Concert Advice
 

I'll be videoing a solo pianist who will also be singing. I normally do lower end dance recitals where I just record the ambient coming from the speakers in the auditorium. mic on a boom stand. I'm be meeting with the performer and stage manager next week and just wanted to be sure of the optimal way to record. Apparently he will want the footage to promote his tour and wants it done right. I was thinking wireless lav and table mic on piano or letting stage manager set up the audio and plug into his board recording the ambient to one channel and the board to the other and mix it post.

Re: Concert Advice
 

I'm assuming this is a grand piano. I would advise you to put the lid on half stick (unless the singer has a really weak voice). Then place a stereo pair of mics, about five feet away from the opening, at a height midway between the top of the piano body and the lid, aimed horizontally or slightly downward into the "curve" of the piano, toward the strings. That should give you a reasonable piano pickup. Not sure what you mean by "table mic" but any sort of desk stand sitting on the piano will pick up all sorts of unwanted vibrations and thumps from the mechanism.

You will want another good mic, on a boom, for the vocal mic. Unless you have an exceptionally good lav, it will not do as well as a large diaphragm condenser for the vocals. Be sure you have adequate wind/pop protection on the mic. Also, run it wired, as that will give you cleaner audio than any wireless will. Position of this mic will depend on the style of singing. If the singer is classical/operatic and can really project, you can back the mic off a foot or 18" and probably get good pickup (just watch out for too much bleed from the piano). If it's a "lounge" type of singer who's used to swallowing a cheap vocal mic like an SM58, you may have to deal with that differently.

Mixing in some ambience might help, depending on your desired effect. Again, it's partly a question of what sort of music this is. If the performer normally works in an auditorium setting with little or no amplification, then the clients will probably expect to hear some reverb in the recording. If the performer normally works in a more intimate setting like a lounge, the client may expect a more intimate, dryer sound.

If possible take some reasonable speakers, or at least a set of really good phones, and let the performer and stage manager listen to a few trial takes. You will save yourself a lot of grief and possibly a re-recording session, if everyone can agree on the sound from the get-go.

Re: Concert Advice
 

The performance is described as "features nine original piano compositions, along with a spoken narrative". The lapel mic might be needed if he gets up and walks around. Thx Greg

Re: Concert Advice
 

There are 101 ways (and counting!) to mic a grand piano. It's not an easy instrument to record because of the quick percussive attack and the potential for getting a lot of mechanical noise - also the physical size of the instrument presents some problems/opportunities. A lot of commercial recordings tend to spread the stereo image out (ie bass to the left treble to the right, which is how the pianist would hear it,) but I've never liked that effect. Piano can put a lot of demands on your recording equipment - I've often heard "ringing" when using lower end gear.

What Greg recommended is a good starting point, but I think it will take some (a lot) of experimentation to get the sound you (the artist/client) want.

I sometimes find that even on half stick some pianos (especially a 9 foot concert grand) will overwhelm a vocal or a violinist. Also, some pianos don't even have a half stick, just low and high. Heck I've sometimes had to make up some felt covered wooden spacers when even low stick was too much for the soloist. And the lower the lid, the harder it is to get the mic's aimed right.

I usually try to cover both soloist and piano with a single stereo pair IF I can fid a spot that makes it work. Getting an additional mic on the singer/pianist can be problematic because they tend to move around a lot while playing. But it all depends on the genre - more movement for classical, but less likely that a classical pianist will be singing. (Unless it was Glenn Gould singing along with Bach!) Club performers are probably used to singing into a mic while playing and can restrict their movement accordingly.

I sometimes find that having the stereo pair fairly high (ie above what might be the sweet spot "looking in" to the piano) can work OK - you may have to decide whether the vocal or the piano sound take precedence and position accordingly.

My wife was once a concert pianist and still performs occasionally so this is a subject near and dear to my heart. She ALWAYS has an opinion about the recording and her concept of how it should sound is not always the same as my concept. But the performer ALWAYS wins! Be forewarned!!!!!

