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How is a piano recorded?

What prompted this question is this afternoon's activity: going to the mall, an obligatory task of being a husband, we entered through Nordstrom. As the habit of Nordstrom is, they usually have a pianist play a baby grand near their escalators in the middle of the store. So while my better half was browsing, my son and I watched the pianist.
From a certain distance, I certainly couldn't localize where the lower register or the upper register or anything in between was, the piano sounded as a whole, singular unit. However, that's not the case in many recordings, at least what I have: the piano is spread wide b/w l & r speakers. Is this the result of close-miking the piano? I wonder why the rec engrs don't make it more like real live, but I have no experience or skill or any background in recording so I don't know. What are the considerations for close miking like this?
yr44
muzcal
66 posts
 
The piano recordings that don't sound real usually are miked much too close, often under the lid of the piano. A more realistic sound can be obtained by placing the mikes some distance from the piano and aimed towards the lid.
tobias
1,534 posts
 
IME the piano in real life sounds the way you describe. I can only suppose that piano recordings which place you so that you hear low notes at one side and highs at the other have been miked and mixed that way because that's what the producer thought we expected to hear.
yr44 OP
57 posts
 
Thanks Beavis. I'll take a look.
I was standing about 6-8 ft away from the piano, and it certainly sounded as a monolithic unit, no 'L to R piano soundstaging' as in many recordings. BTW, it sounded great!
jeffreybehr's avatar
jeffreybehr
805 posts
 
Most solo-piano recordings are done with the lid off and with the microfones either facing the pianist or his/her back. That's why we get upper frequencies on one side and lower frequencies on the other side of the soundstage. I own very few solo-piano recordings, but one I can recommend and which has some but not lots of the above-described 'stereoness', is by Mieczyslaw Horszowski (whew!), Nonesuch 9 79160-2, named something like 'Mozart/Chopin/Debussy/Beethoven'. It contains 2 Chopin nocturnes, o. 15 #2 (my fave) and o. 27 #2, plus Debussy's Children's Corner plus Beethoven's Piano Sonata #2, o. 2 #2. It was recorded digitally by Max Wilcox, usually NOT one of my favorite balance engineers, but this time he got it right, IMO. The piano has a VERY nice tonality and presence that sounds quite real at correct levels without being too forward.

I believe the CD is out of print--at least I couldn't find it among other Horszowski recordings at Tower--but I recently found 2 copies on Amazon.
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barnz1's avatar
barnz1
11 posts
 
I guess I'm outing myself as an "audiophile" but this talk about a live musical instrument reminds me of a story about a turntable... :)

Someone I worked with was demonstrating a certain high-end turntable to a difficult customer who didn't think it would make a beneficial difference. The customer brought in his table and some Brubeck records. When the 'good' table was played, the customer began shaking his head "no, no, no. The sound is no good, it sounds like you closed the lid of the piano."
My friend picked up the customer's record jacket and said "during this phase of Brubeck's career he always played with the lid closed, as you can see in this photo."
The customer quickly made his purchase and went home to rediscover the rest of his collection!
(At least, that's the way I remember it...) :)
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