Slau Halatyn on Piano Recording

Björgvin's note:
We kind of dove right into the interview after some light chit-
chat beforehand. That's why the audio on the mp3 sort of begins
abruptly. I didn't really get a chance to introduce him to you but Slau
is a very, very smart and experienced professional engineer working in
New York. He is the owner of BeSharp Studios and host of Sessions
with Slau, a podcast about everything interesting that goes on in his
recording world.
With that said, let's dive into the transcribed interview.

-On the topic of microphones…

Yes

-Well, let’s talk about what kind do you use on piano? What are your go-to mics for
piano?

Well, you know. As far as piano recording is concerned, I tend to go for large diaphragm
condensers. But, I’ve used all kinds of mics. I mean back when, geeze, I’ve been recording
pianos for, like, twenty years. I mean, when I first started up, my goodness, I was even using
dynamic mics on them. What did I know back then? No, but, I’ve used probably just about
everything on piano. With better or worse results, I’d say. But generally these days, I tend to go
for large diaphragm condensers. And, I typically use them in omni mode. Occasionally, I would
use cardioid patterns if I specifically wanted to get a little more isolation or tighter focus on the
piano. But, these days it’s generally omnis, large diaphragm. I mean, as far as brands are
concerned: I’ve used TLM170s on piano; I’ve used 414s on piano. You know, I had a pair of
these advanced audio CM12s. Those were very nice on piano. Sometimes I used Gefell UM70s
in omni-mode as well. I’ve also used the Neumann TLM103s. And those are cardioids, but I’ve
certainly used them on piano. And, when I’m recording piano I almost always, not every single
time, but almost always use a pair of ribbons as well.

- Is that for the ambience, or…

Not always. Occasionally it is. But more so, I tend to use a stereo pair of, well in other words, a
stereo pair of or a stereo ribbon microphone just inside the piano. And, sort of around the inside
curve of a grand piano. So it’s fairly close to the piano. It does pick up a little of the room, but
not so much since it’s fairly close. I do that because, occasionally, any given client of mine might
really prefer the sound of the ribbons as opposed to the condensers. But, the ribbons tend to be
a little bit of a softer sound. Sometimes the bass is a little bit more pronounced with them. It
depends how the person plays as well, because two different people behind the piano are going
to sound totally different. So, you know that’s what I generally mic with. If I’m doing more of a
classical thing, I’ll certainly take the microphones out in front of the piano,

-Since you’re using basically two different pairs of microphones, do you run into any
problems with phase?

Well I never, thus far, mixed the sound of let’s say the condensers with the ribbon. It’s never a
matter of that.

-It’s just something you choose?

Yes. I would pick one or the other. And, I would entertain the thought if it was necessary to use a
pair of stereo ribbon microphone several feet away from the piano if I specifically wanted
ambiance, and at that point phase is generally not an issue because it’s so distant. But, the
issue of phase does come into play with the condensers. With the large diaphragm condensers,
or any two condenser microphones within the piano. Especially if you’re close miking. The
important thing, of course, when you have microphones that are only a couple of feet apart, is
that you absolutely must monitor the signal in mono. I don’t even listen to stuff in stereo
sometimes until the piano recording is done. I might just flip it into stereo at some point just to
say, “ok yeah sure, we have a left channel and a right channel” but I tend to listen so much in
mono when I’m on establishing the piano’s sound and when I’m moving the mics around. But, I
sometimes just leave it in that position.

-That’s a good tip. You’re going to hear it immediately if something’s wrong, I would
assume.

Absolutely, yeah. A lot of it. You know, they just put a mic up near the bass strings and one near
the treble and they pan it hard left, hard right, and that’s it. They hear both signals, the balance
is even, and they start recording. But it’s really important to check that phase. And, again,
monitoring in mono. I’ve gotten recordings that I’ve overdubbed. I’ve done some tracking and
mixing. You know, tracks that were originally recorded, let’s say the rhythm tracks were recorded
in a different city, like here. And the musicians were somewhere down in, you know, South
Carolina or something like that. And they would send me these tracks. So often, I’ve seen piano
tracks that came back and if you listen to it in stereo, “Yeah… That sounds good.” But as soon
as you sound that to mono, the bass just disappears, and the clients don’t hear it. As they’re
sitting in front of a stereo set of speakers, they don’t hear anything wrong. “Yeah, it sounds
great.” When they walk in to the next room, and they think, “Wow, you know, it loses a whole
bunch of the low end”. And, sure, because walking out of the room is the equivalent of
essentially summing into mono.

