This is the second in a series of attempts to do some piano recordings, a project which started out of a desire to conquer stagefright on the rare occasions that I perform in public. Increasingly I have been investigating the process in more depth, making use of Cubase and various recording techniques. The result of these investigations is this recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in D Major, which I performed at a recital in June. This represents probably the best recording I can achieve given my upright piano and limited knowledge of recording techniques. The audio player requires Silverlight, I have also provided a link to an mp3 file.

Prelude in D Major, Op3 No 4 by Sergei Rachmaninoff

Setup

This article from Sound on Sound describes a number of piano recording methods, including several for upright piano. The simple fact is that an upright piano is not a suitable instrument for recording, however by following some of the advice in the article I think i have probably got the best I can from the instrument and the equipment available. The picture on the right shows the setup, which is as follows

• Kawai upright piano
• Alesis IO|2 stereo interface
• Pair AKG Perceptron 150 microphones in crossed stereo configuration
• Laptop computer running Cubase LE ( supplied with the Alesis hardware )

Most of the kit is quite portable, so at some point I hope to repeat the experiment with a grand piano and compare the results.

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