Disklavier

On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Adrian Thomas wrote:
> If you can use a Disklavier with silent function (esp Mk III/IV), the Piano 
> voice
> used in Silent Mode is a high quality sample of a Yamaha Concert Grand, so 
> you
> could just take the audio outputs from the Disklavier into whatever you use 
> to
> record and still record the sound of a Yamaha Grand Piano.

I can't speak for the MkIV, but the MkII XG and MkIII silent mode piano is 
pretty awful IMO. It has horrible rings and isn't particularly responsive, 
although it is quite well matched to the keyboard and has support for 
progressive pedalling. Pretty much every computer based piano sample (ie the 
Gigasampler/Kontakt variety) wipes the floor with it, as do many "synths" with 
piano patches (Korg being the exception to this).

I think Carol is talking about this in more generic terms than just the 
disklavier; ie recording any acoustic piano.

As others have said, recording a piano is an art, but one can often get more 
than passable results with cheap hardware - especially with the explosion of 
high quality and cheap Chinese microphones on the market.

You need at least two microphones to record a piano and get it to sound 
reasonable. One microphone works, but it will sound dead. More than two 
microphones presents a lot of problems with phasing (so can two microphones if 
they are positioned badly).

For simple "play to the grandparents" recordings I've had good results with a 
pair of PZM mics positioned either inside the piano under the lid, on the floor 
under the piano, or even just resting on the music stand. The room and position 
of the piano in relation to the mics make a lot of difference, so you need to 
experiment a bit in each room.

For higher quality recordings a pair of proper condensor mics seems to work 
well, either positioned a few feet from the piano pointing into the lid or the 
"close mic" technique often used for pop / rock / jazz where you put the mics a 
few inches over the strings. This gives a brighter, but more un-natural sound, 
but it does help remove a lot of the room from the recording which may help if 
the acoustics are bad.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings :)

Regards,

James