Is Amateur Piano Recording This Hard?

[charleski]

piano for left handed

It actually exists:

Left-sided piano; Christopher Seed; Poletti en Tuinman;

 

[tomtoo]

It actually exists:

Left-sided piano; Christopher Seed; Poletti en Tuinman;

Thx, this ruined my joke.

 

[thecheapseats]

You can do so much better relative to what I post in the OP. Here is an example:

YES!... far and away better than most piano recordings on a vid... the fidelity is there - not to much 'room' - just enough... great presence and hammer attack... a bit of 'something' odd at the very top (6.5 seconds in) - action noise (a slow hammer escapement or a damper fall created a harmonic on a string)... a very good grab as an example...

 

[tomtoo]

You can do so much better relative to what I post in the OP. Here is an example:

It stays far away from max level.

 

[charleski]

Thx, this ruined my joke.

The Netherlands is a crazy place!

 

[tomtoo]

The Netherlands is a crazy place!

I know they call a small hill a mountain.

 

[thecheapseats]

It stays far away from max level.

considering the venue - pros recorded it - 24 bit (assuming) and conservative levels - it almost records itself... obscure note: whomever did it ahead of time, that piano was voiced exceedingly well...

 

[Blumlein 88]

My last piano recording was a guy playing a Steinway in Miller Hall on campus here. I used crossed ribbons back about 3 or 4 meters on the side of the piano where the lid was open. I added a 1/2" omni condenser mike over the soundboard and pointed at the lid, mixed in at a very low level just as a slight hint of spice. I was pretty pleased with it.

What ribbons did you use?

 

[tomtoo]

Exceedingly important! People often forget that a piano is a percussion instrument.

Jim

Maybe some just forget that the real name is piano-forte. What should us give a hint to the dynamic range of the instrument.

 

[SIY]

What ribbons did you use?

My home-made ones. Stereo mike, 1.5" ribbons, 1:37 step-ups (Lundahl).

 

[thecheapseats]

My home-made ones. Stereo mike, 1.5" ribbons, 1:37 step-ups (Lundahl).

mu metal lundahl xfmr - and home made... brave!...

 

[Music1969]

Adding on, when reading the comments, not one person says anything about bad recordings! Are folks this tolerant of distortion and bad sound quality?

I think no one complains because expectations are low.

I don't even go to music festivals or concerts expecting great SQ from their PA systems.

I keep expectations low - sometimes I am surprised !

Same with hearing music at the local coffee shops playing over cheap small speakers.

If I like the song, I don't lose any enjoyment due to the crap SQ.

I just Shazam it for listening at home with better SQ !

 

[blueone]

I've never had a problem recording pianos over the years, even with my handheld Tascam digital recorder, using its built-in crossed mics. For more serious recordings years ago I had a Calrec Soundfield, which was absolutely amazing. I wish I had kept it, because I understand they're selling on eBay for about $5K.

 

[JP]

My last piano recording was a guy playing a Steinway in Miller Hall on campus here. I used crossed ribbons back about 3 or 4 meters on the side of the piano where the lid was open. I added a 1/2" omni condenser mike over the soundboard and pointed at the lid, mixed in at a very low level just as a slight hint of spice. I was pretty pleased with it.

I don't see that one in my folder....

 

[robwpdx]

I have been watching a lot of short piano videos. With almost no exception, they sound so distorted and poor to me. I assume some are recorded using iPhones and such. Others appear to have pro videographers yet the sound is just awful. Are they just doing a poor job or is it this difficult? I mostly hear the distortion from the bass notes. Some examples:

This one seems under water:

Every one of her videos sound bad in a different way!

Another under water:

This one screwed up the image too:

Another one with good image but so bad of a recording:

Professional recordings sound infinitely better no matter which album I listen to. Any ideas?

Pianos are loud instruments, with a wide dynamic range accessible to the player, so the mic has to be rated for it. They are percussion instruments with felt mallets. They evolved to fill a medium size hall without amplification and are usable in a large hall without amplification.

Some microphones have a pad between the head and the internal preamp for that. You also have to take into account the room. In a small room you can get echos you don't want picked up by the microphones.

Professional recordings always have engineers with experience selecting and placing the microphones and managing the gain structure. They have done the same thing thousands of times often in the same room.

Phones will have automatic gain control. It is probably tuned for voice, but not for fast attack percussion instrument recording. The microphone response of phones was studied and published by academic groups leading up to the NIOSH iPhone free sound level meter app. See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32108336/.

Another common problem with directional microphones is the back side of the pattern vs frequency. If you look at the published polar patterns, at high frequencies, say above 6kHz they become less directional, and at higher frequencies have directional spikes of strong response. Those spikes are interacting with the room modes in a very unpredictable and often unpleasant to listen to way. Directional microphone back pattern is a challenge to manage in location recording dialog for films indoors. That is why location recordists select from just a handful of respected indoor boom microphones.

 

[SIY]

I don't see that one in my folder....

You can thank me for that. Trust me.

 

[MRC01]

As others have said, pianos are notoriously difficult to record well. The recording almost never sounds like an actual piano. Piano is also notoriously difficult to play back well. Superficially, this should not be the case since it's mostly midrange, no extreme LF or HF. But it's such a complex sound, with such wide dynamics, and the timbre changes with dynamics, the recordings & playback reveal resonances or distortion that would be subtle or masked when recording other kinds of instruments like strings.

 

[computer-audiophile]

... no extreme LF or HF.

I might not necessarily agree with that.

The full audible spectrum should not be missing on a recording. I once knew a guy in Austria who developed a loudspeaker for Bösendorfer. From him I got a CD with reference recordings of various concert grands. The frequency and dynamic range of these recordings is very large and also goes down very low.

 

[ahofer]

Distorted or ridiculously low-level piano recordings were one of the reasons I was an early CD adopter in 1984. Lots of dynamic range.

 

[MRC01]

I might not necessarily agree with that.

The full audible spectrum should not be missing on a recording. I once knew a guy in Austria who developed a loudspeaker for Bösendorfer. From him I got a CD with reference recordings of various concert grands. The frequency and dynamic range of these recordings is very large and also goes down very low.

The lowest piano note should be around 28 Hz. But the physical size & construction of the string & piano means most of what we hear is harmonics of that frequency - even live! And most piano music doesn't use those lowest notes. I also have a couple of piano recordings that show energy down there, but they are the exception, not the norm. And that's not just about the recording, it's the same as what we'd hear live. That's why I said piano doesn't usually have much LF or HF. In other words, when a piano recording doesn't sound right, the common primary reasons are not due to the system (whether recording or playback) LF response.