-Yeah, because as you get further away, you’ll notice the bass not being there, because
that’s where it’s supposed to be because it’s so strong.
Precisely. So, I do spend as much time as I need to in order for me to feel comfortable that
everything is working in terms of phase. And I might adjust those mics four or five times. I’ve
gotten better over the years, I used to adjust them ten times or so. But especially with the piano
at my studio, yeah, I sort of know the piano. So, these days, I might get it right the first time.
Even if I think it sounds right, I might move it a little bit to see if it sounds better or worse. So,
within the first two tries max, I usually get a good sense.

-It’s like what Joe Gildur wrote about a while ago. At least move the microphone once to
have a good comparison. At least move it once to see if it gets better.

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. You don’t know until you have something to compare it to. It’s definitely a
good idea.

-You said you used large diaphragm condensers and ribbons, but what about small
diapraghm condensers like pencil mics. What would you say is the difference between
using the large and the small?

I certainly have used small diaphragm condensers as well. Typically, I would still use omni for
those, although I have used them in cardioid. I was doing a live session with a band, like a jazz
combo, and, on that particular recording I recall using a pair of AKG small diaphragm
condensers. The small diaphragm condensers, they generally… people say their transient
response is a little faster. An instrument like a piano is a very percussive instrument. I think of
the piano as a percussion instrument. And it does have a sustain of course, but it has a very fast
attack. The small diaphragm condensers might do a better job of capturing that kind of detail.
But, to me it’s not something that I would so much specifically look for in terms of a piano
recording. In a way, since the piano is so aggressive, I almost prefer the large diaphragm
because it’s just a little bit slower. I mean we’re almost splitting hairs. It’s a matter of a
millisecond or two difference in terms of how it responds. But, that to me is almost more
theoretical. Believe me, I would just as soon pick up a pair of small diaphragm condensers if
they were the only thing I had. I’ve heard it said before, and I’ll repeat it. The best microphone is
the one you have. That is the best one. And they say that about cameras. It’s the one you have
with you when you want to take a picture, and if you didn’t have the camera, what’s the use? To
capture a performance with whatever you have is the best mic.

- You could wish for all the great mics in the world if you want to, but they’re not going to
be there to record the music.

Exactly. And as usual with everything, it’s just globally true that the most important thing is the
performance. And that is foremost. One could say that the most important thing is the music, the
sound, and if it’s well performed, well-arranged, well produced. Really, much lower down on the
priority list is the gear. I mean, sure you want to have good quality microphones to record with. I
mean, if the song sucks, it still sucks. I’ll be the first person to say that I’m totally into
microphones and gear and everything like that, and, as a lot of people do, I’m certainly
interested in what sounds better or worse on a particular instrument, but at the same time, to
me, it’s also a subject that I get tired of very quickly. Because you can swap out microphones all
day long in front of a piano or bass or anything, but, ultimately, it really doesn’t matter if the
musician is getting tired and if they’re losing their inspiration. You have to make a couple of
quick decisions and go with it. Because you can second guess yourself until the cows come
home and you’re going to lose the moment.

-Yeah, the performance is key. You said you used omnis, so I would assume that the
room plays a very important part.

