Re: Looping (what else!) questions..Human Prepared Piano!

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

Hi Alex,
whow, you got yourself into a challenging situation here...
Concert grands have a range which produces fundamentals from 16-something 
up  to more than 4000 Hz. So generally, these low frequencies will be a 
problem for your P.A., your microphone and possibly your audio interface 
as well. So I sure hope your composition can live without the fundamentals 
of the lower one and a half octaves being properly reproduced...
Any microphony which is meant to minimize crosstalk from the P.A. will 
consist of (at least) two (identical) microphones. The general approaches 
I'm aware of which also have good properties regarding minimized crosstalk 
include:
          * two microphones below the soundboard (one on the left, one on 
the right)
          * two microphones above the soundboard.

In direct comparison, the "below" approach tends to have a more "round" 
sound. The huge disadvantage for your application is that you loose any 
detail of percussive effects happening inside the piano (e.g. the 
transients of somebody plucking a string or something), and I believe that 
these are an important part of your composition.
With the mics from above, a problem in your case is that they might get in 
the way of the performer when she's playing inside the piano.
Generally, I wouldn't see a good way to do this with the microphones at 
your disposal. Do you see a chance that you could borrow a pair of 
half-omni PZMs to be placed on top of the piano's soundboard? With that, 
you don't have the problem that they get in the way of the performer too 
much, pickup of sound from the P.A. is minimized, and as they are 
(half-)omnis, low-end reproduction is usually far better compared to 
cardioids and the like.
I hope you will be recording the performance (another tricky part...)
Best,
                 Rainer

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Betreff: Looping (what else!) questions..Human Prepared Piano!
Gesendet: Do, 21. Feb 2008
Von: Alex Graham

Hey all-

I'm currently working on a piece that I hope to have performed at a 
student composition concert at my University-

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