My humble little recording of the "fun to play" G major 2-part invention. I think it came out pretty well...

Bach - BWV 781, 2-part invention in G major

That sounded perfect. Nice and lively, good trills and really good sound quality.

Was this recorded on your yamaha? I agree with the quality. It is excellent. Both playing and recording. It sounds as if the recorder was right on the strings but yet far away. Bravo Mr. Robert.

I loved it. Your mordents were so crisp and clear. I agree with Juufa that it sounded like the microphone was right next to the strings. It gave a "harpsichord-ish" quality. Very clean and accurate playing.

Thanks. The XLR "drum" mics (bought 15 years ago to mic a rock drum set) are located at the back side of the grand on left/right position and the reason it sounds like it is far away is the rather large amount of reverb that I added. Perhaps too much. Mixed down in a nice little mixer which costs about nothing these days and then lined to the Edirol.

The ornaments, especially the short appoggiaturas are a lot easier to execute fast and accurate on this than on the digital which I sold the other week. (It was sold in 2 days (!) which I never expected. Pianos/grands usually takes month to sell if you ever find a buyer in Sweden.)

I probably should re-record the entire set once I am done with the 3 remaining.

Splendid ! Bright, lively, and yet relaxed. Nothing to niggle about (except I always wonder about such long trills). Ornamentation is spot-on. I can see why you now think of re-recording the cycle... that is the problem with cycles as you get better along the way.

Very well done, perfectly played, also the trills came out pretty evenly!

And your Yamaha sounds very good to me too, along with your recording quality. Please tell a bit more about your recording equipment!!!
Two condenser mics below the grand, and also some mics above? And mixed it for 2 channels to feed the Edirol? Or directly into a soundcard? Details - please more details

Robert, Very well interpreted , very pleasurable listening, ( Bach don't have humble work) all Bach pieces are B.A.C.H

Thanks for your kind comments.

Well, details you want and details you get.

I use two unidirectional mics named MT58 but actually no trade mark(!) and a 6 channel Mixer named Alto S6. From the mixer, I have a stereo phono connection to the Edirol which records everything directly in MP3-format. I located the microphones at the back of the piano to reduce the noise I make myself and which originates from the room itself. I panorate the left mic to the left and right mic to the right to represent the sound I hear when I sit at the piano. Perhaps even more as it sounds nice in headphones.

I make sure I record a couple of seconds with noise in the beginning to be able to do noise reduction.

Then I make the recording until I am satisfied. I edit the recording using Audacity where I use the noise I have recorded in the beginning to make the noise reduction. As the program digitally learns what the noise profile, you can actually remove that specific noise out of the recording. But if one choose to remove too much, the sound will get tweaked too much. See the picture below



After I have done this and have the dry signal, I will add reverb and the best plugin I have found is named GVerb. See the picture below.


Also, as I have a "slient grand", I can use the headphone connection to line out the sound.

To make this example a bit more clear, I have recorded the beginning of the Ravel prelude of Le Tombeau de Couperin first with the Edirol mic (children in the background, sorry), then I have the same recording directly from the mics, after the noise reduction and finally after I have added reverb. I also attach the recording directly from the headphone connection and a sample of the noise.

This is quite off topic...I know.

Thank you for details, but too bad I don't have 6 channel Mixer named Alto S6, all my recordings are in studio with sound technician.

Robert, the first sound example, the Headphones into the Edirol sounds good, almost as good as the final version, which has just a little more reverb.

I don't hear any noise on the 'noise' sample. But I can definitely hear the difference between just the Edirol sample and then the 'noise reduced' sample. Makes me want to experiment with these things. (I have a feeling this little hobby of mine is going to get expensive)

Thanks for taking the time to do all of this.

I believe your studio technician have a lot better equipment than I have. Especially a lot better microphones. Mine are not really suited for piano.

If you listen to the recordings with high volume in headphones, you will hear pretty much difference.

There is not enough treble in the microphoned recordings comparing with headphones. Strange enough, there is more noise in the headphone recording comparing with my final result.

If a real purist read all this (or a professional sound technician), he/she will think I have really destroyed the recording completely with all this manipulation. The sound will be severely malform using all tweaks I do here.

Perhaps the Ravel prelude was not a good example as I do not use pedal and do not raise beyond mp anywhere. Damn difficult piece even though it might not sound so.

I also forgot to say that I digitall in Audicity change the amplification and add a stereo effect.

Thank you much for your informations!
Amazingly how good the noise reduction works with Audacity!

Also interesting for me, that you placed the mics below the grand (the take with Edirol internal mic was also with Edirol below the grand?). I would fear that the pedal noise disturbs the result, but it is not in your case - maybe your Yamaha don't produce such a pedal noise like my old grand lady.
I will try it out next time too to place mics below the grand instead closely above the strings (what I did until now).

I could imagine that with a pair of condenser mics the result gets more crisp, like the headphone output (I assumed that your mics are dynamic mics? Maybe I am wrong, then forget this). Since you use a mixer (which surely could provide phantom power?), maybe it gets a bit brighter (if that is what you want). The price for those large diaphragma condenser mics dropped drastically the last few years - with 200 € you would get an acceptable pair.

How did you record you headphone output - also with Edirol? Then it would be plausible that there is noise too - or do you hear any noise with headphone while playing on the silent system?

A question to Setrak: could you please tell where your professional audio technican placed the mics usually? Below or above the grand or beside on the right side of the grand, like a listener in some meters distance?

Ah, sorry we misunderstand each other here (my bad explanations, sorry). I do not place the mics under the grand. What I mean by behind is at the back of it but above the soundboard so I actually see them from where I sit. And I forgot to say that I have the lid closed.

Under would catch the sound of the pedals for sure (but for in this as I do not use them) and I actually myself put in some oil in them not long ago as a knirking sound there made me crazy.

I checked on the mixer and I have a black little button saying "phantom power".

What bothers me most about the sound is that I do not catch the string sound very good but get a rather mellow sound. The reason why I do not have the lid open and the microphones "inside" is that if the mics gets too close to some strings, the volume will differ quite a lot comparing with strings farest from any mic. Another things is that the sound from the hammers seems to transmit in the wood so the actual mechanic sounds rather high which is obvious in the dry recording (listen in headphones).

The noise reduction works really well but there is a thin line between malforming the sound and remove noise. If I just cross that thin line, the sound will be weird. Try it out yourself and you will see how well it works. I usually have the level to the next highest to the left (or second next) of the picture and not in the middle as in the example.