Published Work

Caging The Beast

July 8, 2019 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, piano, piano micing, piano miking, recording magazine, recording piano

How to mic pianos

First appeared in the May 2016 Recording Magazine, reprinted by permission.

I have a lyric, “88 ebony and ivory blisses”. Many people feel that way about the piano – until they have to record it. The piano is big, complex, has a frequency range as large as human hearing. Plus, there are hundreds of different kinds. It’s a beast, and caging it is said to be the most frustrating thing in recording, but I think of it differently. For me, it’s the instrument with the most possibility. But “possibility” means variables, and that can be overwhelming, so I’ll try to get you started here.

I won’t go into the history or construction of a piano; you can look at previous articles by Michael Schulze and Nathan Rosenberg for that. I’ll just dive into miking it, and try to cover as many bases as possible. I’ll focus mainly on grand pianos, but I’ll give lip service to uprights.

The way I think about miking the piano is to first visualize the instrument and the room it’s in. I picture all the places a mic could go, and think about what that will sound like. I might even have someone play while I put my head in those spots.

Next, I think about how the piano can be manipulated. There are four basic states: open, half stick, closed lid, and lid removed. Where the instrument is in the room, the room itself, and playing style are also factors I lump into this category. I also put “problems” in this category: noisy pedals, overly bejeweled player, clicky fingernails, rattling keys, creaky benches, tuning issues, etc.

Next is context. Is it a concert or a recording? Is it a solo or group piece? Are there other instruments playing in the room? Classical? Pop? Rock? Where on the piano will we be playing? All of these factors influence your choices in miking up the beast.

Last, I think about the mic, pickup pattern and technique. Dynamics are rarely used in piano miking because the heavy diaphragm lacks the ability to capture high end nuance, but it’s not unheard of. Both large and small diaphragm condensers and ribbons are common, usually with an omni or cardioid pattern. Techniques boil down to spaced or coincident, and there are several flavors of each.

To review the overview, we’ve got: Placement, Instrument, Context, Mic(s).

I’ll center around placement, and consider other variables around that.

Room Micing

Many engineers would disagree with this, but I think there are no wrong places to mic a piano. It depends on what you want to hear. For example, if you want a muddy sound, you could go behind the lid, but usually the accepted place to mic any instrument is in front of where it fires. With a grand piano, that’s in front of the open lid, which is a large area. As with anything, the closer the mics are, the less room sound you get. This is a place to consider context. In classical recording, it’s typical to place mics in the room. You will notice the piano sounds even and live this way. How far back depends on the room, but try 2 or 3 feet back for a relatively close sound in a decent room, and go back from there. Try head high when you’re closer, or draw an imaginary line along the angle of the lid. Place the mics around where that would line would be – higher if farther away. This can help with capturing high frequencies reflecting from the lid.

With the lid at half-stick, high frequencies reflect more downward than into the room. So you won’t get as much high frequency brilliance with a half closed lid and room mics – a duller sound. Closing the lid and room miking really won’t work, unless you want major high frequency attenuation and a muddy sound. In the classical context, we usually leave the lid fully open.

As far as mic choice, small diaphragm condensers work great. Large diaphragm condensers are awesome too, but small diaphragms have a better off axis response, which is nicer for capturing reflections. You can do a cardioid pattern here, but if the room is nice, an omni pattern might be better. Even in omni, point the mic at the source (downward toward the strings), because there will always be SOME off-axis coloration.

You can choose between a single mic, a spaced pair (Figure 1), or a coincident pair like an X-Y (Figure 2). A spaced pair is straight forward but comes with two potential problems: phase and “hole in the middle”.

If they’re spaced too wide (Figure 3), you could get a feeling of having a hole in the middle of the stereo field. You can bring them a little closer, or you can try adding a third in the middle.

The other potential issue is phase. As your spaced pair is summed to mono (which still happens quite a bit in broadcasts), you could find a major change in tonality based on complex phase interactions. Careful placement and checking in mono can help, or you can change your technique to an X-Y placement. This will create a more natural stereo image, eliminate any “hole in the middle” issues, and (mosty) take care of phase and mono compatibility issues. That makes X-Y configuration seem superior, but I myself am more likely to use a spaced pair.

