Because both these gentlemen seem to be or have experience as recording engineers.
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Good to know. I wasn’t aware of that.
Could it be (my WAG) sympathetic vibration, piano to mic?
Clamping small mics to the harp (metal internal frame) of the piano is common (typically lid up). They pic up vibrations directly as well as from sound pressure of the air. It is a nice direct, intimate sound, with huge dynamic range. Closing the lid reflects sound down with less delay.
@badbeef will have some great observations.
In addition to the things already mentioned above, these aspects are very important.
If you think about how your stereo interacts with your room, most of us are familiar with “how our room sounds” with respect to our stereos. Imagine putting a grand piano with the lid up in that same room. Think about how the sound radiating from it in all directions would absolutely swamp the typical room with sound. It is not an acoustically dead cabinet with drivers in one face!
Yes - we have the ability to parse this automatically to some degree - a piano in a small room doesn’t sound “bad” or “swamped by the room” to us. Our brain sorts it out. Perhaps related to the ability to pick out a conversation at a noisy cocktail party.
But when using mics, the neural networks aren’t in there (yet😝), and the perception of the resulting stereo reproduction is an entirely different animal than the experience of being in the room hearing the instrument being played.
The best recordings of piano tend to be done in a decent-sized (or larger) room that sounds good to begin with (has what we would call “good acoustics”) and capture a nice balance between the instrument and the sound of the room. Too much or too little room can be readily perceived as being more or less desirable.
This is particularly tricky if you’re just using a single pair of mics. Shove them in very close to the strings, and you may get a good piano sound, but you effectively limit the sound of the room audible in them compared to the instrument. This can be a good thing if the room sucks or the environment is noisy. Put them too far away from the instrument, and the room sound can predominate.
Mic choice is another story.
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I’ve felt this on many great recordings of piano trios, even where the artist/composer is the pianist! Older stuff by Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans, etc.
I think a big part of this had to do with recording with a stereo pair or Decca Tree. Getting the placement of the VERY different instruments in a trio with respect to a pair is very challenging, if nigh-on impossible. Sometimes upright pianos were used with the lids shut, limiting their volume relative to the other instruments, but affecting their tone.
I’ve mentioned Ken Christianson in this regard before - he’s done a bunch of “True Stereo” recordings for the NAIM label and others by placing the instruments in the room based on how they sound from the POV of a stereo pair. So an acoustic bass will be put up on a tall riser, right next to one side of the pair (which is often raised to standing ear height or higher, depending on the room), a piano 15-20 or more feet away to the other side, and the drums even further back. This is largely about how intrinsically loud the instruments are.
So you get a pretty “present” bass sound, a mid-field piano sound, and the drums can get pretty “roomy” depending on the space.
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Is it not common to place instruments in different rooms?
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Oh, for sure. But I’m talking “purist audiophile” sorta stuff here. As well as how stuff was done in the old days before multitrack recorders. The band played together in a room. In the 70’s and onward, as multitracking and isolation of instruments and performers from one another came to dominate (“Fix it in the Mix!”) the sound of a band playing together in a studio room got lost to a large degree. It is thankfully in again.
Frankly think this is part of what us audiophiles/music fans appreciate about some older recordings - the semi-live vibe of the band playing the song all the way through together.
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I already posted this under Strictly Jazz, but it sounds so great that I’ll post again here to give a wonderful example of beautifully recorded piano: Oscar Peterson “exclusively for my friends”. Wow.
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The advantage to putting each in their own room is you then have complete control over each instrument/voice as to level in the mix, EQ, image placement, amount and type of reverb, etc.
As an example, while I find it disjointing when the voice and the snare are placed in a different room with different types of reverb, but I understand using this as an effect for a pop/rock recording.
Exactly.
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The last work I did was for an organist. They put me in the room with him on his B3 and the upright bass. Sax and trumpet were together in another room. Drums were in another room. Seemed weird to me but it sounded great after all.
Actually, the piano is a hybrid. It is both a both a percussion and a stringed instrument. If you go by the Hornbostel–Sachs system, it is a string instrument in the chordophone family.
I think chordophone instruments’ strings are plucked rather than struck.
According to Hornbostel–Sachs, the piano is a chordophone.
Thanks for that, Speedy. Honestly, I think I overslept for that class, “Introduction to Hornbostel-Sachs for the Aspiring But Unlikely Musician”.
I suspect you are being facetious…
I don’t know who or what teaches the Hornbostel–Sachs system. All I know it is considered authoritative. Note that I said the Piano was also considered to be a percussion instrument. Again, a hybrid…string/percussion. It doesn’t fit neatly into either category…
Never heard of it. Authoritative or not, that is some crazy schtuff.
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Not facetious. Light–ok, very light humor.
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Chordophones can be struck, but this side discussion is, at best, pedantic.
Whatever one calls a piano, the struck strings define the sound.