Thanks Pianistically! - I loved and enjoyed the interview - certainly Rick Wakeman is someone who's opinions are golden.
Re. 'under' - he really didn't mean to put mics 'only under', just to be clear - the vid is marked to begin where he talks about the 12 mics, for readers' convenience.
https://youtu.be/zppfjeculUs?si=h-OwQgJ...amp;t=2357
Here are some idea goose-chasing about this kind of thing - in hopes it gives some helpful perspective to anyone thinking about this kind of thing. Hope to make the notion of many mics make sense.. although these days, I'm not so sure anyone might really 'need' or crave for it *but that's just my observations to current times.. and I'm just one among many who may have differing ideas - and I guess also - I think, it's just normal for humans to on the one hand think "things work best this way", and yet simultaneously believe "there are no rules" - that's true.. it's OK to know things can be like they were, like they are - and they'll be like they'll become too.. and it's all OK.
My main exposure to the idea of having more mics can cover a lot of territory.. from dealing with sharp attacks making 'near mics' seem too close (compared to much of the typical piano recording techniques I'd suggest someone like Rick Wakeman will have experienced). In my case, beginning at the end of the 1970s in a studio, we didn't have a 'de-esser' for every track until like the early 80s. So, I can imagine at the time of Rick's experience with the harpsichord recording technique, neither might many studios with even custom mixing consoles. We had 2 units on a rack, one better than the other iirc.. and if we needed to use the de-esser for more than just a vocal plus backing vocals or troublesome drum room captures, we might have to do sort of time-consuming things like mix a troubled instrument track out to a 2nd tape machine with de-esser engaged - and then run that signal back to a different main tape track. (easier than it sounds - but with each 'trick' like that, you lose time - but also possibly a little quality). That's a minor thing maybe.. but treble 'transients' were horribly handled by a lot of studio compressors at that time. You needed 'body' in the signal to 'work' them. So harpsichord's needle-like attack would cruise through the slow old compressors.. and of course, the 'body' hitting would risk crushing the signal.. balancing act.. when there were new faster compressors coming on at the time, many didn't have the ability to work in ways taken for granted these days (like parallel compression for the most obvious one perhaps). Instead of being able to mix 3 different compressors, we may be quite stuck with a small selection of very good ones at the time - but nothing like what's possible since maybe the 80s.. (think of things like one compressor or de-esser of sorts for top end transients, one for body, one for makeup/shaping - and maybe even more on the mastering end of things too). It's easy to frankenstien all that stuff too much - and it definitely can be overkill.
That's not all - many mics sharing 'the spatial ambience' means, various things.. despite maybe some inclination to believe it might end up a 'weak' or 'phase' problem in the making.. at some point, once you have enough mixed in signals from vastly differing perspectives, it will 'glue'. It's possible that it springs forth really, from 'wall of sound' days (there have been many well known and not so well known people making discoveries and theories about this stuff, beyond just ideas about stereo itself.). Should add, multi mic ideas predate any hardware encoded 'surround' systems.. so mono and stereo particularly would have been the only final goal..
Other issues (esp. relating to the timeline of that story of the 12 mics), is that maybe it wasn't typical for the London studios (who may have been the only ones who 'knew' of that particular method mentioned btw).. the hardware may not have typically had great 'de-essers' onboard which may have helped with the high treble transients in the attacks.. plus the body of the sound decays much faster than a piano..
In short, to make a 'big full recording' of one of these period instruments, indeed, it helps to have more of a portion of ambient space collected within the room - and in those times, (and maybe until now also), using that 12 mic technique could be interesting to learn more about - but I'd definitely suggest, like Rick Wakeman mentions also, it's often just "let the audio people perform their role - after you performed your part". With very famous people, like Bowie, and producers like Tony Visconti etc. as the characters in the stories.. it really helps to convey these things to people who'd like to learn more about recording (by learning some of the 'how it was done before digital times' etc.).
My concern about 12 mics in Pianoteq would amount to a concern over CPU (the radiating model kind of does good things to replace the need for so many mics - imho) - but who knows, one day it may be possible to have more mics in an improved model. Even now though, to be absolutely fair.. many like 2 mics for piano (and most other acoustic instruments).. some like 3 or more.. but for sure, 5 can be tricky as it is, overkill quite often. More than 5 and the actually fairly few users who venture into the mics seriously, may end up with a ever decreasing satisfaction from every new mic they switch on.