It does depending on the miking technique you use. If you’re miking the piano outside of the
body and keeping the mics a couple feet backward, then certainly the room plays a much more
important role. The kind of recording that I tend to do mostly is Jazz and Broadway tunes and
that kind of thing and certainly rock and pop and that kind of stuff. And that stuff generally tends
to be on the close mic side. For example, I tend to place the microphones roughly eight inches
above the strings. One closer to the treble side of the piano. Probably about twelve inches from
the body. And then the other, a little bit further back. Some people go all the way to the end of
the bass strings. I tend not to. I tend to go about a foot from the left edge of the body if you’re
sitting at the piano, let’s say. There’s a particular spot where a lot of pianos have in the frame…
there's these supports. They’re sort of like these little bridges. Technically that’s not the right
word because technically the bridges are the things that hold the strings over the sound hole.
But anyway, they’re essentially these metal bars that go across the piano and at one point they
come to sort of a “V” over the bass strings. I usually position the mic somewhere around there,
and that’s sort of my starting point, and that works most of the time. Occasionally, if I’m doing a
cardioid pattern I might sort of face them right over the hammers sort of pretty much dead
center on the piano, or I might move them just inside the curve to the right side of the piano as
you’re sitting on it. And, it may be about six or seven inches or about eight or nine inches above
the strings. That seems to work best for most of the stuff that I do. If it’s a jazz combo that needs
a little bit of a softer sound, I certainly aim closer to the edge of the piano rather than right over
the strings. It really just works well for pop and rock stuff. Jazz stuff just needs to sound a little
more natural. And another thing to consider is that pianos, and this is how I think of miking any
type of instrument, I generally try to think of the instrument as a whole. Not just miking one
focused point of the instrument. You know, piano is a six or seven, eight foot long instrument. It’s
no different than a drum kit. You do have spot mics on a kick and snare, but the main part of
your drum sound really does come from your overheads. And the overheads are really focused
on the entire kit. And so, when you’re going for a real natural sound for something like a piano,
you’re going to want to back those microphones off a little bit. It’s a compromise just like
anything. You know, you might not have the best sounding room. In that case, you might want to
use a cardioid pattern instead. You might want to put some gobos behind the microphones to
minimize the room sound, but it will give you a little bit more realistic picture of that piano. On
the subject of panning, I do take one of two approaches. I either pan from the player’s
perspective. Sort of having the low frequencies on the right, the high frequencies on the left just
as you would if you were sitting at the piano. Sometimes that seems appropriate. But other
times, when it’s something like jazz or classical, I certainly don’t take that approach. I pan the
opposite way. The kind of experience you would have if you were sitting out in an audience or
sitting where the microphones are, let’s say sitting in front of a piano. Your high frequencies tend
to be more toward the left side and your bass is more omnidirectional. Either way, but they tend
to be a little bit more toward the right. And, even though the stuff may be panned hard left and
right with the coincident pair, the image isn’t so wide. And that’s as it should be. I mean that’s
how most people experience the piano. And again, that sort of player’s perspective panning is
very specific and it’s more of a rock or pop sort of thing. Because it doesn’t have to be realistic.

-The reason I ask about the omni is if somebody wanted to record the piano because heir
friend has a grand piano at his mom’s house and they don’t want to go there and put up
all the mics and then think, “This room doesn’t sound good. I can’t put up an omni
because I’m too terrified of picking up the bad acoustics.”

If an omni mount is placed inside the body of the piano, you’re not to get a lot of room. You’re
not going to get a lot of room at all. Because the sound of the piano is so much higher, so much
more present than any reverberation. And that’s if it’s a sort of normal sounding room, of course.
But if you’re in a real tiled room, although, I don’t know why you’d have a grand piano or a piano
in a tiled room, but you never know, maybe some people have pianos in their bathroom, you
never know, but people might have a tiled floor or they might have a lot of hard surfaces. That
happens sometimes. But still, even so, if you put the mics inside the piano eight, nine inches or
something like that above the strings, you really won’t get much room sound. You’ll get a little
bit, but it really won’t be that much.

-On microphone techniques. You touched a little bit on that earlier. What would you
recommend some sort of easy foolproof microphone techniques for a beginner.

I can think of three things that I would recommend off the top of my head. If it’s a pop
production, if it’s rock or pop, I wouldn’t even try to record the piano in stereo. You run the risk of
having more problems. I’d recommend a single microphone. An omni mic dead center over the
soundboard. If anything maybe a tiny bit closer toward the front over the hammers. That’s to
taste. If you go over the hammers you’ll get a little more attack, if you back it off you’ll get a little
less. But, only very little.

-On axis or off?

