Topic by Jake Johnson

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  • Jake Johnson
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Topic: On-line issues of Recording Engineer\Producer

Someone has very kindly scanned in almost all of the issues of the old magazine Recording Engineer\Producer. Something of a precursor to magazines like Mix:

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Rec...oducer.htm

Interviews with engineers for rock recordings, etc.

EDIT: I just noticed that:

1. At the lower left of this page are links to several other older magazines devoted to sound engineering and recording.
2. At the upper right is a red Search All button that lets one search all of the issues of the magazine for words such as "piano."

Last edited by Jake Johnson (13-11-2014 19:16)

Reply by eugene

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Re: On-line issues of Recording Engineer\Producer

Nice find JJ!!!

Reply by Jake Johnson

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Re: On-line issues of Recording Engineer\Producer

As it turns out, there is a lot more, particularly for people interested in the history of radio and recording for radio. Huge site that I will regret finding:

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/

In the Recording Engineer\Producer magazine, I'm already getting worried. 680 search results for "piano", and those sometime only reference the first page of the article or, often, paragraph, in which recording a piano is mentioned.

Some revelations about studio mic'ing a piano, too, in the first few pages after a search on pianos. See the Keith Olsen interview in the June 1981 issue? :

"If I'm using a piano on a tracking date, I like having an isolation box over it -quite a tall one. As soon as you have a grand piano on a date you stick a couple of mikes in it, tilt the top down as low as it goes, then you put
blankets over it. But all of a sudden you have created so many reflections inside that piano, that you get this real tinkly, small- sounding piano. So when I need isolation, I like having a tall box over the piano, which is heavily
insulated with glass fiber to absorb everything. Essentialy it's synthesizing a wide, open room, where the microphones can be close to the piano, and the sound that's generated inside the box is absorbed. As long as it doesn't come back, you're listening and hearing the resonance of the sound board and the sound of the strings.  Not the sound of the resonance bouncing off an ebony top, coming back immediately at a very sharp angle, and canceling out all your lower and upper mid-range." (RE\P. June 1981. pages 32-34, interrupted by an ad on page 33)

So he created something like an anechoic chamber out of a box lined with glass fiber. Now I want a Keith Olsen isolation box in Pianoteq. Feature request? I may be serious, since that seems to be one way that they were recording pianos. (Notice that I did not mention that he was talking about how to mic Barry Manilow's piano...And there's some serious discussion of lining the piano's rim with glass fiber, too.)

Enjoy. Let's not think too much about how it must have felt and looked to be put inside that box to play.

Last edited by Jake Johnson (14-11-2014 06:19)

Reply by Jake Johnson

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Re: On-line issues of Recording Engineer\Producer

Sorry to respond to myself, but Elton John was recorded using a similar enclosure box, according to an article by Paul Laurence. This would have been fairly early Elton John. EDIT: Found a later reference that says this enclosure box was used on "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." I don't know what methods were used in the "Your Song," "Take Me to the Pilot"era.

"...Another sophisticated approach to isolating the piano in the center of the recording environment is the piano box Gus Dudgeon had built for Elton John. The box was built to match the piano's configuration, 4 feet tall. The interior is damped with fiberglass, all except the ceilng of it which is left untreated and is a reflective surface. Using this box, Gus has five feet (including the 12 inches from the top of the piano down to the strings inside the piano) to work with for his piano sound. In this way, he has found it possible to get away from the unwanted sounds too close to the strings, without any loss of isolation." (RE/P December, 1977. Page 45) http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Arc...977-12.pdf

Note that the addition of a reflective ceiling is a variation. I guess one could shape the sound by choosing where to put fiberglass and where to put a reflective surface. And by varyng the dimensions of the box. In any case, this variation on the box, according to later in the article, creates a more distant sound.

Don't worry. I'm not going to post everything I read in that magazine here. Just thought that a confirmation of this fiberglass-lined box technique might be of interest, since a popular\rock piano sound is so often requested, and I for one have been moving mics and trying other things, not knowing that there was an entirely different factor shaping the sound in those recordings.

Last edited by Jake Johnson (18-11-2014 21:18)