And have fun!

Re: Concert Advice
 

Jim, that has to be tough! If you mic from the usual position (curved side) the soloist (at the keyboard) will end up pretty hard to the left channel. That might, indeed, be what the audience would hear, but I'd bet the soloist wouldn't like that.

It makes my head spin, just thinking about this one.

Re: Concert Advice
 

I'm wondering if you couldn't go with a wired lav into a little Zoom for the vocals. Seems to me you want the vocals as separate from the piano as possible, so you can really tweak levels independently and pan either to your heart's content.

If it were me I'd go strictly mono for the final mix, but as you all know I know nothing about sound...

Re: Concert Advice
 

A wired lav is omni pattern, and will pick up everything.

This video below doesn't show the performance, but will give you an idea of the sound I got with the following mic placement. For a person sitting at the piano singing I used a large diaphragm condenser right in front of their mouth(must have pop filter or foam), and set to "cardioid" to reject the piano. It was a baby grand, and I put a simple Rode NT-4 stereo mic inside with the top up, and pointing at the strings from about 1.5 -- 2 feet up. Simple. If you don't have a stereo mc you'll need to rig up 2 mics in the piano.

YouTube - Dragonfly Estate


There may be better ways, but this is simple, and if the piano is in good shape it will sound nice without too many squeaks.

Re: Concert Advice
 

If you search "Piano recording techniques" on youtube you'll get lots of ideas.

YouTube - Audio Recording Techniques : How to Mic a Piano

Re: Concert Advice
 

Not all of them good :-)

EDIT
Chad: yes that link is good - sorry to appear negative; however when I did a YouTube search as suggested a lot of other stuff came up as well which was of rather uneven quality. But that's what you get with YouTube I suppose.

Re: Concert Advice
 

Exert a little control over the situation if you can -- don't let the guy walk around!

Lavs are not a first choice, they are instead a last resort. Lavs usually don't sound right for singing because of the position on the chest and the distance from the mouth. This is one of the reasons it's usually a PITA to intercut lavs with boom mics for dialog. It's even worse for singing.

Re: Concert Advice
 

Aside from the other reasons for not using a lav, this one scares me. The lav will surely pick up some bleed from the piano. If the lav is recorded on a Zoom, the sample rate will be slightly different from the sample rate for the piano's recorder. It will be a real challenge to fix that when you mix down. You will have to keep the piano in phase between the two recorders, and that is a much smaller tolerance than just keeping two different recorders in tolerable lip sync. If the recorders wander around in time, it could cause flanging which wanders around too... not pretty.

Out of curiosity, why? I'd think the piano would sound a lot more open and realistic in stereo.

Re: Concert Advice
 

@Greg

Sorry, I need to describe it better. Have to run to rehearsal now, I'll have a shot at it later when I get back.

Re: Concert Advice
 

See, I told you I didn't really know anything. Seems to me the Zoom could be a variety of sampling rates so there's no reason you couldn't match it to whatever other recording devices you have. And I'd go mono because, frankly, that's how most audience members would hear it if they were there. Really a single point of sound from the stage. Not like an orchestra. Silly in my mind to have the lower keys in one ear and the higher ones in another, as the audience never sits on the bench with the performer.

But again, what do I know? Except I do know there are cardioid lavs and for a spoken narrative are likely to be just fine.

With all due respect to the audio experts who clearly know much more than I do, talking about phase and flanging issues in situations like this is like saying the Titanic needs a new coat of paint. It may well, but that really isn't your biggest problem right now.