-Well, omni. So, it wouldn’t matter. Although, just a little side note. Omni of course is on all axis.
Some mics even in omni mode are somewhat slightly directional. They might have a slightly
better high frequency response on axis to the capsule. So, that said, it shouldn’t matter. With an
omni mic just dead center over the piano. You could certainly do that with the cardioid pattern,
just facing down. The problem with a cardioid is that it’s really going to be more focused. I mean
you really have to back off a cardioid mic to about 20in. above the strings to be able to capture a
little bit better sound. I mean, just by nature the cardioid microphone is only eight or nine inches
off that center. The very high strings and the very low strings, they’re going to start to get a little
bit more colorized. They’re going to have a lot more color let’s say. Colorized probably isn’t the
appropriate word here. That would be the first thing I would recommend, an omni mic. Just
recording mono you eliminate phase issues. If it’s a rock song, who cares. Just a lot of piano.
Piano for decades were recorded mono for rock and pop hits. If stereo is really what somebody
is looking for, I would definitely stick to coincidental pairs. Probably cardioid, I suppose, to start
with. Either just inside the body or all above the hammers. There you minimize the risk of phase
issues because they are coincident. Your stereo image isn’t really wide or anything, but it is still
stereo. I still would check phase in mono and stuff. That would be the thing that I would
recommend first and foremost, getting into using two omni mics or even three spaced
microphones and the piano. Some people even space one microphone over the treble, one over
the middle and one over the bass. That sometimes works really well. I know somebody that
does that with 414s and he gets really good results. Your technique has to be decidedly more
precise then, and your listening skills have to be more tuned. Because you can really run into
phase trouble because the coincidence… the proximity. No, that’s not even the best word to
use. The relative positions of multiple mics in relation to each other and to the source. So, of
course, one would try to follow the 3:1 rule, 4:1 rule, that kind of a thing. You wouldn’t want to
have two omni mics, two feet over the strings and only one foot apart from each other. You’re
really asking for trouble if you do that. Although, I did see, I was at a session at Avatar Studios
in Manhattan and the legendary Al Schmidt was engineering that session, and Al has recorded
just about everybody, and he’s the absolute master. And he put a pair of Neumann M149s on
the piano in cardioid mode, and he had them definitely a good twenty inches or so above the
piano, and not too far apart. And when I say, you’re asking for trouble, I mean somebody who
hasn’t done it a lot is possibly asking for trouble. A person like Al Schmidt can do this and know
whether something is going to work before he even listens to it. And then he does listen to it and
then checks it and then says, “Ok, let’s move one of them a little bit”. But I wouldn’t recommend
it for someone who hasn’t had much experience.

-Just start simple.

Yeah, definitely. There are no rights or wrongs, as with everything related to audio I’m sure.
Some people record piano from the bottom, and sometimes it really works. More than anything,
I suppose, a person needs to know what the piano sounds like to begin with. You have to be
really familiar with the sound of the instrument. What sounds natural? Some people make their, I
don’t want to say mistake, but they don’t consider the effect of the room when they’re close
miking piano. If you have a piano against a wall, you start to notice that in the low frequencies,
you get a certain resonance, a certain build up. Even if you're miking the top of the piano, that
piano is going to interact with the floor beneath it. I wouldn’t recommend recording the piano on
a carpet. It’s going to change the character of that piano. You generally want to have the piano
on a hard surface like a wooden floor or something like that. If you have a choice at all, I
wouldn’t record a piano in the corner of a room, because you’re going to get a buildup of certain
low frequencies. It’s just another thing to be aware of, because it’s not all about the mics and the
technique. You know it really is just like people say, recording a guitar. Well what’s important?
Tune the guitar. Tune the piano. Same sort of thing. You’re not going to have a guitar sit
necessarily in the corner of a room, because it’s usually not the best place to play a guitar
unless you want that particular effect. It may be what you’re looking for, but more often than not
I’d venture to say that it’s how you’d want to record a guitarist, sort of, away from the wall away
from reflective surfaces. And it’s the same thing with the piano too. You want to make sure that it
sounds good to begin with.

-What about ambient miking? Do you ever add an ambient mic?

