Recording Grand Piano in livingroom

[Guillome]

Hi all!

(sorry for my enlish)

I have a damn nice and beautiful grand piano in my livingroom. A Berdux Munchen. That brand is gone, the piano is from 1890! He is renovated many times and a couple of years he got new strings. And he souds so so beautiful.

I want to use this miracle of a grand piano to record my CD. I read this wonderfull document, but its english and technical, so hard to understand for me:Piano Recording

What i have learned from that document is what type of sound i like to record and in a sertain way how to do that. My grand piano has a very warm and mellow sound. High notes are soft, mellow but still bright.
The low notes are deep, warm and if i hit the basekeys hard it even has a little sharp edge. Very nice.

So i want to record it wide (stereospace) warm, mellow and intimate with a nice reverb (can be done after recordings in my daw), the nice sustain what the piano have. The deep soft base and bright soft mellow high notes. I play solo piano.

Musicstyle what i play:
Mazurka

Wals

Both recorded with a Yamaha P80. Nice, but its not living.

The recordings that i prefer from the document are:
CloseOutsidePair2

And also, but not as nice as the first one:
InsideSpaced30cmPair2

This kind of recordings i dont prefer:
Spaced Pair 2

Now is my question if you can help me with:
1 What kind of mics do i need?
2 Do i need any Preamps or compressors?
3 What can i do best in my livingroom for the sound i like?
4 Anything more?

My input/ideas:
1 In the document they mentioned Omnimics for the setup i prefer
2 I have a Fasttrack Ultra. Nice stuff to record noiseless. Is this enough?
3 Is it better to use blankets/curtains/stuff at the walls to get a warmer sound or something? Someone has experience with this?

Thanks very well in advance!! I will show the results if i have some recordings

Oh last but not least: budget.
Lets say around 1500 euro. May be more or less, but i saw the mics mentioned in the document, they costs over 3000 euro each. Thats too much

[G-Doubleyou]

The room itself will determine the sound you get.

The most expensive equipment, cannot make up for a bad sounding room.

Do some research on room treatment for recording.

[Jack Ruston]

Yep it's a room dependent issue and although some living rooms are remarkably good, it's not going to sound like those samples. It's going to sound like a small domestic space. You could acoustically treat it at which point it would sound like a small acoustically treated domestic space. I'd be tempted to get a near coincident pair of cardioids in close, shut the lid to get it as dry as possible and then use a reverb.

Honestly, it's going to be a bit of a compromise. But I promise that even if you can't achieve this big expansive hall recording that you want, it'll be better than using a virtual instrument.

J

[Guy Johnson]

OK… When somebody is playing your piano, listen to the piano AND the living room sound together.
Move around close to the piano and when you like the sound best, put a co-incident or AB pair there.
Maybe in the piano, or very near it. Try the piano in different parts of the room while doing this.
Put a mike or two at the other end of the room for reverb to add if you can record more than two channels
Just try things, see how it sounds.

I do not know if you own any microphones? I know you want to buy some for €1500 max. But if you have condenser microphones now, you can get a good sound by experiment. Very good microphones will not be much better if the room sounds bad or the piano is not too good close up.

My suggestion about mics: Small diameter condensers, a stereo set with stereo-bar and adaptors, with cardioid and omni capsules.
I am shure that others will make suggestions for you too!

I would NOT use blankets or curtains, this will take out the treble and mids and leave a nasty sounding boomy room.

[Thunderbass1]

I would agree with everything Guy has said above.
I'm also actually doing a similar project in my living room this week.
In MY situation/piano/room I found AB spaced omni condensers a little above and in front of the Pianists head with the piano on full stick the best for me. (the sound from this kind of position also appeals to the player in my experience but watch out for noisy page turns) If you want your project to sound OK in mono then don't go too wide with the spacing (perhaps 20cm max), if you only care about Stereo you can go wider and get a 'grander' result. The mic spacing ended around 15/20cm in my case.
I find even quite large domestic living rooms actually don't sound very good when recorded so I work fairly close to the piano and add a bit of chamber type reverb depending on repertoire.
On a budget and looking for clean recordings, a personal favorite preamp is the RME babyface, As for mics, I have in the past had surprisingly satisfactory piano results with Octava condensers but if you can afford it I do personally like DPAs (4060, 2006 or 4006).
Good luck!

[chris...]

I am shure that others will make suggestions for you too!

( other makes of microphone may be available : )

[Guy Johnson]

I just remembered.

Ages ago I recorded a baby grand in a small square room in a victorian farmhouse, about 4.5 meters by 4.5 meters by 3 meters high. Two doors, two windows. From memory I think I used a couple of CAD M179s AB close together, cardioid, close in, lid full stick.
The piano had a wonderful squeaky pedal and was not in a perfect state of tune, & hammers were a bit hard ... perfect for the song. Recorded for a puppet show originally. Not meant to be "grand" of course!
Baby grand, baby room.

[John Willett]

The room itself will determine the sound you get.

Agreed - if it's classical omnis are definitely the best.

Listen with your ears and do test recordings first.

You will likely find that the best position for the mics is completely different from what you expect.

I recorded a 9' Steinway Concert Grand in a living room once - the recording came out well, though it really needed a touch of reverb to make the room sound larger. I did several test recordings and the mics were in a totally different place from normal - but it worked and the CD was commercially released by a main label.

[matt keen]

The room itself will determine the sound you get.

Agreed - if it's classical omnis are definitely the best.

Listen with your ears and do test recordings first.

You will likely find that the best position for the mics is completely different from what you expect.

I recorded a 9' Steinway Concert Grand in a living room once - the recording came out well, though it really needed a touch of reverb to make the room sound larger. I did several test recordings and the mics were in a totally different place from normal - but it worked and the CD was commercially released by a main label.

Plus 100 on the room being the issue

I have recorded a retired concert pianist in this very situation
She felt the sound might be ok as her living room was very large
The problem was ceiling height
You can get a decent sound but incredibly difficult to get open airy recordings IMO
Be prepared to use great reverbs and more eq than is normal in a classical recording

[tacitus]

It must be something in the Northamptonshire air: as I read through this thread I was formulating my response and then found Matt had said pretty well exactly what I was going to. You can get a good recording in a living room, but it's almost impossible to get that open, airy sound we all love unless the living room happens to be a good live recording space, in which case it's probably not very good for snuggling on the sofa and watching the telly ...

In the old days, when that's all I had, I'd have stuck up a couple of Rode NT2s, probably in cardioid mode to give some relief from the lowish ceiling (mine's nearly 9', well above average compared to modern homes but still not high in recording terms terms). Now, I"d be tempted to try my NT55s in omni mode or a pair of Oktava 012's in cardioid. Bass is going to be more present in omni recordings, but I wouldn't use that as my yardstick. Rather I'd try to get a decent overall sound that's mainly the piano and try to minimise pedal noise, damper noise and all the little squeaks and rattles you get on most domestic pianos, especially older ones - again, mine's not as old as the OP's; it's a 1934 Bluthner, but like most 80-year old ladies, she has her charm and it isn't a flawless complexion, as it were!

So, as most of the other posters have said, you have to try all sorts and see what you get that you can live with. I wouldn't think the difference between £200 and £2000 mikes is going to be as much as the difference from moving them around, and, if possible, moving the piano around in the room. Mine isn't in a good position for recording, even with the lid off (which I generally prefer), as it's too much in a corner, but I can't easily move it just to record as we have a victorian attitude to stuffing the place with furniture and bits and bobs.