Re: Concert Advice
 

I like hearing all your opinions although I'm some what constrained by my budget and my equipment. I don't own a large diaphragm + accessories or a stereo pair. I have an Octava MK12 for ambient, AudioTechnica wired/wireless lavs, table mic, and H4N recorder. I can imagine using H4N for the piano and using the board's feed from the singer's dynamic mic. Wireless lav might be good form of backup that I can turn up on a separate channel on my mixer for the narrative sections. In my mind his voice should be the priority but I'll defer to the performers preference. Having him listen to test sample of rehearsal to avoid surprises sounds like a good plan.

I imagine the stage manager will only have dynamic mics, one for the voice and the other for the piano.

Re: Concert Advice
 

It's much more complicated that that. Assume that you have two recorders, each one set to a 48kHz sampling rate. Each recorder derives that rate from an internal crystal oscillator. But no two crystal oscillators are exactly the same. (That's why a camera and a recorder will "walk out of sync" over a period of 10, 15, 20 minutes.) One recorder might actually be running at 48,002Hz; the other one at 47,997Hz.

I've often seen it said that some recorders walk out of sync by 1 frame (roughly 1/30 second) in 15 minutes of running time. OK, let's assume that 3 minutes is a reasonable length for one song. That is 1/5 of the above stated 15 minutes; so the sync error would be roughly 1/5 of 1/30 second, or 1/150 second. In terms of lip sync, that's not noticeable. But in terms of mixing music tracks from two different recorders, when the sync difference is that great, it's serious. 1/150 second is half a cycle at 75Hz, so you will have complete cancellation at 75Hz, and at 225Hz, 375Hz, 525Hz, etc... a fairly significant comb filter on up through the audio band. And, since the error is different at different points in that 3-minute take, these filtered frequencies will be changing continuously. You really don't want to create that problem.

With all due respect, I wholeheartedly disagree. That's like saying a 3-dimensional object looks the same whether you look at it with one eye or two. You'd be surprised (apparently) at how much stereo information your ears will perceive in that situation. Not only stereo information about the piano and soloist, but even moreso about the reverberation in the room. Go to a concert hall with good acoustics, have someone play a piano center stage. Stand 15' away, listen with both ears, then plug one ear with your finger and listen for a while; switch back and forth. You will hear a huge difference. Or play a good solo piano CD on a good stereo, and flip the mode switch between mono and stereo... please try this, I think you will find it to be very educational.

Unless you know the final product will be played only in mono, you should definitely mic and mix in stereo.

I agree with you there. If you use the mic technique I described (or Jim Andrada, etc.) you will not hear the lower keys in one ear and higher keys in the other. You will get a fairly accurate representation of what a listener would hear if he were located near (or a little farther away from) the mic position.

That's a cute saying, but I don't think it's a valid analogy. In the Titanic example, you already have insurmountable problems, and you are talking about something (paint) that will have no effect on the problems.

In the point under discussion, we have no problems so far. We are trying to lay out some suggestions and procedure that will avoid problems. (We are not talking about the color of the paint on the piano, we are talking about recording the sound of the piano.)

Phase and flanging are not a problem at all right now! So let's not adopt a technique -- using two separate recorders with two separate time bases -- that will introduce this new problem.

--

All of the above is based on Pete's original description that the pianist is also singing. If that is not the case -- if he plays for a while, then stops playing and talks for a while, etc. -- then using a lapel mic with a separate recorder would work OK. But it will create a huge mess if the musician is playing and singing at the same time.

Re: Concert Advice
 

That actually sounds like a reasonable starting point. And letting the performer and SM listen to playback will guide the final "tweaks" on everything. Good playback speakers will be important.

The H4n mics should get a realistic image of the piano. Start with the recorder up on a stand, high enough to look down into the piano when the lid is partially open. (Again, you want to be at the curved side of the piano; start perhaps 5' or 6' away. The piano and lid are designed so sound will project out from that side... that's the side that always faces the audience.) Depending on the style of music, the artists might want it miced closer or farther away... let them guide you.