In front of the lid or way out in the room is not the only room miking option. You can also try a behind the player placement. An X-Y slightly above the player’s head, pointing down toward the strings (not the keys) is good, and I like to put a spaced pair 2 or so feet behind the player, 3-4 feet apart (Figure 4).

Figure 4 – Behind The Player Spaced Pair

There’s no reason not to try various locations in the room or multiple mics simultaneously. You’re under no obligation to use all the tracks in your mix. One of my recent sessions was miked with 4 spaced pairs of small diaphragm condensers. One was 2 feet apart at the edge of the piano, another was 4 feet apart about 4 feet back, another was about 10 feet back, 8 feet apart, and another was a pair behind the player. I varied my use of the tracks in the mix, but I found that the farthest room mics added nothing, because the room was fairly dead. Don’t be afraid to experiment, and throw away what doesn’t work.

Close Miking

Close miking a piano is more typical of pop and rock music, and is, to me, more complex and interesting. There are a million ways you could achieve something cool with close miking.

Any placement starting at the edge of piano and moving in toward the strings we’ll call close miking. I like a spaced or X-Y pair right at the edge of the case, where it curves, about two feet above the edge. Another set up I like is a spaced pair of 414’s a little deeper into the piano, but still a good 2 or 3 feet above the strings. As you move toward the strings, you’ll find more distinction, ie: certain strings will be emphasized more. This isn’t always good, so you want to play with placement and think about where the song is mostly played.

Another technique is to use an X-Y pair in the middle of the piano, using cardioid patterns. The directionality of the cardioid pickup in this situation can pick out the high and low strings.

Recently I put an omni 414 deep into the piano, about 6 inches above the low strings and 3 inches behind the dampers, to emphasize a line that was played only on the lowest octave. This track I centered in mono, but there were 3 other tracks to mix with: a 414 a foot above the highest strings, and a spaced pair at the edge of the case. The latter 3 were for overdubs higher on the piano, but I recorded all the tracks on all three takes.

All of these placements use an open lid, and I’ve used both cardioid and omni patterns to great effect. With a half stick lid, shoving mics inside gets trickier, but this might be preferable when other players are in the room. It’s also typical to use blankets to help isolate from the rest of the band. Half-closing the lid changes the acoustics inside the piano, but not THAT much.

Closing the piano entirely is another story. First off, you can’t stick booms inside a closed piano, and as I mentioned, room miking a closed piano doesn’t work. A traditional solution is PZM mics taped to the underside of the lid. With care, you can get cabling out of there without too much disturbance, and you can even pile on more blankets for isolation. The problem with putting PZMs inside a closed piano is a boxy sound. The inside of the piano is an insane place acoustically with the lid closed, and decent PZMs do an ok job, but it’s still tough.

There is a solution I like for that dilemma. It’s the Earthworks Audio PianoMic (reviewed in the September 2011 issue). The PianoMic mounts inside the piano (Figure 5), allowing the lid to fully close. The mics attached to the adjustable boom are what’s called “random incidence” mics, which means they “don’t care where the sound is coming from”. Basically, they’re “super duper omni directional”. This matters because sound inside the piano comes from all directions, making locating a specific source difficult.

Figure 5 – Earthworks PianoMic mounts inside the piano

Earthworks was kind enough to send me a loaner for this article, and I did some testing in an environment not ideal for recording: a showroom. Alex Boggs at 88 Keys Piano Warehouse here in Albuquerque (88KeysPianoWarehouse.com) generously lent me their space, where I installed the PianoMic on a baby Yamaha. The environment was relatively noisy due to street traffic and air conditioner noise, and I was curious how well I could isolate by closing the lid. I also tested with the lid open and at half stick. The playing masked the room and traffic noise, so isolation became less of a question. I really liked the sound; I did notice that with the lid closed, it was slightly darker and boxier, but less than I expected. What impresses me about the PianoMic is that it takes the guesswork out.

