Piano Recording

I recorded an upright piano with two dynamic mics, but the more I listen to it, the worse it sounds. Is there another inexpensive way to record it with dynamic mics. Or should I buy condenser or pzm's. Thanks for any help!

ORIGINAL: christianpatrick

I recorded an upright piano with two dynamic mics, but the more I listen to it, the worse it sounds. Is there another inexpensive way to record it with dynamic mics. Or should I buy condenser or pzm's. Thanks for any help!

Maybe the piano realy does sound that bad, most upright pianos do. It's hard to catch the attack of the notes.

As others have said, recording an upright piano is nasty work. I've found that the key to getting a good (er... tolerable) sound is to open it up as much as possible. Open the lid, remove the lower chassis board and as much wood as possible. That'll kill some of the excess resonance and muddiness that shows up on the recording. (Grand pianos don't have the same problem, because they can be opened up wide.) Like boten said, use condenser mics and try to get them as close to the strings/hammers as possible without getting too percussivey. And after you've spent a week tearing your piano apart and tweaking mic placement, dump the whole idea and get a midi keyboard

Check out Art Vista Grand. Inexpensive and one of the best out there. It rivals packages costing 3 times as much.

NI Akoustik Piano is the best I've heard. Even so, I know what you mean. You can always spot it as a fake.

Here's the most realistic piano sound I've gotten:
1) Start with NI Akoustik Piano, one of the darker settings
2) scale all your velocities down to 80%
3) Throw a small plate reverb on it (I use Waves TrueVerb - "Estate Bathroom")
4) Throw a compressor/limiter on it.

That usually comes out sounding believeable. But I feel your pain man. Fake pianos never sound quite right.

Hey Frank,

Sorry to hijack this thread, but is THIS the bass you recommended a while back for recording purposes? If so, MF has a great deal on it now - $180.

Please let me know.

Thanks!

Hi Sam,

I seriously doubt that as many as 90% of people on this forum could spot the fake - it's a good one. I do find - speaking to other people about this - that a lot of people are scared of admitting that they've heard something they like. In certain circles there's a rising trend of criticising sampled pianos as a way of asserting sound engineering authority! It's as though admitting to liking a particular sampled piano will somehow show you up to have inferior ears.

I've had a listen to your tunes, and quite like the VGP. What additional processing of the sound (if any) did you do? Or is that straight out of the box?

Wow samhoff. I've heard (and paid for ) many expensive piano samples, but your demo of the VGP is the first time I can say I would've been fooled. It sounds great, especially on the hard attacks which is where most samples start sounding cheesy.

I may go ahead and buy myself one. But first I wanted to ask, has anyone here tried the Synthology Ivory piano? I've heard a ton of glowing reviews about it ("blows away NI Akoustic", etc). I just found a great comparison page which has PMI, IVORY and VGP side-by-side:
http://www.pianosamples.com/Tests/index

My 2 faves are the VGP & the Ivory Steinway. But the VGP sounds the best to me.

Well, I couldn’t help myself. I had to download and try this “True Pianos.”

And either I’m biased or Art Vista’s VGP is still a clear winner over this.

To prove it to the rest of you I went ahead and did my own “piano shootout.” I loaded up the “True Pianos” “Warm” setting (because I play very quiet new age type piano) and I played for one minute (chords C, Am, F, and G over and over, a very simple chord progression that is pretty hard to screw up and that for some reason I always return to when I’m thinking). Then I copied the MIDI file over to VGP and tacked them together into one strip. (I made sure to play and record while listening to “TruePianos” because I wanted to try to make it as good for them as possible). Note that both these are "straight out of the box," I didn't add any reverb or anything.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=440467

So if you listen to it on my soundclick web site the first minute is TruePianos and the second is VGP. I feel like the TruePianos is a bit tinny and fake, and also there seems to be a bit of a “twang” in the intonation of each note when I first hit it (i.e. it swings flat for just a moment then back into pitch). I will say that TruePianos has a bit brighter feel to it and VGP is a shade muddier . . . maybe I just like muddy stuff.

FWIW,

Sam

Yep, that's the one I use.

Thanks Frank!

You haven't steered me wrong yet. My Grace 101 is working out nicely!

christianpatrick,

Patience. The piano is probably the hardest instrument to record. There are so many variables that only with experimentation will you get ''your'' sound. There are no ''carved in stone'' rules. However, the Sound on Sound article quoted above is a great place to start.