Hot answers tagged piano
8
If you like the piano sounds on your keyboard and are confident that you can play your piece without making mistakes, then you can simply use any recording program (e.g. Audacity) to record the sound using the audio inputs on your soundcard. MIDI is not required at all.
If instead you want to use MIDI, that gives you the option to make subtle corrections ...
6
I never made a decent recording of a grand with a dynamic mic. If you don't care about stereo, I would get rid of the 57, and just position the NT1 at the good spot. Depending of the kind of music, I'd put it just inside the piano - on the edge with the lid open - with pop or jazz music, (when in a reverberant room, open the lid just a slight bit and get the ...
6
Try to find the sweet spot in each and give it a little EQ boost, while cutting that from the other tracks. Also, cut areas where the tracks have no contribution, e.g. below 100hz for vox/guitar, and above 10khz for the guitar (e.g., you'll have to play with it).
A more advanced trick is to use side-chaining compression between the vocals and one or both ...
5
First, the D-20 isn't a piano. It is a synthesizer, which is a type of instrument that allows you to create a wide variety of sounds. The good news is that the D-20 was intended for creating realistic instrument sounds rather than just sci-fi bleeps and bloops. The bad news is that by 2013 standards, the D-20 is going to sound a lot less realistic than ...
5
Well, I don't know for sure, but I wonder if the statement is even correct.
How often do you see a piano where the player face the audience? In most cases people encounter real pianos (ie at home) the piano faces the wall and the player has his/her back to the audience. In concert situations the pianist usually sits with his side to the audience, so there ...
5
You can get more sounds either by purchasing disks made specifically for the D-20 or you can get MIDI (.mid) or Sysex (.syx) files to send to your keyboard from your computer via MIDI. You can get a copy of the owners manual here. See chapter 5 of the owners manual volume 2 for instructions on how to transfer/receive data via MIDI.
5
Before you buy any microphones, you will have to consider how you will connect them into your laptop. It sounds like you don't have a separate sound card, and the microphone input on your laptop is likely to be poor quality.
There are several options. First you could get a microphone that has a built-in USB interface (eg the Samson C01U). This will be the ...
5
In short, yes, our keyboard and computer are enough, so long as you have some recording software! More detail follows:
There are two things coming out of that keyboard that you can record:
The audio
The MIDI data
Recording the audio will preserve the audio signal from the keyboard. Eventually, you'll need to do this if you want your recording to ...
5
Assuming you're talking digital:
Punching in can be tricky, since no musician starts at exactly the same point in time on every take. Fingerstyle guitar has similar problems; there are always overtones hanging around.
I dupe the track I want to punch into, but without audio. (I.e., preserving settings, gain, and so on.) Then, record the bit of music in ...
4
Your keyboard has an option for an mLAN16E expansion card, which is a firewire interface that acts as an ASIO sound card for your computer. If you have this expansion then use that. If not, you might be able to pick one up for cheap online. Otherwise, don't worry about it.
Your keyboard also has a USB MIDI interface. Simply plug a cable in, and your PC ...
4
This is a very tricky question because much of it is subjective. What may sound acceptable or even good to you may not be bearable for someone else and vice versa.
That said, there are several tiers of techniques and equipment that need rising levels of money and expertise. So I will try to answer the question as simply as possible.
The simplest way to try ...
4
If you're working in a computer, and you record a second track in addition to the original, you can apply a crossfade or volume envelope after the recording is completed, to fade the portion of the new track you want into and out of the mix, and then you won't have to worry about getting the punch perfect.
3
It should be easy enough to find a SoundFont that contains what you want, like this one.
Note that most SoundFonts bend each sample a few notes each way to cover the entire keyboard. If you want one .WAV for each note on the piano, the Fruity Loops Studio demo allows you to make the files by just opening the piano roll, making the note then saving it in ...
3
Usually you work mics which record the "direct" tone and mics which record the room sound. So place your SM58 in the middle near the piano as you had. And place to mics 2-3m away from the piano. Then mix all three together. You'll get clear piano sound with nice room reverb and a stereo effect.
