match AEA N8's. It depends on the type of recording but in this case the N22's were angled so their Fig 8 nulls coincided with the singer's position reducing direct vocal pickup. In the photo the stereo mic position focuses mostly on the middle section of the piano but this matched the song anyway as the extreme low and high notes weren't played.  This room is essentially a small isolation room so is heavily treated to reduce reflections. I find pianos can still work well in quite dead rooms as they have a lot of 'built in' reverberation due to sympathetic string resonances.  |
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Post by reddirt on Nov 12, 2017 15:55:59 GMT -6
Ir's all dependent on what sound you are going for but a very natural sound can be had by moving it well away from walls and micing the soundboard from behind ( a spaced pair at around 30" off the ground and 1 ft out is one option)
Cheers, Ross
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Post by rowmat on Nov 12, 2017 16:24:28 GMT -6
If you think about it a good quality well tuned upright can be made to sound closer to a baby grand if you open it right up.
IMO the enclosed soundboard of an upright has more to do with its sound than the orientation of the soundboard.
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Post by johneppstein on Nov 12, 2017 17:03:22 GMT -6
At my place in SF before I had to move there was an antique Mason and Hamlin from the 1870s that was still capable of being tuned to concert pitch that I miced up semi-permanently with a couple of Sony ECM-50/ECM-55 broadcast lavalier mics suspernded by their thin cables with gaffer tape inside the upper cabinet. totally unobtrusive, with no stands to get in the way, and it didn't sound bad at all considering that the 140 year old strings were stone dead. I can only imagine what it might have sounded like with fresh strings, probably pretty good. With careful positioning of where the mics were suspended we got quite good balance across the range of the instrument, and the little Sonys gave a nice representation of what the piano sounded like. I would have liked to take it when we moved (the landlords didn't want it), but moving it down the long flight of stairs and the expense of obtaining piano (or perhaps Hammond organ) dollies, plus the cost or restringing, made it too daunting a task, especially on top of moving the studio, the console, and all our personal junk, so we left it.
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Post by sean on Nov 12, 2017 19:29:00 GMT -6
Attachment DeletedThis is how ours stays mic'd up. Cheap NT4's but they sound alright. If you listen to the new Jake Bugg this is the piano and mics on every song. "Man On Stage" has it pretty exposed
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Post by stormymondays on Nov 13, 2017 9:42:16 GMT -6
The idea of having the piano mic'd permanently is tempting!  |
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Post by adamjbrass on Nov 13, 2017 10:17:25 GMT -6
When thinking about gear selection and microphone placement, the first question I ask myself is "How should this fit into the arrangement?" So the context of the song always drives my choices, which seem to be very many these days Nothing bad about using a Mono Ribbon somewhere in the room, or maybe you want a closer sound. Using Condensers of Small or Large origin. Depending on how soft the piano sounds, I might not use tube gear or ribbons, unless I wanted it softer still. If the piano sounds hard, I might use more soft selections. If I need more attack and less low end, I typically use a small diaphragm condenser. I would place microphones near the hammers exactly like the pictures in this thread. I basically never stick a mic anywhere weird, unless I am doing something weird. I think the LCR setup is way cool, as you have your choice in the mix. I tend to make those decisions quickly in the heat of battle, so I try to use less things and get them really nice sounding. Rather than something that will be a "maybe" later on. To end this post, if there were a Stereo Ribbon mic available, like the R88, I would probably use that 98% of the time. peace |
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Post by stormymondays on Nov 13, 2017 11:04:34 GMT -6
Thanks everyone, lots of useful info - and pictures!
I have a pair of Stager SR-2N ribbon mics that I can't wait to try on the piano. I will also try a pair of Joly-modified Oktava MK 012 cardioid SDC, and a stereo LDC Avantone mic (CK-40), as well as some random stuff.
I do have one omni capsule for the Oktavas. Will it be worth to get another one so I can have an omni pair?
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Post by EmRR on Nov 13, 2017 11:22:24 GMT -6
I keep a DPA 4060 in the boundary mount inside mine, no matter what additional technique is deployed. If there's a singer who will recut, you can close the piano and it's a fine sound by itself. If you have the piano opened up with distant mics, it is usually still useful for some hammer definition. Lots of times I'll go with the Samar MF-65's in Blumlein 5-6 feet out behind the player at chest level with top and bottom off the piano.
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Post by schmalzy on Nov 13, 2017 13:00:57 GMT -6
I've only recorded an upright once and it was for use in a sparse arrangement. It was old, wonky, out of tune, in a big warehouse-style room (not for recording), planes flying overhead, and fairly noisy in the playing. Exactly how the artist wanted it.
They wanted warts-and-all. I gave 'em warts-and-all.
I did three pairs of mics because it was a mobile thing and we were only going to get a small window to do it.
Cascade Fatheads in the room Blumlein. Too dark and we needed more closeness so those got tossed out though I liked most of the sound and would have loved to try a brighter pair of ribbons.
SDCs over the top with it open. Just didn't sound good. Too much detail for what we wanted - but we didn't have time to chase another sound and we didn't need to anyway because...
Two LDCs in Figure 8 a couple inches off the floor just on the outside the legs of the piano. We removed the bottom panel and put the mics just on the outside of the legs and pointed the mics toward them left or right thirds (left and right mics respectively) of the removed panel area. Some ambience snuck in from the back side of the mic, some stereo width (but not a ton). We tried omni first but it was too roomy and we wanted a little more warm. Figure-8 gave us some proximity and tightened the ambience up.
