Recording - May 2015 - 30

By Michael Schulze

Today's grand piano is the result of a long evolution that started with the harpsichord. A harpsichord has strings that are plucked by a feather quill (plastic on a modern instrument) and is not velocity sensitive. Around 1700, an Italian harpsichord
maker invented the fortepiano, which looked just like a harpsichord but had hammers
striking a pair of strings per note and played louder the harder you played (the name
"fortepiano" means "loud soft" in Italian). This is the instrument that Mozart and
Beethoven played. The action (the mechanism between the key and the strings, including the hammers) had single escapement, meaning the hammer bounced away from
the string even if you held the key down, to avoid muting the note. Modern upright
pianos typically have this kind of action, and you must fully release a key before you
can repeat that note.

The piano must be tuned by a professional. Never attempt to tune a piano
yourself! You won't do a good job and
will probably damage the instrument.
Find a piano that is professionally maintained, or pay a pro $100-$200 to do
it. You can also ask the tuner to check the
voicing. Over time the piano hammers
become hardened from banging the
strings, resulting in a brighter tone, probably unevenly so over the keyboard.
Voicing corrects this. The tuner will also
address squeaky pedals or other extraneous sounds.
Center the piano on the stage. You
want the piano to sound good in the
room, which means not too close to the
back wall (to avoid those reflections from
being too loud). The keyboard should be
at a 90 degree angle from the front of the
stage, and the lid should be fully open.
The lid is there to protect the delicate guts
when the instrument is not being played,
and the shape, angle, and density of the
lid is designed to reflect sound outward.
The piano also has a short stick, which
allows the lid to be only partially open.
This makes the piano a bit quieter but a
lot muddier. Its purpose is to mute the
instrument for apartment playing, or
when accompanying a quiet instrument
like a violin. However, the short stick is a
compromise. I can tell you from experience that the best pianists can play as
quietly as they need to with the lid all the
way up. Never record solo piano on the
short stick, and use all your sweet persuasive powers to avoid using it in any
other situation.

A grand piano has double escapement action, and you do not have to let the key
come all the way back up before hitting it again. This allows rapid repetition, as exploited by the great 19th century pianist and composer Franz Liszt, who used blindingly fast
2-fingered note repetition to give the illusion of infinitely sustainable notes. Your upright
piano might be an "upright grand", which means it is extra tall and has double escapement. In this article we will consider recording the grand and upright piano for any musical situation from traditional classical to in-your-face pop purposes. We'll start historically with classical recording, and end hysterically with pop recording.
The classic(al) approach
For street-legit classical recording, we need a grand piano. A concert grand piano
is 9 feet long and outrageously expensive. Go buy one, I'll wait.
Got it? Okay, now we need a real concert hall: even more expensive, but a large,
great-sounding room will suffice. You might have access to a 7-foot grand in a nice
sounding church. Inquire as to whether they will let you bring in your laptop and a few
mics on a Monday morning to cut some tracks.
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RECORDING May 2015

You will sometimes see people remove
the piano lid, but it's there for a reason. The
reflections off the lid really do contribute to
the sound, even for close miking. While it's
been done, for example on a few Elton John
recordings, you will find that the instrument
sounds kind of thin with the lid off, and you
risk damaging the hinges and pins.
For classical recording it is important to
record a proper balance of the direct
sound and the reverberation of the room.
As such we are going to place a matched
pair of condenser microphones anywhere from 6 to 12 feet away from the
piano. You'll want to use small-diameter,
single-diaphragm condensers.

Recording - May 2015

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