2
Back when I had access to a grand and was experimenting recording it, i ran into the same situation - one condenser, and one cardioid, both not of remarkable quality. I got the best sound (although not perfect) by placing the condenser 3 feet above the strings on an open piano, above middle C, pointed at the strings. I placed the 57 underneath, but had to ...
2
You do need additional software, but since you are recording only one thing it doesn't have to be particularity complicated. I would recommend Audacity as being both quite good and free. In it you can record the sound of the keyboard via the line in on your computer, cut off empty time at the start and beginning of the file, and adjust the levels. You can ...
2
I would happily trade you for a synth with a piano mode. :-D
I don't have one of these, but the nature of this synth is a bit different than a sampler with basic envelope. If there is a piano sample on there, I suspect the reason that it won't go on the full keyboard is because it would sound terrible! You would be loading one "piano" sample for the ...
2
There seem to be quite different models of the Privia; the one I know doesn't actually have a real line out but a stereo headphones output. Now, this is normally not optimal for recording in a complex studio setup, but can work surprisingly well with computers' stereo line-in's. Apple is really quite decent in that regard, so you might in fact get absolutely ...
2
As has been mentioned in comments, the set-up you need is dependent on your budget and your desired quality. If all you need is a mono piano track recorded, then a 1/4" to 1/8" converter will be perfectly acceptable. Since you mentioned you had access to GarageBand and Abelton, then this will even work to layer the tracks and cover all the parts you need.
...
2
Never expect to get usable quality when recording through laptop built-in sound hardware, be it the microphone or just the preamp and AD.
A microphone that you can operate at all on your sound card's mic input is almost certainly not suited for piano recording; virtually all such microphones require 48V phantom power.
But you say this problem doesn't occur ...
1
How recently has your piano been tuned? The higher notes have two or three strings per note, so it is possible that the high-frequency phasing is because some of those strings are out of tune by a few cents.
Two other things to consider:
Are you using a single microphone, or either a pair or a "stereo" mic? If you are recording in stereo, try moving the ...
1
This sounds like a phase effect rather than a wah effect. My first though is that you are getting some interaction between the "direct sound" of the piano and reflected sound. I think this is called "comb filtering" and in this particular case is undesirable.
Experiment by moving your microphone position. Also look into "undesirable phase problem piano ...
1
Rosegarden should do the job.
If you have programming skills, it is extremely easy to generate MIDI files like this with python or perl and the appropriate MIDI library.
Along similar lines, I wrote some tiny Pure Data patches for holding long, droning notes. You can get them at the Pure Data forum (you have to sign in to see the attached files).
Update - ...
1
Keeping in mind that I've only ever mic'd a piano once in my life, and it was a baby grand, not an upright...
Point your two mics straight at the strings, on either side of center. Don't necessarily go to the extreme right or left, but somewhere in between. Experiment to find the right spot. You are definitely going to get "rhythm on one side, melody on the ...
1
There are loads of free sampled pianos on the web. The University of Iowa had free piano samples already in AIFF format, but their site seems to be unavailable at the moment.
A lot of the other free sampled pianos are in SF2 format, meaning you would have to find a free utility to extract the WAVs, and convert them to AIFF, which may be more laborious than ...
1
I think in live situations you will run into the problem that only two condenser microphones will not capture the whole range of the piano effectively.
If you move them too close, you won't capture the whole sound board.
If you move them too far, you won't even be able to make out the piano in a live application, especially if there are other instruments ...
1
If you cannot punch in right as the sustain pedal is released, you'll want to have the pianist listen to what s/he is playing before the punch point and try to match it as closely as possible so that the sustained notes don't sound to weird. Depending on the complexity and length of the piece, it might be better to just to the entire thing over again :(
1
If you have a pair of headphones move around the microphone (or if you have an assistant make him move the microphone whilst you instruct him over the headphones) in and outwards from the piano lid and across the board.
This because some of the biggest difficulty that I found with relatively poorly maintained grands was the fel sticking to the strings and ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
