thecheapseats
Addicted to Fun and Learning
yep - they get low... lowest note on an 88 key piano is appx 27.5 Hz... lowest note on a bosendorfer imperial grand (97 notes) is appx 16.3 Hz... fun with subwoofers...
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Is Amateur Piano Recording This Hard?
- Thread starter amirm
- Start date
kemmler3D
Master Contributor
I think that all of these are phone recordings, you shouldn't expect much from them. See any actual mics in the video? There's your explanation...
MRC01
Major Contributor
Pitch stability is perhaps the most common reason. Especially on sustained notes, warble or wow causing slight pitch fluctuations is evident in most analog piano recordings, even good ones.
My old mentor, before he went digital, built a turntable with a truck flywheel, substituting rumble for pitch variation.
computer-audiophile
Major Contributor
Interesting man. (I briefly checked his bio) Is there a picture or something of the turntable? Couldn't he design a good platter bearing for it, or what was the problem.
Bill was great. He was the "master" of my residential college at Yale. We bonded over our love of music and gadgets, and my wife and I kept up with him until his death. I never saw the turntable, he only described it to me and said the rumble was pretty bad. His widow might have a picture, I could ask.
Acoustat speaker fan. Four in his living room, and convinced the university to buy two huge ones (like 4' wide and 8' tall) for the college dining hall, which he also had acoustically treated.
computer-audiophile
Major Contributor
Thanks, not so important.
But I thought with his profound physics background, it should be easy for him to design a good turntable.
One of the things that was fun about Bill is that he derived as much enjoyment out of failed experiments as successful ones.Thanks, not so important.
But I thought with his profound physics background, it should be easy for him to design a good turntable.
MRC01
Major Contributor
Nice, and that does help. Also why good turntables have heavy platters - rotational inertia = speed stability. But it solves only half the problem, since some of the warble is from the tape decks used to record it.
MRC01
Major Contributor
That's a sign of a true scientist. A successful experiment reinforces what you already suspected was true. But a failed experiment comes with the excitement of that something you suspected was not actually true, and you are about to learn something new.
thecheapseats
Addicted to Fun and Learning
how odd... I've now heard second hand from two individuals regarding him (yourself and my son)... he certainly has a legacy which is still retold there, as my son explained to me several months ago when he was visiting here... he's is in that same dept, on 'science hill' close to completing his grad/phd...
Poor pianos...
If someone has the cash ( about 100K) to add to a truly hi-end system that's my advice:
Steinway Spirio Player Pianos | Steinway & Sons
Steinway Spirio player pianos are high-resolution self-playing pianos that bring the world’s finest artistry and engineering to your home or performance hall.www.steinway.com
Plays for you,free of any recording and reproducing problem.
Can you think of anything better in terms of natural sound?
Bösendorfer Disklavier with historic performances
This video is fresh from Vienna. I thought some here would enjoy it. This is exciting to me:
This is a great thread talking about the complexities of choosing the player system.
computer-audiophile
Major Contributor
When it comes to the most beautiful grand piano sound, I would say: Fazioli.
thecheapseats
Addicted to Fun and Learning
for low piano notes in common repertoire for concertizing piano soloists (rarefied air) that's partially true - if excluding the colloquially known 'russian five' composers and their outlying cadre of a few others in that same category...
but in contemporary orchestral works - specifically film scores which have become the modern historical extension of orchestral repertoire in many ways, those very lowest piano notes are used quite often...
many times for creating sonorities with tension usually with tymps, contrabasson, bass trombone as well as double bass... it can get real creepy sounding - real fast - and is always fun to hear combined with picture, after the fact... definitely throws you for a loop the first time you see it on the page and have to execute...
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thecheapseats
Addicted to Fun and Learning
a lot of history regarding yamaha's disklavier system (as it's known now) are in the origins of joe tushinsky's pianocorder technology - and his personal desire to reproduce physical piano rolls (done prior to mass recording technology and performed by long dead notable pianists) to be played back on modern high quality pianos...Bösendorfer Disklavier with historic performances
This video is fresh from Vienna. I thought some here would enjoy it. This is exciting to me:forum.pianoworld.com
This is a great thread talking about the complexities of choosing the player system.
almost took a job there at that time (when I was a kid - starving/starting out) - fixing anomalies in deprecated and/or missing pieces of the original paper rolls to be transferred, due to rot and poor storage over the years... seemed far too tedious to me at the time... I guess they eventually found a crew of people to do it...
True that miking pianos can be challenging to get the best possible sound, but it's not difficult to get a good sound. The first time I miked my grand piano was when I borrowed a Nagra and a pair of KM-84s and had to record the part quickly and get the gear back quickly (in college, I had a 3 hour window, and the drive was an hour each way). Moderately close-miked, IIRC—it sounded good.
In the videos, there is just a mic in the room, apparently, and the room is not kind. Miking the room is fine, if the sound of the piano is the room is fine. The same would be true of miking an acoustic guitar, success is a lot more certain if the mic is close. Beyond that it's mic selection and location, and being in a better room if it sucks. Again, it's not hard to get a good sound, one that's not embarrassing like these recordings. It takes experience to get a great sound, though (or a lot of patience on the way to experience).
PS—I still have that piano, getting perilously close to 50 years later and 60 years since picking it out (the Bösendorfer was my #1, pops laughed at the price tag and told me to pick again). It's here in my office/studio. I've recorded many piano tracks. But almost exclusively with plugins like Ivory driven from a digital piano. Why? The time involved, mainly, plus the ability to pick a different piano after the fact. And it saved me from buying a matched set of mics.
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thecheapseats
Addicted to Fun and Learning
the first fine instrument we acquire after years of lesser instruments is always memorable... my first choice was a Hamburg Steinway B which by some miracle came to market in L.A. when I was ready to 'commit'... priced almost the same as a house I'd just purchased, I simply couldn't justify it in my head... chose a new yamaha c7, custom ordered with a renner action (had to be installed at the yamaha factory) was less than half what that B would have been... no regrets, it's been a fine instrument, but I still dream about that 'B'...
hmmm... earlevel... do I know you, in real life?...
MRC01
Major Contributor
I have a couple of albums that mention using a Fazioli piano and it does sound nice. However, never having heard one in person it's hard to say in a recording how much of that distinct sound is the room, the mics, etc.
Well, you have incredible taste. That's Lang Lang, considered to be one of the greatest piano soloists, if not the greatest piano soloist, of the present day, playing in one of the best concert halls in all of Europe.
He recorded that album in Vienna for Sony and it is on Blu-Ray/DVD, and CD. It was recorded and engineered by one of the best classical music engineers, Stephen Flock. Flock works at Berliner as an engineer and is also the head of engineering and owner of Directout Technologies, a leader in professional digital recording products and design, including ultraquiet A/D converters in their recording systems. He miked that piano and hall for 2 ch., multi-channel, 3D, etc.
"Much better" than the earlier posts is certainly true, but you sort of hit the Everest of recordings/performances with that one.
thecheapseats
Addicted to Fun and Learning
Lang Lang is a technician for sure - personally I prefer Daniil Trifonov for a number of reasons...
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