How I Record My Upright Piano

[jimp.]

Had to spout-off on this one. Like so many of us, I started out as a kid playing piano. I still have the Wurlitzer spinet I practiced on in the sixties. When I hear many stereo recorded pianos, it just sounds a bit weird to me. Kind of artificial. Nobody listens to a piano with their head under the lid at both ends for maybe the piano tuner, lol. For people sitting around 10 feet away there's really no stereo, ..especially with an upright. I think most all piano image like that can be derived from room reflections, ie; room mics or reverbs. Mono rules for uprights. 👍 Also, there's often a magic place on the sound board in the back, .. right around the middle. A cool trick a Nashville producer uses, (forget name), . And NO PHASE ISSUES! Easy peasy. 👈

[solarwind]

I've tried recording an upright piano. Depending on what octave you are playing, that's where you will want to place your mic between the wall and the back of the piano, this is where it will give you the fullest sound. If you want an old timey sound, place it on the register opposite of where you are playing.

[MrMcrRed]

I've definitely fallen foul of this so many times.... trying to use triple mic setups with a condenser for ambient. Just becomes a headache and the stereo image I was looking for just isn't there. Love the comments here already. Keep it simple.

[LeChapeauMusic]

to be honest, only stereo piano recording makes sense to me, as long as you mic it in a way that the stereo image is not too harsh. take a grand piano for example. you might wanna use some U87s for the A B stereo mics, but if you just go with these 2, it's gonna be really harsh cause it's a spaced pair. so what engineers often do is that they place an omni mic below the piano, right in between the 2 A B mics and right in between the bottom of the piano and the floor. what this does is that it captures the standing wave between the floor and the bottom of the piano. using that the stereo image becomes super smooth and it opens the door for many useful EQ decisions; for example when you leave it out of phase with the A B mics, you can boost a specific frequency that you don't like and you'll hear it being nicely reduced in volume.

[Charlie-Oooooo]

As I recall, piano can certainly very easily over dominate a recording, in terms of both frequency spectrum and stereo sound stage, when recorded as part of a small group or ensemble. A great example of "less is more" :-) Cheers Warren!

[andreirlmeier]

Was this technique also used in The Fray´s "How to Save a Life" ? What a great production and what a worldwide success ....

[anthonycurran]

I've tried most configurations and I agree, mono is the way...unless your recording Chopin🤔

[ThyLowZeen]

@ProduceLikeAPro
What's the best way to record and mix multiple bass lines?
Kind of like how Prince did

[LukeGajdus]

Poor piano. I know you need a lot of space. it's okay, we love you.