If you can get a feed from the singer's usual mic, that's also a good starting point, because it will get you the same vocal quality that the singer and SM are accustomed to. Hopefully it is a reasonable quality mic. Some singers are very picky and spend big bucks; others just use an SM58... keep your fingers crossed on this issue.

(Again, if by "table mic" you mean a desk stand, don't try putting that on the piano unless it has the world's greatest suspension, or it will pick up all sorts of thumps, vibrations, etc.)

Sounds as if you actually have a reasonable starting point, so give it a shot and see if you can make everyone happy!

Re: Concert Advice
 

Can't argue with anything you've said in the last two posts. You're undoubtedly correct and I still have a lot to learn.

Re: Concert Advice
 

The table mic was a mistake, I was just listing the different types of mics I own.

Re: Concert Advice
 

Adam, I thought about this before, and was going to try to include it, but didn't want to muddy the waters. (Uh oh, there's another aquatic analogy.) ;)

I wonder if photographers and audiographers think differently. I was quite interested in still photography as a hobby, from about age 12 to 32, so I have a small bit of hobby-level experience in that field. That does not at all make me a real photographer.

Most photographers are constrained to a medium which is displayed flat. (I will try to avoid talking about "dimensions" here because that might lead to more philosophical confusion.) When you take a photo, you see each object through a single lens, so each object loses its depth and essentially becomes a plane. When you compose the photo, you actually compose a number of planes stacked in front of one another. You're concerned with depth primarily as regards depth of field. But even if you shoot wide open, with very shallow depth of field, the result gets translated into more or less sharp parts of a plane image.

Stereophonic sound changed the audio world from a flat one to one with depth, starting over 50 years ago. So I think -- and listen -- in terms of three-dimensional sound. I suspect many "sound people" do the same, although with some variations. (Dialog recordists and editors are thinking of a single depthless track. Qualities like presence and reverberation can impart a sense of distance but that's not the same as depth.)

Anyway, I may be all wet (oh no, more aquatic analogies) but this idea occurred to me when you said that a piano was heard as a single source. You were overlooking the concept of depth. Do you think that might be related to the fact that your medium usually resolves itself into images that are in a single plane?

(By the way, your analogy reminded me of a comment I used to make about one of my former employers. I often said, "The only difference between this place and the Titanic, is that the Titanic had a band.")

Anyway, thanks for your thoughts, and Carry On!

Re: Concert Advice
 

That's actually a really great analogy and analysis. Could well be coloring our differing perceptions. My father-in-law is actually a composer/conductor who owns a sound studio and we've had lengthy discussions about the nature of sound and how it differs from pictures.

None of this helps Pete, of course, but it is pretty interesting.

Re: Concert Advice
 

You might also check with the venue's technical director/guy, I recorded a concert a few weeks ago and the house had some beautiful cardiod mics hanging from the ceiling. I just plugged my tascam in to the wall XLR jacks and got great sound. If you go that route, find out if the mics are powered, if they are, then you of course can turn off your 48v. But, nonetheless, on the day of the actual recording, MAKE SURE the power is on! That's what happened to me, the technical director forgot to turn the juice on. If I hadn't caught that, I would have been completely screwed.

For me, and I think for you, the best advice in this thread is to pick a set up and let the manager and performer sign off on the sound sample. From that point on, you're covered. Just do it exactly like you did in the rehearsal.

Re: Concert Advice
 

I can't speak for Adam, but I don't think too many of us that toil in creating one type of visual image or another, think of it as working in 2-D space. It's the opposite for me, one of my primary considerations in creating a frame is the illusion of 3 dimensions.

Btw, some great info in this thread. Thanks!

Re: Concert Advice
 

Let's face it - anyone (except maybe a trained opera singer) trying to be heard over a Beethoven sonata on a 9 foot concert grand is in big trouble no matter where the mic is placed.

On the other hand if the piece is designed to be heard with narration, then the piano will almost certainly "get out of the way" of the narration, ie, the balance between voice and piano will have been thought out ahead of time. And the odds are pretty good that the performer will turn toward the audience while speaking instead of just facing the piano and shouting into the air.