I rarely do because I don’t do that much classical stuff. And that’s really the only place where
ambient miking, for me at least for the stuff that I do, really comes in. When I’m doing sort of
ensemble recording, the piano is ultimately picked up a little bit in the other mics in the room, so
sort of by default there is a little bit of ambience. But that goes more so for the entire band. But
as far as ambient miking for solo piano stuff, I tend not to do that so much. I tend not to record
stuff that really requires that so much. On top of that, in my studio I would say I bet I have a
decent sounding room. It’s not big enough for piano ambience. For piano to really sound good,
you really need a room that’s 30 to 40 foot long, kind of in that ball park. You need kind of a hall.
You could have a room. I mean, let’s face it. I certainly could record the room and it would have
a room tone to it. But that’s a very specific effect and you have to really be careful with it. Back
in the day you had to be careful, because I did a lot of stereo recording. I’ve done a lot of jazz
recordings that were mixed to two track. In that case, still in my mind I still think of it as you have
to be careful, because if you’re adding something in, you’re printing it. That’s the way it sounds.
It was a whole different way of recording. I learned a totally different approach. I did multi-track
recording then too, but a lot of the jazz stuff was live. It was live to two track. When I say a room
you have to be careful for two track recordings, but if you’re going multi-track you certainly could
record a room and add it in to taste. And one of the things a person can do if they happen to
have a room that’s sort of on the bigger side, what one might consider a large family room or
something like that if the piano’s located in there is to take like a pair of any kind of microphone,
but preferably sort of omni microphones, but stick them right in the upper corners of the room
where the two walls meet and right up in the ceiling. Put one in one corner, put one in the other
corner, and just compress the hell out of that. And just add that slowly into the mix. And
sometimes you get a really nice ambience that doesn’t have as much of a boxiness to it. You
don’t have phase issues because it’s kind of like a PZM microphone. You have this thing so
close to any borders, I mean right in the corner. Anything might work.
-You touched earlier about when you were recording piano with other stuff, with another
band maybe in a live situation. So, when you’re dealing with a live recording with a lot of
bleed. How do you deal with that when you’re trying to process the piano mix
afterwards?

I don’t process pianos. No, not at all. I typically don’t even compress pianos. I’m really sensitive
to the sound of a compressor on a piano. Now if it’s rock or pop, all of that goes out the window.
You can of course compress the piano and stuff like that. I’m talking a little bit more, like
because if it’s a band playing, more likely than not, it’s jazz or classical in this case, and I’m not
going to process the piano in any way. I don’t even EQ the pianos typically. I might maybe,
maybe add a little bit of top end to it occasionally or I might take off a little bit. Sometimes I’ve
done classical sessions with a pianist who was used to a softer sounding piano, and basically
had to take off a little bit of that top end and they would say, “Ah, yeah. That sounds more
natural.” So, the bleed isn’t an issue.

-What about upright pianos. I assume you’re always talking about grand pianos.

Yeah. That’s mostly what I record. I certainly have recorded upright pianos. But, in most cases it
was a demo recording. It wasn’t anything for like a cd release. I did on one occasion try to
record an upright piano for an album release. I was never happy with the sound of the piano
itself. I don’t mean the miking technique or anything like that. I mean actual piano. It just didn’t fit
the track. The client wanted to add a real piano, and in this case that’s all they had. We were
recording in their home studio, and I was engineering it. I did it but ultimately we ended up using
a digital piano because it just didn’t work. With upright pianos, there are essentially like three
approaches. Essentially one of them is to record from the player’s perspective. Put a pair of
overheads above the piano, essentially kind of like you would with the drum overheads, and you
could record it from the front of the piano. Sometimes you can take the front… I can’t think of
the technical term for it. The fallout board? You take off the front of the piano essentially. You
open it up. Some of them just open up like that. The other is to stick the microphones sort of
inside the piano. If you lift up the very top of the upright’s lid. I seem to think that that’s sort of
the least natural sounding. It might work for a pop production or something like that where you
just want a kind of sound. Sometimes the character of that is exactly what you want for a song.
Kind of like Landhill’s “That Thing”. You know, you have this like little chords pulling up, slightly
out of tune or whatever. Sometimes that’s the perfect sound that you’re looking for. And that
kind of miking would certainly work in that case. But the third technique that comes to mind that
a lot people opt for is to mic the back of the piano with the sound board from behind, and that’s
sort of akin to miking the bottom of a grand piano. Because as we all know an upright piano is
essentially a grand piano on it’s side, really. So that technique kind of gives you more of a softer
sound. You don’t get so much the attack of the hammers. But, sometimes you can get good
results. Again, it depends on the kind of sound you want from that piano. Sometimes you just
want a soft sound. If it’s a quiet or very soft ballad, miking that sound board is totally fine. You
get a really nice sound. And, again, just like I said with the previous, like with grand pianos, that
piano has to sound good to begin with. If you get a rickety old upright, no matter what you do,
it’s going to sound clangy and stuff like that sometimes. Especially with the older ones, the
action of the piano has hundreds of moving parts. I mean, hundreds. With older pianos we tend
to get clicks and clangs and that kind of stuff. You gotta keep in mind that that’s gonna come
through, so make sure that you choose the appropriate instrument. If that’s what you’re going
for, there are no wrong answers. It’s just what seems to work best under the circumstances.
With the overhead point of view you’re going to get more room, certainly. You’re gonna get other
noise in the room. If you put it inside, you’ll get more isolation, but you’ll get a very focused and
kind of unnatural sound. But sometimes that might be great. And if you mic the back of the
piano, same thing, you’ll get more of the room. You’ll maybe want to move the piano away from
the wall because you’ll run into all kinds of phase problems. You’ll get less isolation, but a fully
natural, mellow sound.