Figure 6 – PianoMic goosenecks can be re-posititioned

The mics sit on tiny goosenecks so there is some play (Figure 6), but really not that much choice in the grand scheme of things. This makes miking the piano less overwhelming. You sacrifice some flexibility, but I like the efficiency. I especially like that notion for live situations, and lo and behold, Earthworks makes a touring version of the PianoMic which breaks down more for easier transport.

Even with great mics, a closed lid is the least desirable scenario, but when you must close the lid, I like the PianoMic.

For an open lid, I already described spaced and X-Y pairs placed either at the edge of the case, or deep within the piano. I tend to gravitate toward the player, and I’ve spaced two 414’s as wide as the width of the piano, 2 inches from the strings, right up on the hammers. Another option is to bring that pair together, or X-Y a pair of small diaphragms right up near the hammers toward the middle. This will yield a percussive sound with a lot of attack. Any of these techniques might get you a lot of pedal noise, though, and depending on the player and piano, that may be too much.

You might solve that problem by going to an overlooked spot on the piano: the foot. In Nathan Rosenberg’s article on our website he says, “there is a wonderful place at the tail, just about where the back leg is, or often just outside the case. Here, the various registers tend to project in a surprisingly uniform manner.” That’s a good place for a mono recording, too. Thanks, Nathan!

Another accepted technique is to place one mic toward the middle of the group of high strings (toward the music stand) and a second more toward the foot of the piano. Typically these would be condensers in omni configuration.

Another extreme option is what Elton John producer Gus Dudgeon did – remove the lid. This allows you to hang mics above the strings almost anywhere your heart desires. It can result in a considerably brighter sound with less low end power, and that may not be for everyone, but some people swear by it. A spaced pair of omnis about 2 or 3 feet above the strings would be reasonable.

Of course there are the “sound holes”, which aren’t really sound holes, but can yield some interesting results. One technique involves an X-Y pair about halfway between the lid and case, pointed diagonally toward the strings. People have also been known to stick a directional mic right down into a hole, usually as a supplement to more traditional techniques (Figure 7). This is the one situation where a dynamic might suit you. I once put an SM57 in the middle hole, ran its cable directly to two guitar pedals (delay and distortion), ran that to a vintage Fender amp, and miked that amp like I would a guitar. I put the amp in an isolation booth across the room and closed the door and it was STILL feeding back! The point is, there are any number of creative things you can do, like miking under the piano to help bolster your low-end or for a mellow sound (Figure 8).

Indeed, there’s an endless variety of spaced pair, X-Y, mono and multi-mic configurations you can try. We’ve talked mostly about condensers because that’s more common, but in any of the situations I’ve described, you could substitute ribbons. We’re not done though. We haven’t talked about the mid-side pair, which can be a great way to use ribbons.

A mid-side pair makes use of two mics to create 3 tracks. Mic 1 – the “side” – must use a figure 8 pattern. Mic 2 – the “mid” – is a cardioid, pointed at the sound source. The side mic is perpendicular to the mid, so the figure 8 is left-right of the source direction. Once recorded, the side is doubled and one side is phase-reversed. These two tracks are panned hard and the mid is placed in the center. You can then mix to taste. A mid-side pair can be quite beautiful on a piano, and is perfectly mono-compatible since the 2 sides will cancel when summed. Placement of an effective mid-side pair for piano is similar to other placements – there are plenty of great possibilities. The other day I set up a mid-side pair at the edge of the case (Figure 9), right where I would normally put a spaced pair.

Figure 9 – Mid-Side pair at the edge of the piano

I loved the result. I also loved the result when Houston engineer Rock Romano recorded me with a mid-side of ribbons placed about the middle of the piano, with the cardioid pointed right at me. However, I do find that a mid-side can go wrong a little easier than other techniques. The experimental set up in Figure 10 was placed near the edge of the case a little higher, and I found the result lacking depth and character. I ended up killing side two and panning the mid left and the original side right to salvage the take.