If you record the piano in stereo (which I think you should) then I think it's important that the speaker/singer be pretty much centered which would mean that the stereo pair would have to be aimed more across the piano toward the speaker/singer. There will be piano bleed into the speaker mic and speaker bleed into the piano mic so if you're going to pan the speaker's mic center, then you won't want the speaker bleed into the piano mic stereo image to be much off center.

Honestly speaking, I think for optimum results you should think about recording piano and narrator separately and mixing. If it's a live performance, it will be a compromise whatever you do so be flexible and have a clear idea in your head about whether the voice or the piano is the main subject, and act accordingly.

And good luck

Edit - just occurred to me to add that if you back further away from the piano it will minimize the stereo spread - ie the whole piano will be roughly in the center of the stereo image so much less of a worry re the centering of the performer's mic. For example, if you get 10 or 12 feet away the speaker bleed won't seem all that much off to the left, and the piano would still be easily heard. Maybe not optimal, but could well work out for you.

Re: Concert Advice
 

Sound on Sound magazine's website has several articles on piano micing in their archives that are a good resource.

Re: Concert Advice
 

Most of my work is in a theatrical situation, on stage, with an audience. While if I was recording a piano recital, I'd probably go with the pair of mics 5 or 6 feet away (or I'd actually use a single stereo mic that I rather like), there are two problems. However, there are problems when the pianist talks or worse, sings.

Questions. You mention an audience, is there a PA involved, or is the venue small, compact and there's no PA requirement? The snag is that piano's are loud. Especially on half or full stick, and the pianist with any form of omni miking will have considerable piano in it! If the style of music dictates you want an ambient sound, then you have a quandry. You need distance, but distance means lack of clarity when somebody is singing against the piano. A sensible alternative would be to mic the piano with a couple of condensers, and put another on a boom stand for him to sing into. I'd also have a lav on him for when he gets up and wanders. Record the lot and then sort it in the studio. Any attempt to 'tie him down' wouldn't work with the artistes I work for.

The other thing of course is the visual impact impact of mics all over the place. Mounting them at 5 feet away or inside the lid means floor stand and they look grim. It's actually quite possible to mount microphones inside the piano - some have convenient places to stick a small cast base and if it sits on a lump of foam, I've had pretty good results. Rolling of the very LF end helps with the thuds from the pedals.

One thing you could try, and this only works on some pianos (Yamaha C3) being a good example, is to mount the microphone underneath the sound board. It;s easy to do, pass the cable over the wooden strut, bend the microphone back up, around a foot below the board, and tape the mic and cables together, so they support themselves. I use a hypercardioid, and it works amazingly well, and nobody can even see it underneath. This is completely against all the advice you ever see. I didn't invent it, I was recording a German concert pianist, giving a demonstration on Schubert. Yamaha provided the piano, and I started to mic it up. No No says the pianist, I show you how. As I was a lowly recordist and I'd already heard this man rip into somebody else, I decided to do exactly what he said. It was great, and everyone was very happy. However - I tried it on other brands and it produced horrible boxy recordings. It works on the C3 and larger Yamahas. I have no idea why.

Another alternative technique you can use when you have to use the mics inside the piano, close in for visual reasons is to mount large diaphragms pointing UP at the lid. This too works rather well. If you want a more 'acoustic' sound, careful application of artificial reverb can be quite effective.

Re: Concert Advice
 

Thanks Paul

You've said well what I was fumbling around thinking about - thank you!

Yes - distance can be your friend - it can also be your enemy - and both at the same time.

One thing I've tried is one or two boundary mic's stuck on the underside of the lid. It can work well when the lid is open, but to my ears less well when the lid is closed (or almost closed.) I have a DPA mic stuck almost permanently under the lid of my wife's Bechstein grand. I've also tried them on the metal frame with somewhat mixed results. Here's the funny part - the boundary mic under the lid sounds OK for jazz or more modern classical, but too crisp for classical classical. I think you get too much of the attack for it to sound great for Mozart or Beethoven or Brahms etc, but for more modern percussive stuff it is fine. But then again, for Bach it can be OK - after all he really wrote for harpsichord or cembalo, etc which have a more inherently "twangy/stringy/attack-ey" sound.

Even with the lid closed or nearly closed, though, if there is a string player involved I've had bleed into the under-lid mic's. Mostly I just use the DPA for a little balancing and rely on the external stereo pair.

(I've also had some success with a mic under the soundboard - and it was my wife's Yamaha grand come to think of it. Not a C3, just a G3, but a rather nice one.)

Damn - every individual piano sounds so different that it's hard to generalize. To say nothing of the fact that each pianist likes to stretch or compress the tuning to suit themselves. My wife is always yelling at the tuners that she wants her pianos tuned to A = 442 Hz, not any wimpy old standard American A = 440 Hz

Too much rambling!

I guess what I really wanted to say is that I think you have to decide if you want to record piano with voice, (or violin or whatever) vs recording voice (or violin or whatever) with piano, vs voice/whatever and piano ensemble. In other words, is the voice the main instrument or is the piano the main instrument or are they sort of equal.

I think from what has been said that if this is modern piano with voice narrative as part of the music, then I'd start from the position that it's an ensemble and I'd start by backing away from the piano further which a) lets everything blend together more, and b) sacrifices both voice and piano to emphasize the ensemble-ness of the whole thing, and c) narrows the stereo image of piano/singer so the stereo image is more about the feeling of the space than about the instrument(s) themselves.

By the way, I think Schoeps has some clips of different recording setups for piano on their website - but again this is all about piano mic'ing, not ensemble.

And we haven't even talked much yet about the effect of the venue on the whole thing.

Re: Concert Advice
 

I don't disagree with that. But the key word there is "illusion." You can't really capture depth, in a reproducable way, with just one lens/camera... at least not from a physics/optics definition. Of course good photographers are good at re-creating the [i]illusion[/u] of depth by using composition, lighting/shadow, depth of field, etc. But someone looking at the end result (be it a paper print, video image, or projection on a screen) will see exactly the same thing whether they look at it with one eye or with two.

Contrast that to stereophonic audio recording, which really can capture the depth and spaciousness of the performing/recording space. A good stereo recording will sound drastically different if you listen with one ear (compared to two) or with the playback system in mono mode (both channels combined) compared to normal stereo playback.

If I look at a photo of a piano, with a singer standing in front of it, and the pianist partly hidden behind the piano, I really see a plane image of the pianist, partly obscured by the plane image of the piano, which is partly obscured by a plane image of the singer. I can't actually see any depth to the singer, piano, or pianist, although a good photographer might re-create the illusion of depth in such a way that, when I look at the flat composite image, my brain "sees" depth to it.

That's a bit different from using a good pair of mics, correctly, to capture a realistic sounding ambience of the performance in some given space. (Of course when playback is in a second room (the performance venue being the first room), over a set of speakers that produce their own idiosyncracies in the sound, maybe the audio recordist is also creating an illusion.)

I'm not suggesting that one way of thinking is better than the other. Perhaps one way is better when thinking about images, perhaps one way is better when thinking about sound. I simply thought it might explain why someone who works mostly with images would initially think of a piano as being just one point source of sound, rather than thinking about all the various aspects of that sound reaching our ears with different time/phase relationships.

After reading the many good suggestions in this thread, it's clear that there are as many ways to record a piano as there are to photograph one. The only common conclusion I can draw, which I feel strongly about, is that the piano should be recorded in stereo... it's too big an instrument, with too big a sound (especially including the sound of the room) to sound right in mono.

Re: Concert Advice
 

Well, a bit OT Greg, but you're on to the reason why I hate a stereo mic mounted on camera - as the camera pans the stereo image moves, which might accurately represent how it sounds when you're embedded in the real scene, but will sound just plain bad when you perceive the scene on a small "canvas" (even a 60 inch TV is small relative to the room you see around it, after all) which is fixed in a larger context, which in turn is giving you a lot of visual cues that won't match the audio cues from the recording.

Re: Concert Advice
 

Short answer to your question...

1. Make sure you have a dedicated microphone for the pianist's vocals. A simple dynamic mic will do.
2. Record the piano. Since the pianist is singing, I assume this is more of a pop aesthetic. In which case, try putting some mics close to or inside the piano.
3. Mix. Three channels is all you need...

YouTube - Chris Merritt - Tiny Bird, Live at Buchanan Hall

YouTube - Chris Merritt - Virginia, Live at Buchanan Hall 8/15/09

Re: Concert Advice
 

I just want to throw out there a +1 on NOT recording music on 2 different recorders. PHASE is an issue when blending 2 MUSICAL recordings together. And that is because of the variants of the crystals or whatever they use for a clock. Even with all settings the same, the drift will cause things to sound odd. Not so much if it's just dialogue. I'm starting to think that the OP may just not have the gear needed to do this.

Whatever you do, try it out long before the show on another day. Listen to what you get back at home so there are no surprises.

Re: Concert Advice
 

I went to the meeting yesterday and it was decided the stage manager will put two condenser mics on a boom inside the piano above the strings. Things were complicated by them wanting to close the lid half way through the performance but that would hit the boomed mics and would have to use a boundary mic inside but they finally settled on full stick to half stick, which will still be tricky to do in the dark but will give better audio than the boundary mic. Anyways I'm glad I got your input because I was able to understand and be a part of the decision made. It also turns out he won't be singing so a combination of wireless lav and dynamic mic will be use for his narration.

Re: Concert Advice
 

Good luck

Let us know how it comes out.

Re: Concert Advice
 

By the way, you can get magnetic mic stands that will work on the metal frame of a piano and have a gooseneck so you can position the mic's above the strings without having to worry about the lid hitting the mic's when the lid gets closed. Only worry would be how much the sound will change depending on lid position.

Some makers (like DPA) sell the magnetic stands for their own microphones but I think I've seen something that has a regular 5/8" threaded stud on the end. I think it was called Stage Ninja or something like that.

Re: Concert Advice
 

He won't be playing when its closed. It's so the view of the slideshow won't be blocked by the piano lid.

Re: Concert Advice
 

Don't forget to turn off the bubble machine before they start the slide show.

Re: Concert Advice
 

@Pete

Thanks - I get it!

@Greg

Are you old enough to remember Liberace? (I guess there aren't too many of us left - they closed the Liberace museum in Vegas recently)

Re: Concert Advice
 

A Liberace museum!? How disgusting.

Actually, when I mentioned bubbles, I was thinking of Lawrence Welk.

Re: Concert Advice
 

I laughed although I'm not old enough to have watched them air. I remember seeing infomercials a while back though.

Re: Concert Advice
 

Yeah, Lawrence Welk had occurred to me when you mentioned the bubbles. I have to admit I sort of liked the accordionist he had on his show (Myron Florin, I think).
.
Actually I'm thinking of getting a couple of those magnetic goosenecks I found at Markertek. Curious to see how our pianos would sound with the Schoeps mics inside (lid closed) compared with the little DPA boundary mic on the lid. Still not sure I would like the effect for classical, but for the price of the goosenecks it might be worth giving it a try and there's always a time when that kind of thing can come in handy.

Edit - I ordered a pair of the goosenecks. I'll let you know how they work out

Re: Concert Advice
 

You may also consider Audix D-Flex clips for miking inside pianos.

I frequently make bridges of gaff tape instead of using clips.