I'm mostly using default presets now - when I like to keep editing 'for a project', it's pretty much that.. for one a time use. A bit like real life.. and for many users, it's often most satisfying to just find a mic setting for a fav piano/preset and set it, forget it and make music. For others.. I think a deep microphone labyrinth could be fun - but honestly, I don't think many are missing out on something by not having 12 mics. Like I hope to convey above, I really think it was a combination of 'the era' (equipment) and a very clever person to get a nice template for a way to repeat doing at in different studios.. but like so many things about recording.. one person may say "Oh, it has to be this way, or it's just not correct".. but hey, there will likely be many equally successful folks who've done it differently for as long or just currently, but really well too
Grain of salt and all. But - I've enjoyed this interview - and quite of few of Rick Beato's interviews - it's really, I believe, highly valuable for new/young recordists to hear from those old horses' mouths about.. 'how' we got to how things are now. Some perspective, maybe some deference to the reality of what grounds these people already covered (decades ago) might stop a lot of disagreements in this day and age too. Like Luc says there are no rules. I like that - and often say "No rules, just infinite rules!"
BTW - should mention - different people and genres will have absolutely a lot of different sort of 'safety rails' for what works in their world. I have absolute respect for classical recordists, like Luc might say he hits start/stop (kind of understating the solid hand he has on the wheel I'm sure) .. and has some rules to mic things.. but you don't get to be good at setting up, unless you're doing it a lot - and hats off.
In Rick Wakeman's time, he's seen classical and contemporary music through a long timeline. One thing I'd like to add about 'mics' - and esp. in regards to piano.. is that like he mentions, he was learning as he went, from people who had been recording others like himself for a long time. Rick said, he noticed things like the way pianos often were recorded with close mics (isolating from ensemble at times, using a cover as a kind of movable baffle and so on).. essentially though, esp. in pop and some modern music, indeed, close mic is common - and it's what is done with FX later which is to create ambience which replaces 'the room' to an extent. Often, it is to run dispirate sources (like abstract vocals/samples whatever) through 'the same' virutal space or reverb(s). This is indeed infinite in scope.
Consider the way vocals may be recorded in a booth (commonly), or at home studios with pop shield or small baffle-like shielded cages (foam padded tiny booths essentially).. the idea being, to "NOT" capture 'the room'.. so as the voice is easier to operate upon within the production/mix goals. Adding reverb or ambience to a clean signal can be better (in a lot of contemporary cases) than having some room or 'boom' from the room or tails or reflections which may be 'ugly' compared to nicely tailored BPM staged delays etc. (from extremely subtle through to 'you are supposed to hear this weird bit' - depending on genre or artists with whatever trademark things they aim for and so on).
I nearly forgot why I added the 'BTW' above.. I guess the main element I wanted to shine a light upon, is that, in contrast to close mic work, having a more ambient mic technique for esp. 'era' instruments gives a natural sense of the thing being in a space. I think people often may not notice when the music they are listening to, goes from 'realistic' like a band with a piano in the middle of the stage, to some pop music with the piano zipping around the edges with little motiffs and only occasionally taking up the whole sound stage more realistically.. a lot of modern audio production for a long time, has been about sort of painting with sound. If a mic is placed somewhere strange, in pop.. it may not follow that a listener will hear/understand where the mic was placed.. they're hearing the final mixed-in result which might collude with other instrument parts to 'glue' the piano in a novel way.
With close mics, you tend to bring things out by taming elements and enhancing or magnifying others in a way (in various ways, which may include saturation/echos/reverbs/chambers/plate for the basics).. but with more distant mics, you might expand on that sound and not go cutting or sculpting so much.. by kind of 'pulling the instrument' out of the room and in some ways then settling the stereo image with additional buff and polish (whether again nudging things with compression/EQ and maybe additional ambience) all interesting stuff.. I'm sure the next time I put on some classical music I'll be listening to how they might have mic'd the piano. I kind of tend to overlook that.. esp. with classical music since it's almost inevitable that it's within the bounds of expectations - but with other music? Try thinking of "how did they mic things for that piano sound" next time you hear a piano or harpsi!
Here's probably my fav contemporary-ish harpsichord in a kind of pop song. Stranglers 'Golden Brown'.. it's a repeating riff etc.. but check how you have quite a sense of the harpsichord in the piece.. you can kind of hear how the mix seems to place all instruments in the same space.. kind of traditional in a lot of ways - but vocals and guitar are probably the most 'modern' exceptions to that (mixing-wise).
To me, it would not matter if the harpsichord was recorded with 2 or 12 mics - if it works well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-GUjA67mdc
Pianoteq Studio Bundle (Pro plus all instruments) - Kawai MP11 digital piano - Yamaha HS8 monitors
