Tips for recording a piano

Hey friends,

a question from user snuffles and an answer from mdm in https://www.wikiloops.com/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=2909#post_21149 brought me to the idea of discussing piano recordings a bit.

I agree with mdm in that recording a real piano isn't an easy job, I've worked in real world studios when I was younger (both as a musician but also a technician), and I know that miking a really good and well-tuned piano is always a question of taste, context, and life-time learning. Maybe we have any pianists around here who are using real stringed instruments, and not digital and pre-sampled or modelled ones? Thanks in advance if you'd like to share some experience for the rest of us.

For using digital pianos, I first took the cost-free XLN Audio Addictive Keys Studio Grand which I've got together with my Focusrite interface, which is, I think, a Steinway in some recording studio in Norway. I'm no pianist, but my daughter used it on "my" most successful track here so far:



But since then, Zuleikha opened her own account here, and she also re-recorded the same song using a freely available virtual piano (played on her Yamaha Arius), and that one's called "Salamander Grand", sampled in thirds and 16 velocity layers, and it's a Yamaha C5 grand piano, see, read, and hear https://rytmenpinne.wordpress.com/sounds-and-such/salamander-grandpiano/ and https://sfzinstruments.github.io/pianos/salamander where you also have download links for it. Just compared them again lately, and we all liked that Salamander one better for the example I played. But here is Zuleikha's re-recorded track of the one above:



I also tried modelled ones like Pianotec, liked it a lot, but like I said, I'm not the piano player in the family...

So, I'd be glad for further input on this, and maybe it would also help other users like snuffles?

Thanks in advance,
and cheers,
Wolfgang

---

Sampled pianos have become so good now we have the computing power that I think unless you have a beautiful space, expensive microphones and a quality well tuned piano, real pianos are so difficult to capture they are rapidly becoming a thing of the past?

Sorry I can't help with recording a real one. If it were me, sadly (because I do love real instruments) I'd be looking at a good keyboard and VST.

Zuleikha's re-record sounds fantastic.

---

Your daughter plays beautifully Wolfgang!

---

This is an excellent source of information on recording an upright piano.

https://reverb.com/news/how-to-record-an-upright-piano-a-look-at-5-distinc-micing-techn...

---