Research on microphone arrangement in the grand piano recording: In search of a musical suitable timbre
Every musical instrument has a specific sound radiation pattern, which is highly dependent from tone and frequency. This has been extensively investigated by Jurgen Meyer in his book “Acoustics and the Performance of Music”. In 2018, We did comparison recordings of 15 orchestral instruments and In 2022, we finally did grand piano. The purpose of this research is to make comparable sound sources and to search the microphone arrangement that can record the most musically appropriate timbre of a grand piano through subjective evaluation experiments. This project was done in April 2022 at Berlin University of the Arts Hall by Kazuya Nagae of Nagoya University of Arts, Thorsten Weigelt of Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), Toru Kamekawa, Atsushi Marui of Tokyo University of the Arts (TUA) and Tonmeister course students of UdK, and graduates of TUA. About the recording, 28 omni-directional microphones, Schoeps MK2H were installed at different positions and heights while keeping the AB stereo 55cm. We can listen and compare the positions of 24 points. Also we recorded ambisonics microphone, Sennheiser AMBEO VR MIC. Because we want to introduce what is the direct sound and indirect sound of the piano in the hall. After recording, we conducted a subjective evaluation experiment to see how the sound impression would differ depending on the microphone position. We'd like to introduce about all this project, current results of subjective evaluation experiments and how relate between the piano and the microphone.