Recording - August 2013 - 42

When Jerome Gilmer’s latest CD, Remember Well, came my way, its tonal quality impressed
me immediately. Except for one track it is just Gilmer playing solo piano, on his personal
grand piano, in his house. The playing is very fine, as befits a professional of his caliber, and
the mix of Gilmer’s originals and his tasteful arrangements of older tunes is compelling... but
it’s that superbly recorded piano tone that puts this project over the top.
Jerome is no stranger to the readers of Recording, and since he lives in the area, we
decided to go ask him how he’d achieved this fine project.—LzR
Thanks for having me over again. Your grand piano still stands in a space just
inside the front door of your suburban house, with large windows close by, no
soundproofing of any kind, and not all that much space around the piano. And
yet it sounds superb! What’s the secret?
Jerome Gilmer: It starts with the piano. This is a Yamaha C7, a big improvement
over my previous C3 that I was lucky to trade in for a good deal. I had tried for years
to get that C3 to sound just the way I wanted, and never quite got there.
Can you describe what you were after?

Jerome Gilmer offers a remarkable piano recording from a very non-studio studio
I have a Don Grusin album that has a piano sound I love, and that was the tone I
pursued for a while. I know he uses Sanken mics...
Yes, but have you seen how he places them? As it happens, Don invited me to his
house outside of Los Angeles some years back, and I remember seeing a number of
strings with loops at the end of them dangling from the inside of the lid where he had
taped them up. Don showed me how he could place the mics differently from tune to
tune, laying them across different loops, to match the changing loudness and the
attack etc. All those dangling strings looked a bit odd, but Don sure made it work...
I’m not sure that such a look would fly up here on this floor...
So when you got the new piano, what did you do to get it to sound just right?
Once I got the C7, I had it constantly worked on by Reid Schafer, a specialist who
is not just a competent piano technician and tuner, but somebody who does critical
maintenance of pianos on concert stages. He knows just how to voice it so it sings—
the notes keep ringing and stay in tune for longer than you hear from most pianos.
Steve Avedis is credited with helping you—what was his contribution?
Steve is a fine engineer and producer. At first, he helped me get the tone I was after.
We tried a number of microphones; I would be playing while Steve placed mics and
swapped them out.

Interview and photos by Lorenz Rychner

Which mics did you audition?
We tried the [Neumann] U 87, the gold [AKG] 414, some ribbons... The ribbons
gave us the best low end, but not the greatest highs. At some early stage I had an
Earthworks PM40 PianoMic rig (reviewed September 2011) here and didn’t like it.
Well, when Steve encouraged me to try those, we listened again, and he adjusted
them until they sounded just right for all the tracks on the CD.
And they are so unobtrusive, I’m sure you’re not getting into trouble over the
look of them?
Not only don’t you see them when the lid is open unless you step up closely, but
you can put the lid down, no problem. [See the photos]
Your studio is in the basement, and you did all the recording yourself. How do
you do that without driving yourself crazy, running up and down the stairs when
you should be concentrating on the music?
I use MOTU’s Digital Performer, and, look here [shows the screen of his iPhone], they have
this app that lets me talk to my computer over wi-fi from up here. Everything! Record, pause,
stop, play, level, and I see and I can adjust the levels of the other tracks if I’m overdubbing.

RECORDING August 2013

Recording - August 2013

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