Recording Secrets For The Small Studio - Additional Resources (1st Edition Archive)

(This page contains archived resources for the first edition of Recording Secrets For The Small Studio. You can access updated resource pages for the current edition here.)

The following audio examples were recorded with pianist Jon Whitten using the Yamaha upright piano in the Colin Hill Recital Room at Cambridge’s Hills Road Sixth Form College. The microphones used were Rode NT55 small-diaphragm condenser mics, kindly loaned by UK distributor Source Distribution, which were preamplified via the mic preamps of a Tascam DM3200 digital mixer and recorded digitally without any signal processing. Many thanks to the college’s Director of Music, Jonathan Sanders, for the use of the recital room and its adjoining control room, and also to Dan Jeffries and Tom Adams for their assistance with the sessions.

Multimic Setup 1

This microphone setup used three stereo pairs of Rode NT55 microphones: one pair in a coincident crossed-pair configuration using cardioid capsules; and the other two pairs in spaced-pair configurations using omnidirectional capsules. The piano was recorded by all mics simultaneously.

• Panels On: Without removing any of the instrument’s panels, its lid was opened and the mics were placed in horizontal line inside the piano above the hammers, as shown in the diagram. In addition, we also recorded two additional passes with the mics raised 20cm and 100cm above the instrument respectively to showcase the effects of increasing the miking distance.

Multimic Setup 2

This microphone setup used three spaced stereo pairs of Rode NT55 microphones, all with their omnidirectional capsules fitted. The piano was recorded by all mics simultaneously.

• Panels Off: Both the over-keyboard and under-keyboard front panels of the instrument were removed for these audio files. Three separate recording passes were recorded, to showcase the effects of increasing the miking distance: 20cm, 50cm (as shown in the diagram), and 100cm.

Further Reading

• To read (and hear) more about recording upright piano, check out this Sound On Sound magazine article, to which the above audio examples directly relate.