Figure 10 – Mid-Side pair higher near the edge of piano

That brings me to a point on mixing. It may seem there’s no room to play in mixing a piano, but that’s not true. Especially if you use multiple mics, there are many ways to experiment and adjust. For example panning an X-Y closer together is always an option. A spaced pair will start to change tonally as you bring the panning in (because of phase issues), but that tonal change may be something you like. Just as there are no wrong ways to mic a piano, there are no wrong ways to mix it.

Before I end, I’d like to give my promised lip service to uprights.

Upright pianos aren’t recorded nearly as often as grands, and the reason is simple: they don’t sound as awesome. But that doesn’t mean it never happens. Some general concepts still apply. Condensers and ribbons usually work better, spaced pairs have more phase issues than X-Y pairs, and close miking yields less room sound than getting farther away. The upright is physically different though. So where do we place mics? There are three basic possibilities: Inside or above the top (with the top open), in front of the piano underneath the keys, or behind the piano. Upright pianos are often shoved up against a wall, and it’s probably best to not do that. It’s also probably best to remove panels either in front or in a back, to give better acoustic access to the sound board and strings. My personal preference would be a spaced pair of cardioid condensers placed about 2 feet off the ground, right about even with either side of the bench, so the piano player kicks them when sitting down or getting up, with panel removed. I once shoved a cheap dynamic into a 100 year old out of tune monster and the result was…magnificent…in its way.

By now you’ve got the picture that piano miking is a complex and variable task, with a lot of room for creativity. I’ve covered as much as I could, leaving out one big possibility: surround. That’s a can of worms that I think deserves its own article. Talking about piano miking is by no means simple, and neither is getting what you want from such a complex instrument, but I hope you’ve at least got some places to start now, and at best, a better idea of what to expect when caging the beast named Piano.

In case you’re wondering, I put together a bunch of notes and samples from my session with the EarthWorks PianoMic – you can get all that stuff for free right here.

Changing Of The (Pick) Guard

June 14, 2019 by Aaron

Modern use of guitars is changing

This article appeared in the December 2018 (I think) issue of Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

A curious thing has been happening lately in my studio. I’ll hire a killer guitar god, bang out a session, throw down a great mix thinking “ohhh yeeaahh” and when I seek feedback, I’m told the track sounds dated or old. For a little while, it was every time there was any kind of guitar involved. Once it was pointed out, all those tracks sounded stale to me too. What gives?

Needless to say this was quite disturbing, because I love a sick guitar track. I love putting one on a record even more, but that’s mainly because I can’t play the guitar to save my life. I’ve had guitars since I was 16 (that’s 27 years but who’s counting?), but I can play an e chord and that’s it. So maybe this whole trend where guitars aren’t as central is good for me?

This really got me thinking, and almost immediately, I started seeing article after article about the decline of guitar sales (over the past 10 years, electric guitar sales have gone down to about 1 million annually, from 1.5 million), the death of rock and roll, and so on. Everyone has an opinion about why, and the guitar-making giants have their opinions about how to slow or reverse their apparently imminent demise. I’m more interested in making hot tracks, telling amazing stories and moving people to dance, yell, sing or cry.

So the question for me became “why does this instrument sound old?” and “what do I do about it?” Do I remove guitar from my productions? Do I use it in a different way? How do I coach a guitar player who wants to keep up with the latest trends?

Well first, let me say this: Trend chasing isn’t always important. Straight forward, guitar driven rock and roll will be relevant as long as there’s someone who’s moved by it, which, Beethoven will tell you, will probably be forever. Trend chasing is also dangerous to creative flow, and can be detrimental to originality, leaving a person forever one step behind the edge. In other words, I don’t copy the latest hot acts. I AM the latest hot act, and I encourage you to think the same way.

Now that that’s out of the way, we can talk about the role the guitar plays now, as opposed to the role it played 10, 20 and 50 years ago, and more importantly, some ways to keep it fresh in the studio.

But Why?

