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.

In December I had my first piano recital in nearly two years, and so I started to look into various methods that performers use to conquer performance anxiety, something which causes me a lot of grief. Lately I’ve been hanging around with a number of friends involved in Cambridge’s thriving local music scene, and so not willing to go the beta blockers route I started thinking about doing some recordings. This way not only do I get to hear what the audience hears but it also reproduces some of the pressure that comes with performing for an audience. The audiofile above is my first effort, a recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C♯ Minor.

Ok, nobody’s ever going to sign me up for any recording contracts and there were a number of dodgy chords in that last section but I thought it was pretty good for a first effort. It was recorded in one take and I haven’t added anything else since the whole point of this exercise is as practice for a live performance.

Kit

I spent a little under £200 ( excluding the piano and the laptop ) on the recording kit, from Digital Village in Cambridge. I used an Alesis IO|2 stereo mixer attached to a laptop running a cutdown version of Cubase that came with the mixer, and a couple of cheap microphones stuffed down the piano cabinet and secured with parcel tape. The piano is a fairly largish Kawai upright.