How Do You Record Your Acoustic Piano?

Larry K Room modes play a part in determining ideal mic placement. How close are the mics to a wall/corner of the room? Maybe try moving the piano and or mics away from the wall/corner and see if it helps.

Ken Radford Oh, yeah, the piano is in the corner of the room. It is 27” from a wall on the right and six inches from the front wall.

The mics are probably three feet from the right wall.

I can’t move the piano for two reasons. The first, the wheels are in caster cups so I can get my long legs under the keyboard, and the second, I had hernia surgery a couple of months ago. 
 

Can I improve the situation with mic placement?

Larry K I have my stereo pair a few inches behind my ears and it works well in my room. It’s a case of trial and error with mic placement, so you’ll need to try some new positions and see if it helps.

Larry K It is generally recommended that you record an upright piano by moving it away from the wall since the sound coming off the soundboard will reflect off your wall back to your mic. This will change your sound and may be responsible for some of the sound you are not liking. 

Because the room is such a big factor, we really have to experiment by play a passage repeatedly and recording it with the mics in different places to get a sense of what sounds good. If you can't move your piano away from the wall you may have to experiment by placing your mics more like  3 -6 feet away from the piano. It's like doing a science lab honestly - you have to make small adjustments and make a record of the differences to narrow in on what you like.

I feel I should point out that placing mics by our ears is not really a typical placement when the goal is to record the way the piano best sounds to a listener. As the performer, we are actually not in an ideal listening position when it comes our own playing. We are very close to the instrument compared to a typical listener and we are hearing the sound from one particular end of the sound source. We don't hear the full blend of sound immediately and some sound may be blocked by music stand / music desk. One example of this that comes up often in my studio is that students think the pedal is getting too blurry in a passage and make unnecessary adjustments but it sounds perfectly clear and rich when listening from off to the side / recording the sound.  

Another thing to consider is the fact that our own body and head become an acoustic barrier if the mics are placed too close to us. There is also more key and pedal mechanism noise that we perceive as the player; noises that someone sitting away from the piano would not notice. Instrumentalists in general do not hear their instruments at peak listening points. 

That's not to say don't try it but classical pianists generally record themselves to get a sense of how their sound is coming across in the space and make appropriate adjustments or to record the fill richness of their instrument. If you do a search for suggested mic placement when recording an upright piano, I am sure you will find some diagrams from audio-tech sources that have some suggested placements to get your started with your scientific method approach to testing your recording setup!

Dustin Anderson Thanks for all of this advice!

I will experiment.

Given the volume that the YUS5 can produce, I might need to have the microphones in the next room, lol, but that will pick up a lot of ambient noise.

I will back away three to six feet and see what I get.

By the way, the cabinet has a rectangular hole cut into it, right behind the music desk. So, I hear the piano through that hole. I don’t think I can mic that hole, though.

Larry K Sounds good. If your volume is overwhelming your mics, thats when you turn down the gain =). 

I had a YUS5 for about 3 years before my C2X. The cut out behind the music desk was a nice detail for sure but yes I probably wouldn't mic just that spot. You could always try it for science though!

Dustin Anderson Ha, I didn’t know you owned a YUS5. Cool.

I love the music desk on the YUS5 but wish they had made it open with lattice work to let more sound through to the player.

If I can’t have a grand, I want for no other upright. I am a tall guy and cannot bend my neck down to play from sheet music that is just over my hands in those music desks that are under the lids of almost all uprights.