Yesterday I built a simple shock-mount for my new condenser microphone and recorded some piano tracks in the church. Using a large ring of PVC pipe, two hose clamps, a bunch of elastic bands, a joining piece of electrical conduit, and two bolts I MacGyver’d the shock mount together. It doesn’t look pretty and I needed to use a 2lb weight to counterbalance the mic stand, but it works!
I recorded some piano tracks in the church with our 11 foot Petrov grand piano. They turned out quite well. I used the large condenser and one of the small ones I built last year, about 5-6 feet from the side of the piano, in an ORTF-ish configuration. I then reversed the stereo field because I thought it sounded better (lower notes on the left, higher on the right, like it would be if I was sitting at the keys).
The church has a beautiful natural reverb sound to it that the mics captured quite nicely. Unfortunately, they also captured the fan from the furnace, but there’s not much I can do about that until the summer!
The 3 pieces are:
- “Thaxted” by Gustav Holst
- “God Is Alive!” by David Haas
- “Kingsfold” by Lucy Broadwood, arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams
Please forgive any mistakes. :-)
