Probably the most common instrument used in churches today is the piano. Annoyingly however it is one of the hardest to get sounding natural. Much of this is dependent on the quality of the instrument, of course. I see this happen all the time with acoustic guitars where it's stupidly easy to make an expensive Seagull, Taylor or Martin sound good while you tear your hair out wrestling with the sound from cheap guitars.
And it's the same with piano's. An entry level Yamaha grand will sound good, but a seven-foot Bosendorfer will just sound much better. And when you're micing up a piano you need to keep in mind its budget and sound quality. What does it naturally sound like with the lid open? High stick versus low stick?
A word of warning. All of these microphone techniques are just arbitrary. And for live sound, you'll probably use the short stick, and pencil microphones, rather than the large diaphragm condensers shown here.
The best way to get good piano sound is to plug in a pair of microphones, give them both an arbitrary amount of gain without EQ. Then, using headphones, move the microphones around until the sound from the two microphones is as pleasing and natural as the microphone placement allows (taking into account stage bleed from other instruments, music style and natural resonances from the instrument's formants.)
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Tips and Tricks: Basic Micing Techniques: Piano
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2 comments:
Great post. Pianos are indeed the hardest to get sounding good. We're going to be conducting a piano mic shootout in the next few weeks. We should have about 6-7 different mics to try out. Should be a good time.
Beautiful. I still need to post the picture of the mic technique I used today. I modified the orchestral piano micing technique to suit our own unique needs for worship. I'll try and post it later on. Check back.
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