Remote Recording

On Wednesday, I had a pre-production meeting scheduled. A vocalist and her accompanist (Erin White and Brian Kennedy) were going to play me some songs that they wished to record with me.

We met in one of the coolest recital halls I've ever seen. This was at the UNCG school of music. There was a huge organ in the middle of the room.

As Brian and Erin worked through some of the songs, I realized that this room would be a great place to capture a recording of the acoustic piano. What began as a simple meeting turned into two half-days of acoustic piano tracking at a remote location.

I had never recorded a real piano before so I grabbed my Modern Recording Techniques handbook, a 57, a condenser, a pre-amp, a few cables, a few mic stands, and my VS-1680, which I found in my attic. The thing still worked, thankfully.

The tracks came out quite well. It's refreshing to hear things like pedal noise and breathing on a really quiet piano performance.

Brian, Erin and I will be completing this recording project over the next few weeks. I believe we have one more acoustic piano session. We'll also do some electric piano work on a few of the tunes. This was a lot of fun, for sure.