First it might help to understand why my track with the shredding 16 bar guitar solo and nifty keen twice dubbed, stereo spread distorted rhythm track sounds old, and why I would gravitate toward that, even though I don’t play guitar. Well, because it IS old. It’s something that we’ve all heard a thousand times. That’s not a bad thing at all! But that’s the basic reason.

A rock band has this basic line up: Drum kit, electric guitar, electric bass, vocal. There may be piano, synths, other vocals, but that’s been the foundation for long on 70 years. I haven’t been around THAT long, so why would I be slave to that? For the same reasons I make music that’s very different from that, and there are two big ones:

1 – Guitar driven rock-n-roll has been the most important musical thing in the world for longer than I’ve been alive. Of course I want to emulate that, it’s what I think matters.

2 – Guitar driven rock-n-roll is hard to record. Until maybe 10 or 15 years ago, you really had to BE somebody to have the money and access to record that music. Of course I love it when I can sound like that, it makes me feel successful.

Ironically, these are also reasons that straight forward guitar driven rock seems to be getting less and less important. New musical trends are often initiated by people who lack the resources to do things the old way. Hip-hop is a great example. Grand Master Flash used two old turntables because that’s what he had. EDM is today’s version of hip-hop. Samples, synths and “fake” drums are easy and cheap to create, and an intrepid kid with a crappy laptop can make music that way. She may not even have the resources to learn how to play a guitar, let alone the scratch to get a big ol Marshall stack to play with, but she’s got a laptop.

And of course, the young and creative tend to want to push past what they’ve heard before.

So, now the pop landscape is dominated by sounds other than your basic 4 piece rock band band.

But the guitar isn’t dead by any means. I didn’t say sales had gone down from 1.5 million to 0 – a million is still a lot! But at the cutting edge, it’s being used differently. So I’ll spend the rest of this piece talking about how, and present a few ideas for using it in fresh ways in your productions.

Acoustic

While I have noticed a drop off of new and hot electric guitar driven rock, I have noticed a significant pick up in the number of acoustic driven acts and songs. Ed Sheeran uses nothing but an acoustic guitar and a looper on stage. Jason Mraz and Jack Johnson are older examples, but they’re still relevant, and they’re acoustic guitar people. Satellite radio has an entire channel dedicated to “coffee shop” versions of hit songs. And in my productions, my favorite killer guitarist has recently given me a few latin influenced nylon string acoustic tracks that absolutely no one said sounded dated (even though THAT tradition is way older than rock and roll).

So idea one is pretty simple: go acoustic. And if you can get creative with technology like looping, effects and genre mixing, you might discover a completely new sound. Tommy Emanuel is incredibly creative with a series of effects pedals and wildly different playing techniques, all using an acoustic guitar. For another older example, look to Ani Difranco’s array of oddly tuned acoustics.

Even a plain acoustic guitar somehow remains a more timeless sound, probably because it’s another example of something that a creative person with no money and no band can use to show up anywhere and move people.

Texture

Matt Bellamy (front man for Muse) was quoted this year by the BBC as saying “The guitar has become a textural instrument rather than a lead instrument, and I think that’s probably a good thing.” That’s an astute statement, and if you listen through a bunch of hit music today, even hip-hop, you’ll be able to pick out guitars that sometimes don’t even sound like guitars. Big, reverby swells and pad like sounds, boops, beeps, noise tracks, even crazy effects and odd techniques that sound like synths are all possibilities. After all, the guitar is actually a super versatile instrument. You can bend the strings, you can break all kinds of fretting rules, and you can add effects like crazy. And the cool thing is, a great guitarist can switch from texturing to rhythm to traditional lead relatively easily.

Check out “Last Danger of Frost” by Steve Kimock for some crazy textural yet melodic guitar work, or listen to U2’s “Beautiful Day” for textural work that also serves to create a groove.

