Recording Secrets That’ll SAVE Your Music

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As always, thank you so much for watching, and thank you to all of you that leave comments.

[@JoeyFTL]

Alan Meyerson is someone I never expected to show up on this channel, a wonderful surprise for sure

[@dmacrolens]

What a polite insult!

[@oxoelfoxo]

@@dmacrolens only if you wish to see it that way

[@NahreSol]

He is amazing!!

[@JP-zq8yv]

Damn, you are sooo lucky to have had the chance to be taught by such a master. I could have watched a two hours version!

[@Jason75913]

I'd be up for a longer vid about his input, too

[@salliemorrill2671]

The science of Acoustics is deep. You have come a long way. Thank you for sharing this information with us. Good mic preamp, well treated environment, & yes, good mic makes a world of difference.

[@NahreSol]

Thank you!!

[@alanhirayama4592]

The quality of your sound engineer will definitely influence the quality of your music! Thank you for sharing!

[@leaveitorsinkit242]

Just use a good piano VST plugin.

[@Jason75913]

@@leaveitorsinkit242 that, too

[@christophergetchell6490]

I'm currently studying wave mechanics, but I love watching people who have incredible intuition and experience working with waves like this! I've lived in the playback end of sound and music for most of my life, it's really awesome to see the other end of this worth your videos! It looks like upgrade syndrome is very real for microphones just as it is for speakers and amplifiers!

[@agucci]

To record is to become a recorder. The instrument. Literally. You physically become a recorder, and it is the best feeling this life has to offer.

[@TeagueChrystie]

It's just wrong that these videos have so few views. These videos are perfect. What the hell?

[@PianistAcademy1]

Hi Nahre! Great video and I especially like the comments about home recording. I'm a professional musician and also professional audio engineer, and the spacious sound you can achieve in a big room or hall is something that's just never possible to come anywhere close to at home, even with a wonderfully acoustically treated "home studio" space... it has nothing to do with the player or even the instrument, which confuses a whole lot of people who don't have audio background (which happens to be nearly every listener of music on the planet!)

[@rexwine]

Recording itself as "art" is interesting, because that suggests some level of ability that may not lend itself to being taught in specific steps.

[@tomjensen618]

Excellent Nahre! Thanks!!

[@sfulmer430]

What's crazy is that after all this work to fine-tune mic type, number, placement, model, brand, etc plus modifying EQ on the recording then most people play the recording back on their cheap, low quality computer or iPhone. Musicians should explore the world of high end home audio.

[@NachtmahrNebenan]

Now this was a lesson in recording, rooms and microphones! I learned so much today, thank you 🌺

[@Foodgeek]

Exciting idea for a video 😁

[@TonyThomas10000]

One of my favorite LA Studios. I have fond memories of visiting TVR back in the 80s.

[@ahoha.]

Such precious knowledge, and here you are sharing it with all of us. Thank you! Wish you all the success and health : )

[@truecuckoo]

Wow, looking forward to hearing the new piece! It sounds absolutely phenomenal 😮

[@jesperdj]

You are meeting so many great people and visiting special and interesting places! 🎹 The difference between take 1 and 2 of Farewell to a Songbird to my ears is mostly in the timing. Thanks Nahre for your interesting videos and beautiful music!

[@dukeengine1339]

I love this kind of subjects! Music is interesting, composing more, and technical stuff even more. Because you don't find all this on a single channel! Thank you, good job

[@GizzyDillespee]

Thanks for showing the different mics and positions, and especially sharing all those different takes.

[@lyleabrahams]

Love the recording and gear tip vids!

[@dsullivan6916]

Just preparing for a long weekend session at a friend's farm house that came with a 100+ year old piano and i'm stealing all these ideas including ambient mics in the stair well. Love your channel and can't wait to see/hear more !

[@LuigiSuardiMusic]

great video, it’s amazing when you explore all the aspects of music not strictly related to the performance

[@NahreSol]

Thank you!!

