Piano Mic Techniques, Part I

Thanks to Dan Hocott, I decided to take advantage of his lending me his Neumann KM184 stereo matched pair mics. Gorgeous sounding mics, so detailed. Anyways, I thought this was the perfect time to play around with a few grand piano mic techniques on my Hazelton Bros baby grand. I used 4 different techniques, a couple popular, a couple not very. I also wanted to record more than one style, because one technique might sound great on one style and awful on another. Onto the test!

The Techniques:

• 7 inch- This is probably the most popular I've seen. I'm referring to it as the 7 inch technique because the mics are placed about 7 inches off of the strings. One mic is about 3/4 of the way down the bass strings, the other about half way up on the treble strings. The goal is to get a direct sound that accents the bass and treble (obviously).
  
  

• 21 inch- This is kind of the opposite of the 7 inch technique. I placed both mics about 21 inches high, facing down over the hammers, about 15-20 inches apart from the middle of the console. The goal is that it gets more of a room tone, not as direct sounding, and is more balanced. It's not focusing only on the bass and treble, but does pick up more of the hammer sound.

• Facing- To set this up, I had the two mics facing each other at the opposite ends of the piano. At about ear height from the sitting player's position, over the hammers, and the mic capsules match where the high C and low A keys would be if they extended out to the hammers. This is supposed to be incredibly natural sounding, and closely resemble what the player hears.
  
  
  
• XY- I set it up about 6 feet high, behind the player, with the mics facing down towards the middle of the keyboard, slightly over the hammers. Again, this is supposed to be natural sounding, like a mix between what the player hears and a room mic.

I used my Rode K2 at a "sweet spot" near the curve of the piano, but didn't include it in these mixes. I treat it more like a room mic, and depending on what the 2-mic technique needs, EQ it totally differently. Since it's like my "overall balance" mic, I only wanted to show how these matched pair techniques sounded.

The Music:

I didn't want to use just one song, but didn't want to do 1,000 songs. I decided on a selection of classical, jazz, pop, piano rock, blues.

• Classical- Prelude in C#m, by Rachmaninoff. I liked this one because it contains a lot of space, uses a lot of low and mid-high piano range, gets busy, gets quiet, etc. I think it's a good representation of most classical piano pieces.
  
  
• Jazz- Christmastime is Here, Vince Guaraldi. It has the melody and nice full sounding jazz chords in the part, so I thought it was a good overall representation. I would have liked to have done a second Jazz example that focuses more on chord comping, but this will have to do. It's slow, not very dynamic, but wide.
  
  
• Pop/Rock- Dreaming with a Broken Heart, John Mayer. I thought for Pop this was a good selection. It contains a high part, low chords, space, busy playing.
  
  
• Piano Rock- Of course it had to be a Ben Folds song. The only really rocking song of his I know how to play is One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces. This is balls to the wall rock, where piano is the main instrument. Perfect example for me.
  
  
• Blues- New York State of Mind, Billy Joel. Yeah, it's not exactly blues, but not jazz or pop either. It's still piano driven, but much softer than the Ben Folds stuff.