Throw Back Farther

One of the problems those of us of a certain age have is that we throw back – to our youth. That’s the surest way to sound and feel old. But throw back art is almost always in vogue, when it’s ACTUALLY old. Instead of throwing back to your youth, throwback farther. Throw back to your parents or grandparent’s youth. Think at least 40 years back. Have you noticed that 70’s movies are getting cool now? 80’s rock hasn’t made it back just yet, but it’s starting to poke it’s head in the room.

So when it comes to guitar, try thinking back to the 50’s. Portugal The Man.’s “Feel It Still” uses a really 50’s feeling spring reverb’d bass/guitar combo to give the track a retro feel, but the use of newer technology and drum technique in combination with that, as well as a very un-fifties lyric set and modern female vocal makes it feel weird, fresh and cool. Bruno Mars’ entire act is a purposeful throw back to old school funk R&B and it works because there are slight differences in the production style and culture that connect it to now. The guitars in these productions are clean and funky. They generally aren’t distorted or bluesy sounding. Take off the distortion, throw in a wah pedal, and see what happens.

And of course, if you or your guitar player friend are steeped in older traditions like classical guitar or flamenco, you can come up with brilliant new combinations that ground themselves in the past yet pull you forward into the future.

Jump Forward

Here’s another idea. Use the guitar as a tool to create EDM-like grooves or technological wonders that combine recording technology with the instrument. Recently a radio promoter and artist manager told me that a song sounded great except for the guitar, which he said would be an easy fix, just use the guitar in a new way. He pointed me at an act called Nvdes, which is ostensibly guitar driven, but on many tracks you wouldn’t necessarily know it. Their use of the guitar doesn’t always sound like a guitar, but it’s not necessarily textural or secondary. Often a guitar creates their groove, but it’s just – well, different.

Post Malone’s “Better Now” starts with a barely identifiable guitar which forms the foundation of the groove, similar to The Edge’s work on “Beautiful Day”. At least – I THINK that’s a guitar!

Or…Metal It Up

When I talked about guitar driven rock’n’roll before, I neglected something important. Metal. Metal is still metal. It’ll always be metal, and metal is for guitarists. But even then, the genre has been pushed, morphed and split. Metal guitars combined with rappers ala Rage Against The Machine, Limp Biskit or Linkin Park, ethereal female vocals like Evanescence, or even with traditional Scandinavian folk are all examples of odd metal pairings that push that genre. Try Cellar Darling for a curious mix of these things like textural work, ethereal female vocals and traditional driving metal guitars. Or if you want a true blending of genres, try The Sidh (one could even argue against calling them metal). The point is, if you want you can just go ahead and double down on guitar and metal things up, and you can still be inventive!

Mix Up The Mix

It’s not just about playing style. You can experiment with new mix techniques too. Right now, minimal and spacious is trumping big wall of sound kind of material, so instead of a double tracked stereo guitar, you might try a mono track, panned just a little left or right. Instead of a huge full spectrum distorted guitar, try just a little fuzz, eq’d tightly into a smaller frequency footprint, to leave room for other instruments to play a bigger role in the overall picture. Or go bigger than ever, or super reverby, and neglect the other elements of a traditional band, to create something that’s truly and only guitar driven. The idea here is if you haven’t heard it, try it.

Other Elements

Finally, as you try to freshen up your guitar sound or tweak a dated sounding track, you might consider that the culprit may not be your guitar at all. The guitar may be the most important element of a traditional rock band, but it’s not the only element. What would your song sound like with a blues-rock guitar track, but a drum machine style rhythm track? How about no drums, or a cello instead of a bass guitar? The possibilities are endless.

Speaking of drums, this conversation is larger than the guitar. Drums have also seen a similar shift in their usage and role in modern music, and next month, we’re going to tackle that subject as well. We’ll talk about how a drum kit can sound dated, and what to do with that, as well as alternatives to the traditional trap drummer that could freshen up not only your tracks, but your stage presence as well. Don’t worry drummers, we won’t leave you behind!

Until then, happy shredding, all you six string samurai!

Aaron J. Trumm can play e-minor and sometimes a version of a minor on a guitar. Check him out at aarontrumm.com and talk to him on social media @AaronJTrumm.