I recently read a thread on mic placement in a piano, (being tuned), that repeatedly mentioned positioning the mic relative to certain points on the string for best results. OK, using a point on the string as a reference is one thing, but believing that the string itself is being miced is wrong. That is not how sound works in a piano and is why I am posting this question here.
The soundboard in a piano takes the vibrations from the strings, via the bridge and, for lack of a better word, amplifies those vibrations into audible sound that we can hear. The sound coming directly off the strings would be almost inaudible if it were not for the soundboard increasing the amplitude of those vibrations and pushing them into the air for our ears to capture. In short, the sound we hear from the piano is coming from the soundboard and not directly from the strings themselves.
Most engineers mic a piano based on a combination of trial and error and experience on what works best. And ultimately that's probably the best way to approach micing a piano for music recording.
That said: Has anyone ever experimented with Chladni patterns on a piano soundboard to visualize the standing waves and find out where the nodes and null points are for different notes? I think this information might be valuable for mic placement in recording but, more importantly for us, in mic placement for optimum results in ETD tuning's. Especially when the ETD is having difficulty picking up the desired partials of certain notes, which is the real focus of my question here.
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Geoff Sykes, RPT
Los Angeles CA
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