-What about pre-amps? Do you record through two pre-amps or just normal clean high
end?

For piano I mostly use like a high voltage pre-amp like a Millennia. That’s a pre-amp that I use
very often. Especially for acoustic instruments, the stuff that I just want to sound pretty natural.
The HV3 series is a very clean pre-amp. I love it. I think it sounds very clean, sounds very, you
know as they say the buzz word, transparent. But you know the pre-amps that are also the
same kinds, the true sisters, the PSolos. That kind of a pre-amp. What is it? The Pacifica, I think
it is. There is another one that’s got that kind of Grace, Grace 101s that are very nice. I have
used tube pres, for example, the UA and I had a 2610 and a 2 channel Version of the 610.
Carters are very nice. Again, depending on the style, I find that that pre-amp, being a tube amp
is sort of, it kind of gives it a little bit more of an impressionistic quality. It’s very subtle. For all I
know it could be psychosematic. To me, when I put a piano through the Millenia what you hear
is what you get. That will amplify the mic and just give you exactly what the piano sounds like
with a tube pre, it tends to maybe soften it just a little bit. And these are very subtle difference.
And again it’s no different than with the microphones. Which pre to use? The one you have. If I
had a choice, I would reach for Millennia first. But that said, tube-pres are a very nice little
brand.

-Especially home recorders that don’t have all the gear in the world. They might if they
have a piano date that they need to get down a track or something, they might opt into
renting the gear if they need to.

Well that’s true. You certainly can. But, I have to say, even with the prosumer kind of gear, or
even like… I did an album for a guy that was a live session and I recorded it to a Digi 002
because that’s what we had to use at that time. That is the most reasonable portable system
that I could take with me. And I recorded the basic tracks on the 002. I recorded piano and
drum. Let me put it this way: It was 002 and I used eight channels of the record on the Millennia
HD3D, but the other eight channels were the Focusrite OctaPre And that’s also another high-
voltage amp. It’s got a decent amount of head room, and it works just fine! And again, it’s not
the best, but it can do the trick. Another pre-amp that I’ve used for live recordings that is very
nice is the PreSonus. I used the Digimax at the time. Now I don’t know what their current line of
pre-amps are, but it was a good eight channel pre-amp. Very basic. Volume, phantom power. I
think there was a phase reversal on the first two channels. It was very simple. It sounds
fantastic. At that level, it’s medium on the scale of expensive v. cheap, but, you know, it’s good
stuff. It’s good stuff. And on the Focusrite, that is cheap! That is absolutely cheap. It doesn’t
sound bad, not at all. I use a Control24 control surface ProTools, and it’s got like 16 of the
FocusRite pres. I’ve heard it said that those pres are sort of like, perhaps a step above the
platinum pres which were the ones that were found in the original Mbox, or whatever. And
nobody considered those brilliant pre-amps, but you could record stuff on something and it
sounded pretty decent. And the ones on the Control24 supposedly are not better but I think
they’re just about the same. I used those pre-amps probably for about a year, at a certain point.
And I was just using them when I had switched over to pro Tools. Previously, I had used mostly
pres on my own console, and those Focusrite pres were fine. Again, it’s all about the
performance, man. And one could argue that, “Ah but had you used APIs or NEVEs or whatever
it might have sounded better.” But, you know, at that time I didn’t have APIs or NEVE to use on
the recording, so that doesn’t matter. The recording’s done. It happened. You could say that
about classic rock tunes, or just classic songs out there. There are songs out there that don’t
sound particularly great, but they’re hits. And one could say, “Oh, if only that was recorded on a
NEVE 8068” But, it wasn’t. So what?

