Setting Up for a Piano Recording Part 2
Setting Up for a Piano Recording Part 2
SETTING UP FOR A PIANO RECORDING PART 2
In part 2 of this series of piano recording articles, I will look at the setup of our piano recording sessions at our WKMT Studio.
To start with, we uncover and unlock the piano, as our studio piano is reserved for recording sessions only. The piano is then set-up appropriately for the session, for example, during a piano and vocal recording session the piano lid may need to be put on the half-stick, to control the volume of the piano in the room when the singer is performing, or in the case of a piano only recording; simply to change the tone of the piano. Once the piano lid setting is in place, the microphones are then placed. At our WKMT studio, we use a matched pair of Audix SCX25A microphones, which are well suited to acoustic instruments such as the piano. One mic is placed over the bass strings inside the piano and the other mic is placed over the treble strings, this setup captures the full frequency range of the instrument and provides a stereo image of the piano, which replicates the pianist’s listening perspective. In addition to this, we set up a stereo pair of microphones at a distance from piano to capture the ambient sound of the piano in the room, to do this we use the stereo pair of built in microphones in the Zoom H4N recorder. These two pairs of microphones can then be balanced during the post-production stage of the recording session, to provide a rich and full piano sound.