Recording Classical Duet: Piano and Soprano

[Tritone87]

Hi All,

This Sunday I'm helping my friend record a grad school audition CD, and I'd like to give her the best quality I can with the minimal equipment/experience I have to work with. We'll be recording in an orchestra rehearsal room, fairly big and built without parallel surfaces. My friend is a soprano and loud.

I have:
1. Logic Pro 8
2. Firepod FP10 Firewire interface (8 inputs)
3. Pair of Cascade Fathead II Ribbons
4. A Rode NT1A
5. An SM57
6. A Heil PR40
7. A Senn 609

My plan was to have the soprano standing in front of the open piano lid facing outwards, then set up the cascade II's in front in a Tony Faulkner Phased Array (parallel figure 8's 20cm apart). I've enjoyed the sound I got from this setup with solo piano before. Any thoughts on how this will translate to a voice and piano duet? Would it be advantageous to put any of my other mics somewhere inside the piano (for seperate piano volume control or frequency emphasis)?

Thanks for any advice or thoughts!

[John Willett]

The other option is to use the two Cascade IIs in an MS arrangement.

Doing it this way gives the same result as Blumlein crossed fig-8s, but with the option to "steer" them when you matrix to normal stereo - giving you the option of widening or narrowing the stereo image.

[Plush]

Often the problem with these recordings is that the engineer needs to balance the piano and singer separately. One way to do this is to have the singer stand in front of the piano facing the piano player.

With this method, you have an overall stereo pick-up at some distance from the piano (facing the piano) and then you have two mics closely spaced in front of the singer. (facing away from the piano) The mics do not have to be the same type or model on the singer.

Then you can balance piano or singer up and down without bringing up/down both the piano and the singer.

[hle144]

Don't think about it too much. The key words here are "audtion and grad school"
meaning you can have a Neve sidecar with you going into a Prism Sound I/O
and get mediocre results that sounds great.


No matter what you do, theres only so much lipstick you can put on a pig.

Maybe a 2 pairs of stereo mics for the orch, one pair above and one pair above that,
a mic for the soloist, make sure your
levels are good, press record,. done

[NorseHorse]

I just did this recently and I'm doing it again next week. How large of a space are you working with?

I was in a church and used four-channels:

A. Some type of main distant spaced pair, XY, M/S, whatever. Your Fatheads will work fine.
B. One spot mic on the piano.
C. One spot on the singer. My "spot" was about five feet away from the singer. Keep in mind you'll be mixing this with your main pair; there is no need for an "in-your-face" pop sound. Your Rode will work fine for this.

Balance till pleased. I would have been fine if I didn't have the spot on the piano, but I mix it in very lightly for a bit more bite. If your friend is as loud as you say, then you might not need anything but the main pair.

Have fun!

[bradley]

Just watch out for phase issues. Tonight I recorded a school concert. Main ORTF pair with Spaced Omni's further out and a spot mic on piano and spot on vocal soloist. All multitracked. Listening back to it at home I can here some phase problems occuring between the spot mic on vocal and the main pair.

As it was live and I didnt have time to mess around with the mics I couldn't deal with this at the time. At least its multi tracked so I can sort it out!

Just watch out for this!