re-post: recorded grand piano editing
This weekend I had my first chance to record a grand piano (along with 46 voices, two violins, an Oboe, a clarinet, a trumpet and a flute!! All recorded on 16 simultaneous tracks via an Onyx 1620 Firewire), and I tried to really do my homework in advance to at least get a decent setup for the piano recording. The limitations of theory as opposed to real experience - and the oppotunity to try again! - are obvious in the recording I got.
I ended up with three tracks of piano: one from an XY pair of dynamic mics (SM57s, not matched) about three feet from the open lid; one from a Shure KSM44 mounted six inches above the XY pair - with lows rolled off, figure 8 pattern and no dB boost, and one from a pair of small diaphragm condensors placed under the piano.
The latter track is useless because it picked up every pedal push.
The other two tracks are decent - better than my worst fears about my first recording of an acoustic piano, in a concert setting no less, but they also definitely have that "in-the-room" sound, not just reverby, but also kind of "hollow" - no real presence, and sorely lacking the kind of definition and clarity I'm used to when in my home studio recording pianos from the Kurzweil 2600...
These tracks sound like, well, what they are: a piano in a room with a microphone (in other words, too much "room," not enough piano), faint and distant sounding (surprising, since the piano sound was pushing 90 dB where the microphones were placed).
Rather than simply go in and blindly throw a lot of eq at those tracks (my first inclination), I'd like to hear some experienced opinions on what might be the best course of action to improve the tracks I do have.
In an otherwise simply amazing recording (the tenors and sopranos will alternately make one cry or get gooseflesh...), the piano is, as I feared the real weak spot, and, I think, glaringly noticable.
Any sugestions?
Thanks!