A while back I tried to properly record for the first time. It was a very interesting experience for sure since I had to do a lot of prep work for it. I was supposed to do record in the Fentener van Vlissingen hall in HKU but little did I know… they had rolled out the grand the day before. Of course no-one was present who was qualified to move it back so I had to book a different room since I had all the gear booked and my family to help. Then I had to kick out some unlucky student who forgot to reconfirm their room. All in all… everything was going exactly as I thought it would. Then the actual fun began (no sarcasm this time). We set up (take at least an hour for this if you want to try this yourself) two different mic setups. The first was a standard two cardioid setup where the mics are aimed at the place where the strings meet the wood, the second a combination of something I saw in a Brad Mehldau video and and an ORTF setup. It was interesting learning about microphones (specifically polar patterns) and how to avoid fase issues. Since I didn’t have the time to simulate mistakes I haven’t gotten down how it (fazing) exactly works but I’m sure I’ll get to see plenty of that in the future. All in all I had way too little time to get the takes I wanted (I was playing Bach’s 24th prelude and fugue from the Wohltemperierte klavier) but it was an experiment so I’ll still upload the video when it’s done. I’m very curious to see the end result!
Recording piano
