grandpiano mic position

[djgout]

hey, i'm doing a piano session tonight with this sort of ben foldsish sounding band. we using a story and clark baby (same thing as a C5)

any suggestions on mics/placement? i've got access to a pair of 4051s which i know sound good on the piano, but i've also got some akg 300s, ksm 137s, u87s, a tlm103, a m149, and a pair of 4050s. this is going to a HD2 setup.

i'm also kinda thinking about putting up a funky little mic some where to get a track we could play with....maybe a shure 315 in the crotch? any ideas for this weird mic?

thanks

[JohnDavisNYC]

since the M149 is the best mic there, and you only mention having one of them, i'd almost be inclined to go with mono piano with that, because it's such a great sounding mic... or maybe the 87s inside the piano and the 149 as a room mic. perhaps the 87s in a spaced pair, one near the high hammers and the other towards the bass side and a little further into the sound board and the 149 a few feet out and above the piano.

cheers,
john

[cgarges]

I've had fantastic results with the 4051s. I recorded Frank Kimbrough last fall and he was floored with the piano sound. (The album will be out on LoNote in September.) I tried 4050s at first and thought that they were a tad dark. Trying the 4051s was right on for this particular piano, in this particular room, with this particular group.

I like a spaced pair inside the piano and it's sort of tough to describe the positioning without showing it to you, but I'll try. One mic generally goes up near the hammers, but back a ways and just over the spacing bar that runs the length of the strings, angled a bit towards the hammers. The second generally goes over the spot where the low strings cross the high strings. There's usually a spacing bar here, as well, and I like the mic right next to the spacing bar and slightly angled up toward the hammers and over in the direction of the lid joint, using the spacing bar to sort of block some of the higher string tone. Overall, this pair of mics will sound really wide with plenty of fun phase issues. Switching the polarity of one of the mics might yeild a more desirable sound, but generally won't make the mics perfectly in phase. For me, this is where the good stuff is.

Neumann FET47s also wrok great for this, if anyone's interested.

If you have the space, you can add additional room mics out from the lid as well.

All the pop-type piano players I've recorded have loved this method.

Of course, another key to some of the Ben Folds sound would be to mic the piano with a C-Ducer or some other type of contact mic and run that into a Marshall stack, in addition to more standard "acoustic" piano miking.

Hope this helps.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[daveaux]

I've done a coupla sessions where, for grand piano, Neumann KM56, U47 and Sony C37s were available ? and the engineer grabbed a Shure 57. If it's pretty percussive material (instead of quiet tender jazz) an SM57, run thru a killer pre and a nice compressor (Urei, Gates, etc), sounds great on a grand.

x/y a pair, grabbing each end of the soundboard using the technique in the above post.[/b]

[HoneyBear]

Also - depending on the size of the room you are in you may want to consider removing the lid and throwing that 149 up high directly over the piano with an spaced pair over the hammers (watch for phase problems). This will work well with high ceilings or if there is defusion overhead and probably should be avoided unless your are overdubbing the piano or don't have a bunch of live mics in the room.

[djgout]

hey thanks everyone, i actually went with chris' suggestiong with the 4051s and they sounded fantastic, i would have liked to have used the 149 for room but it was being used on a vocal session in the other studio.
the tracks are kinda dense rock-type-things so a room mic probably wouldn't have been that great. i did put an 87 up for talk back and put it in figure 8 with the null facing the body of the piano, it sounded fucking incredible too, so we're keeping it for ambience.

thanks again
justin

[cgarges]

Awesome. Congrats!

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC