Master recording the Piano

Watch how leading engineers and composers setup and record piano for film and general music recording.

A film composer and pianist plays for us to help demonstrate 3 different pianos and how they approach recording - mostly with 3 different mic setups so that you can compare and hopefully use these ideas to help you get a better piano recording.

Andrew Sunnucks (L) and pianist Ben Andrew (R) setting up the Yamaha Piano

From felt or ear plugs on the strings to dog leads laid over the Steinway's strings, there's a whole world of creativity open to you to create unique sounds.

Special thanks to School Farm Studios for their pianos and time! Owner Andrew Sunnucks of Audio Networks and engineer Stefano Civetta were brilliant hosts and a very big thanks to them and Hester for her assistance.

A huge thanks to Ben Andrew for giving up his time to play and come up with some music for us to record and to Stuart Bruce for asking the questions and helping organise this feature.

00:00 Introduction

00:27 Prepared piano - Ear Plugs

01:20 Felt on piano strings

Engineer Stuart Bruce sat in the recording studio surrounded by the three pianos

02:20 Character piano

02:45 Microphones - Steinway setup

08:20 Steinway microphone audio samples

10:30 Yamaha upright mics and samples

15:30 Character piano mic setup

Ben Andrew plays the Steinway Model D grand piano

19:25 Andrew Sunnucks on Piano for Film

25:35 EFFECTS piano

29:00 3 piano ending

Some of the things that can make the most difference are what you do to the piano before event recording it and just a few examples of this prepared piano treatment ideas are shown and we hope to record further features with more. From felt or ear plugs on the strings to dog leads laid over the Steinway's strings, there's a whole world of creativity open to you to create unique sounds.

Some of the microphones used include:

Telefunken ELA M260

Coles 4038