-I read about a topic pretty similar to this a while back. I think the headline was that the
“The Audio doesn’t matter, it’s the quality of the music itself”. And it was talking about in
the early days of YouTube how people were just watching to see their favorite bands, and
they watched like the worst bootlegged, first generation video phones on YouTube and
that was watched more than the actual recordings. Because people just wanted to listen
to the music. They didn’t really care how it sounded.

Absolutely. It’s amazing what people will put up with in terms of audio quality. And, I mean, let’s
face it. People listen to mp3s and they sound like crap. A lot of people just don’t even hear it.
They don’t even realize how bad it sounds. And sometimes, if you have the right circumstance
and if you sort of played to that mp3. Let me give you an example. I do a lot of work for these
two dance schools in New York. I do the editing for their shows. Sometimes they’re medleys.
Sometimes it’s just a matter of taking one song and cutting it down. The teachers assemble
these songs. There might be 50 or 60 songs in a particular show to edit, and each teacher might
have five or ten songs. I sometimes get these songs that they’ve downloaded from somewhere
and they’re mp3s. And I import them into Pro-Tools. And of course I’m converting them to .wav
files or whatever, and I’m like “Ugh! This is horrible. Where did you get this?”
“Oh I downloaded it.”

I go, “You don’t have this in any other format? On a CD?”

“Oh, no, no, no. I don’t want to have to buy the CD just for one song.”

Yeah, I understand that, of course. But, I’m like, “Well, wouldn’t you at least be willing to buy the
song for like a dollar from iTunes so at least it could be a little bit better quality?” And they just
don’t hear it. And one time, one of the teachers went and borrowed a CD from someone and
brought it to the studio, and I ripped the song. I put it up side by side with this other one and I
flipped between them, and they’re like: “Oh my god, what a difference!”

It wouldn’t matter to a person if they only heard the mp3 because they have no clue. They have
nothing to compare it to. With anything, like food, you know. If you’ve only had… I don’t know…
haha. I’m trying to think of a good food. I was gonna say omelet or a burnt steak. All your life,
and you didn’t know you’ve never had like a nice medium rare steak, then you’d go: “Oh my
gosh! This is so much better than what I’ve always been eating all my life.”

-Yeah, I remember my first comparison from… I was basically producing a song in my

bedroom. And, even though producing a song in your tiled bedroom in the basement of
an apartment somewhere might not give the best audio quality in the world. But when I
bounced it to mp3 and then listened to it, and then like, Oh I need to go back and listen to
the bass. I need to fix this and that. I went back and listened to the song and I was like,
“Oh my god. The comparison between the mp3 and the .wav, or the unprocessed or how
do you say, lossless format is amazing.”

Yeah, it really is amazing. And I’ve certainly heard examples where, I don’t remember the actual
process or procedure for doing this, but it was George Massenberg that was doing this
demonstration. He took a mix, a .wav file, converted it to mp3 and then sort of flipped the phase
of the mp3. I can’t remember exactly what the procedure was. What you got, essentially, was all
the artifacts just listening to the straight mp3. And it is just scary how many artifacts are as a
result of mp3 encoding, and certainly it’s less when you’re up in the 300… What do you call it?
What is it, 192 and then 3… 20? 320, yeah. It’s less, but when you get down the 128, and that’s
really incredible. I don’t know if you’ve ever used something like a pop and click removal like the
wave’s restoration plug-ins?

