Re: church miking a piano

On Nov 5, 5:55 pm, Nate Najar <n...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This post is really long but I really appreciate the advice you guys
can give.

I have no experience here. my church has a very low budget and slowly
acquires things it needs. there's no trained sound person and no one
really knows how to operate the stuff. except me. I have to cover
the trims on the board so people don't touch them, because they think
it's the volume knob. Anyway, out of sheer desperation for something
to finally sound halfway decent, I volunteered myself to redo a bit of
the sound system to try to get it sounding cleaner.

we have a 24 channel peavey board, 4 mackie 15" mains, and qsc power
amps. The band is a keyboard/piano player, me on guitar and a
drummer. The keyboard player used to play hammond organ exclusively
but since they got the piano they prefer him playing that (too bad,
he's a fine pianist but an excellent organist). So he's got a Yamaha
motif that he plays left hand bass on (sets it on top of the piano)
and a yamaha c3 grand piano. they like it loud. real loud. We have
mostly really shitty microphones and a few sm58s, and a few sennheiser
decent handheld vocal mics. so I've got the choir singing into the
sennheisers and the pastor has a nice new sennheiser wireless. I hid
all the behringer and cheaper mics so they don't accidentally get
used. They used to stick an sm58 inside the piano just resting on the
soundboard. imagine all the problems!

I didn't mic the drums, and the keyboard hits a di and goes to an eon
powered monitor blaring up the keyboardist's ass and also to the foh.
i've got a mic on my little fender amp.

So.... I've got everything gain staged properly and labelled off the
snake and mic cords labeled and tidied up so there's no question what
to do with what. But I need to get the piano sounding decent and loud
enough. The biggest problem here is that the main foh speakers are
BEHIND the band. there's nothing i can do about it. absolutely
nothing. I know how wrong it is, I don't know why they did it, but
they did and there's no where else to put them.

I tried micing the piano last week with a pair of josephson c42's and
it sounded excellent but of course I couldn't get it loud enough
without feedingback horrendous. the board has a single sweepable band
and 2 shelved bands, but no bandwidth on the mid sweep so the eq isn't
really sophisticated enough for any surgery. They always have the
piano lid open- I'm going to rehearsal tonight and will screw around
with it more- I'll try putting the lid on the short stick and see if
that helps.

To me the ideal solution is to sell the piano and get another motif.
use the extra money to buy some needed pa stuff (new mics, CABLES!, a
new snake, etc...) and put the rest of the money away. But i don't
think they're going to go for that. so if that's the case, how should
i amplify this thing. the goal is gain before feedback.

I was thinking about trying a barcusberry- did a search here and
didn't come up with much. terrible? or possibly my solution? what
else do you suggest trying? thanks so much.

Nate


Even if the PA wasn't behind the piano, you'd still need to put
the thing on half stick most of the time, in my experience anyway.
Two comments on mics for this situation.

First, placement is critical. I have recently even used omnis on
piano for live sound, 10 days ago for the Jazz Improv Magazine
convention in NYC. Mine was a medium sized room for about 150 people
and it was pretty damn loud really, more than a few of the artists
prefered in fact. But no problem with the omni mics from feedback,
they were inside the piano on DPA's magnetic mounts (DPA was a co-
sponsor - so I mixed 21 bands live over 2 days with almost all omni
mics! Would have been 27 bands too, but the SEE Factor guys gave me
breaks and a couple bands didn't show up... But I digress. ) The
magnetic mounts for the compact DPAs typically place the mics 3- 5
inches off the 2nd or 3rd and the lowest soundhole, about 1.5 - 2.5
inches off the piano frame facing the keyboard. The room had been
eq'ed with SMART and I did have to roll off everything below about
roughly 70 Hz. The DPA's were flatter than the measuring mic was, only
1,5 db down at 20 Hz. The air conditioning was ringing down there as
it turned out.

Second, often feedback reflects on how poor the off axis response
is on a mic. Somehow in my experience, mics with better off axis
response give me less trouble with feedback, are easier to tweak out.
Perhaps this is why the DPA's. although they are omnis, work so well.
Perhaps if you have a pair of good omni lavaliers, they actually might
work if you mount them in really close. Or you might try getting the
Josephson's in close as well, you can build a sling with gaffer's tape
to get them down inside the piano. Also makes closing the lid easier,
if it's absolutely neccessary.

Similarly I had an 8 piece string section with a live DJ
playing tracks on a live sound gig recently, and I had fantastic
results from the DPA 4061 omni lavs, mounted under the strings with
the instrument mount DPA makes for violins, violas, and cellos. It
hangs under the strings facing the bridge, and when I put up the
faders they JUST WORKED. Fabulous sound, amazing loud, really blew me
away. Yep, a string section competitive for volume with a DJ, and in
a big room like the Hammerstein Ballroom too..

I have used omnis in the studio and in Broadcast a lot of course,
but until recently not really much for live sound. My conclusion
after these experiences is, if the gig doesn't demand Arena level
volume, omnis can work very very well. ( ... I have a board tape to
prove it .... < g > )

And DPA's people are the nicest folks to have around...

Will Miho
NY TV/Audio Post/Music/Live Sound Guy
"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away..." Tom Waits

.

Loading