What came out was cool and vibey but had a limited range of use - I think mostly because the piano was so wonky and the playing was so sparse and specific. On a nice piano with a quiet and appropriately ambient room, I'd definitely try the omni LDC on the outsides of the piano. Raising and lowering would probably give you some interesting results.
Good luck! I'm sure we'd all love to hear it when it's done!
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Post by sean on Nov 13, 2017 16:02:47 GMT -6
I keep all my keyboards hooked up and ready to go. I have the upright mic'd up like the picture, Leslie is always mic'd with a pair of 57s and a 421 on the horn, and I have 4 mono keyboard (Wurli, Farfisa, RMI, and a Sound City Piano) running into a little 4 in/2 out mixer, one out going to a DI the other to an amp. I think it helps want to play them when they can walk up and hear them instead of fumbling around for 10 minutes hooking stuff up.
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Post by rowmat on Nov 13, 2017 16:34:35 GMT -6
I'm about to experiment with some AT PZM's inside the lid/soundboard.
We'll see how that goes.
If it works OK I'll get a couple more and leave them inside the piano.
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Post by ericn on Nov 13, 2017 18:23:07 GMT -6
Boundary type placement can work well, but if you have a nice sounding large room and it's just piano distance and patience can give some excellent results.
Although I once had a ragtime guy who wanted it to sound like he heard it so I put an XY pair of 451's right over his head plus some Sony Lavs inside, he thought it brilliant I thought the sound was huge but lacked separation and it just needed some space to breathe but he was orgasmic and paying the bills.
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Post by wiz on Nov 13, 2017 18:30:33 GMT -6
I'm about to experiment with some AT PZM's inside the lid/soundboard. We'll see how that goes. If it works OK I'll get a couple more and leave them inside the piano. Remember Tandy (or was it realistic) PZMs? and modding them to run off 18V 8) ahhh the old days cheers Wiz |
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Post by rowmat on Nov 13, 2017 20:03:53 GMT -6
I'm about to experiment with some AT PZM's inside the lid/soundboard. We'll see how that goes. If it works OK I'll get a couple more and leave them inside the piano. Remember Tandy (or was it realistic) PZMs? and modding them to run off 18V 8) ahhh the old days cheers Wiz They were Realistic PZM's sold by Tandy. The 'story' was they had to pay some kind of royalty to Crown. I still have about four of these kicking about. You can run them off a 9volt battery for more headroom without modding the circuit, I assume 18v is just two 9v batteries in series? I actually modded one to run off 48v phantom but it was a fiddly job. The polarity of the electret capsule had to be reversed and this required the use of aluminium solder. If you've used aluminium solder you'll understand! They actually had a balancing transformer on the output but it was wired from the factory as unbalanced using 3 core cable with pin 3 tied to ground. You only had cut off the unbalanced 1/4" jackplug and fit an XLR and, "Voila!", it was balanced! |
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Post by stormymondays on Nov 15, 2017 13:16:35 GMT -6
I'll finally be able to run some recording tests tomorrow. If I can do some testing with a real piano player, I'll post them here, but it can take a while.
Now I need to decide whether it's worth it to buy a second omni capsule for my Oktava pair, or just use the cardioids. I'm also interested in the Line Audio CM3...
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Post by stormymondays on Nov 25, 2017 5:03:45 GMT -6
Success! Here's my report.
The Stager SR-2N mics sound stellar. Pressing play is like sitting at the piano! I've also learned that there's a new version of the SR-2N with more output and a bit less rumble, and I'm going to get mine converted to the new specs.
My best sounding setup so far has the Stager as a spaced pair in the bottom of the piano (all panels off) and the Oktavas in ORTF above the player's head. My second omni capsule has arrived, so on Monday I'll be able to test the spaced omni pair. It's highly unlikely that it will beat the Stagers though...
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Post by EmRR on Nov 25, 2017 10:08:34 GMT -6
Now I need to decide whether it's worth it to buy a second omni capsule for my Oktava pair, or just use the cardioids. I'm also interested in the Line Audio CM3... Curious about the Line Audio stuff too. |
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Post by spindrift on Nov 25, 2017 10:22:35 GMT -6
Glad you got it tracked! I bet for the part you were after, it sounds amazing.
I recently recorded an old upright for a folk/rock song in an artist’s house. I hastily stuck a pair of U87s —> CAPI FD312 Heiders on it in the middle of the back soundboard (about 20” away), centered, each looking 40 or so degrees in either direction up and down the soundboard. I knew the part was mainly voiced in the middle notes on the piano so I had a good idea this would work well.
It sounded stellar and I didn’t have to mess with additional positioning! I’ll try to post up some clips.
Don’t let anyone ever tell you that the U87 is not a great mic.
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Post by iamasound on Nov 25, 2017 13:39:01 GMT -6
I only needed to mic a piano once but had no stereo pair except for the new previously owned Superlux S502 pair I had gotten for half a hundred bucks. It is a fixed ORTF just like the much more costly Scheops MSTC64, a real poor man's version. I backed off the piano which I had taken all panels off of about 12 feet, just enough to let the stereo sound of the room develope in the fixed mic pattern. It sounded perfect for the track.
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