-Yeah

XClick, you know you can hit one of the buttons and you can hear only what you’re removing,
and if you’re doing an old record that’s kind of scratchy, you dial it in and all you can hear is,
“Shchchch". All this static. And that’s exactly the kind of stuff that’s in the mp3s. It’s amazing,
and people just don’t hear it. Once you’ve tuned into that, once you recognize it, it’s like hearing
auto-tune. Once you now that sound, you’ll always hear it. And it will always drive you nuts.
-I write a lot of audio production tutorials online, and I’m doing a lot of my audio example
in logic or whatever and I’m trying to show this technique, and then I bounce it to 192
mp3 and put it in the article and I’m explaining what happens. But then I listen to the
mp3s and, like, well, you can’t really hear it in the mp3, but definitely the technique
works.

-Especially if you’re trying to teach subtle techniques, if you’re doing anything subtle,
then the mp3 is going to rip it apart.

Yeah. Sure. Sure, sure, sure. Definitely.

-Well, I guess we’re pretty far away from the hour recording at this point, but I’ve kind of
gone through all the questions. And you’ve answered all the questions I haven’t asked by
just giving your answers to other ones. You said you didn’t really do any mixing when
you did piano?

Not mixing, just no real processing.

-Do you ever low-pass filter the piano?

Yes. Mostly yes. I generally roll off stuff on the very low end. It depends on how low the pianist is
playing. So, it varies from song to song. The piano’s lowest frequency is something like,
technically, it’s something like 27 Hz. So, one would think that you really can’t roll off too much.
But the thing is, if it’s solo piano, and the pianist really does go that low, I’d be careful not to step
on their lowest note. And of course you could always automate that kind of stuff as well. I don’t
even go through that much trouble with it, but generally I do roll off the bottom just to kind of
clean it up if possible. Make sure nothings rumbling. Sometimes people can get sloppy with their
pedal work and stuff like that. And sometimes you need to kind of selectively focus in on stuff
like that to get rid of that funk because they raise their foot so abruptly and stuff.

-Rob Sommerfeldt on Twitter asked, he’s using AKG two 414s on piano to cover the
impact zone, and he’s wondering what mic you’d recommend using at the far end for
resonance or if you’d suggest using any mic at all.

Well I personally don’t use that technique. I know another engineer that does. In fact, he does a
stereo pair up by the hammers and then one all the way up the back toward the end of the bass
section. If it was going to be two mics on the piano, I would stick with the same kind of
microphone. If he’s using 414s???, I would just stick with the same model. In that case, I
probably wouldn’t put the, let’s call it, the left and right mic, and I’m saying this as if I’m standing
at the curve of the piano placing the microphones and the left one is by the treble. I wouldn’t
keep that one so far left. I’d probably position it a little bit more toward the middle. In this case
the panning is really going to be generally kind of like a mono panning. Not so wide. Cause
you’ll just get a weird sound. Unless that’s the effect that you want to go for, but I would keep it a
little bit more sort of mono.
-Compressors on the way in, ever?

Not on the way in, that’s for sure. Occasionally if it’s a pop production I’ll put a compressor on
the piano if it needs it, but we’re talking so subtle that you barely, barely detect it. I really hate
when a compressor steps on the piano’s attack. And even if you sort of back off the attack
setting of the piano. You start to screw around with the envelope of the piano in terms of its
decay. Unless that’s the sound you’re going for. Again, this is always the caveat. If you’re doing
this kind of compressed pop piano song that’s kind of like a Beatles-ish kind of sound, then yeah
compress the hell out of it. But that’s a very specific application. When I say I don’t compress
pianos, I mean I don’t compress pianos when it’s meant to be a natural sound. Now that’s the
kind of piano sound that I mostly record. Again, like draws or Broadway tunes. You don’t want
the Beatles piano in a Broadway tune. Unless it’s a Broadway show about the Beatles. Yeah,
so. Never on the way in. If anything, possibly a little bit afterward if it’s a pop production.

-Thanks a lot for offering to do this.

Oh, it was my pleasure.

-A lot of really good information that many, many more will be able to enjoy and learn
something from.

I hope so.