Hartley space

.aa - week seven.

Today I went into the Hartley Concert room to record Ben Bamford playing the Grand Piano. We recorded using the Marantz ‘Solid State Recorder PMD670’, and used a pair of Rode NT5 (shown below).



To begin with we used a fairly standard spaced pair configuration, with the microphones spaced around 1.5 metres apart in front of the soundboard. It comes across as a fairly typical Grand sound, with a bit of extra hiss from the Marantz recorder that we used. This configuration I might use for a Grand if it were playing among an ensemble, however for a solo recording the stereo field of the recording is a bit too narrow. From here we decided to move the two little microphones into unusual positions around the room.

ex1.mp3


Because there are two Grand Pianos in the room, I decided we should move them so their soundboards were facing one another. Then we played one piano while recording the other piano’s soundboard with the dampener pedal held down. While this worked quite well in the room itself (the Hartley room is quite a reverberant space), the Marantz Recorders hiss tends to cover these resonant excerpts in the recording.

ex2.mp3


We then tried moving the mics up. The Hartley room has a very high ceiling so we placed the mics on top of the piano, so that they were around 3.5 metres high and two meters apart. We made two recordings with the microphones at this height, one with the microphones facing toward the piano, and another recording with one NT5 facing the piano and the other facing the roof. I much prefer ‘roomy’ imprint which the second recording contains.

ex4.mp3


The pianist Ben was a little bit confused as to why we moved the mics into such awkward positions and made a joke along the lines of- why don’t we just move the microphones out of the door??? What a great idea! So this recording has one mic pointing down the hall outside the Hartley room and the other mic pointing into Hartley (still from the outside).

ex5.mp3


.sources.

Grice, David 29.04.08, “Location Recording,” Lecture of Elder Concert Hall, Adelaide University.

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