[@Stick-a-fork-in-Gmorks-tort]

Jaw dropping. I get a new nugget of knowledge with each viewing. There's a lot packed into such a small amount of time. Gratitude.

[@ongyuxuan6989]

This video is just incredible! Learned so much!

[@wan4442]

Great video The microphone in the studio is priceless

[@a.pro.crastinator7409]

I'm a sound engineer major and i found myself nodding to everything you and Mr. Meyerson were saying. Very good and informative video to inspire musicians to start recording themselves! But i feel like you should've said that good results are meant to be discovered by yourself, no one's gonna do that for you. So just start recording yourself and I promise you will learn something new every time.

[@B0K1T0]

Which was actually a bit what I got from that part "I'm not a wizard, I don't always know what I'm doing", although it wasn't stressed that explicitly maybe. And besides it has to be a good balance I'd say. With random trials you'd have to be lucky, where someone else's experience can offer useful starting points to have a bit more "lucky" experiments.

[@leaveitorsinkit242]

Just use a good piano VST plugin. You can immediately start with the sound you want as oppose to starting with a live sound that then needs to fine tuned to become the recorded sound you want. And yes, the sound of a good piano VST plugin is nearly identical to the sound of a _recorded_ piano.

[@a.pro.crastinator7409]

@@leaveitorsinkit242 depends. A real piano is a must when recording classical music

[@leaveitorsinkit242]

@@a.pro.crastinator7409 A good piano VST contains thousands of samples from a real piano. I don’t know where you’re trying to go with this.

[@a.pro.crastinator7409]

@@leaveitorsinkit242 can't wait to hear a new piano sonata from you, sir) Just make sure to use the best VST you have

[@joechip1232]

Really excellent advice!! The character that your recording setup adds to your sound is just as important as what comes from your playing technique. The more your focus on it and start to understand how you can shape it, the more clearly you'll be able to know what you want a piece to sound like. It becomes an integral part of your musical expression.

[@PunyDragon2]

videos like this are so cool, lots of things that i dont know anything about!! thanks Nahre

[@AroundTheHouseShow]

Great video. So much good information, thanks for sharing. Watched on my phone and will have to get to my workspace and rewatch with my better audio setup.

[@Coda02]

I really like your new piece! It sounds beautiful! It's the kind of style I try to write in too.

[@luisrocha26]

As a beginner on music production, the most important thing I learnt is that the Room is a huge player in your sound (it is an EQ applied before your sound is captured), we must pay attention on it just as much as pay on the instruments and equipement.

[@MatthewEverettGates]

Thanks! That was so helpful

[@JacobJackson19]

Your channel is amazing, please never stop

[@TheSeeking2know]

Great content Nahre. Interesting video. I kept talking screenshots of the tips typed as text on the screen. Keep making these kinds of videos.

[@Rondo2ooo]

Awesome clip! So well condensed great information.

[@piannyplayer]

This was so cool and helpful!! Thank you!

[@aidankeithlowe]

Fantastic video! Thank you!

[@markshveima]

Love this. So informative. Thank You!!

[@koshersalaami]

Excellent video. I’ll add a few technical details so your listeners can understand why some of the stuff that’s happening is happening. I will not get arcane here - I won’t use technical jargon. What you’re hearing, what airborne sound is, is really fast changes in air pressure caused by changes in air density - how many air molecules are in a given space. Your space has a resting pressure and the air pressure behind your eardrum is typically at about that resting pressure. When pressure outside your eardrum rises, it pushes your eardrum in. When pressure outside your eardrum drops, the pressure behind your eardrum becomes greater and pushes your eardrum out. If pressure changes (or anything else, like your vocal cords vibrating your bones) move your eardrums in and out between roughly twenty times a second and twenty thousand times a second, you’ll sense it as sound and hear it. The greater the pressure changes, the louder the sound. The faster the pressure changes, the higher the pitch. (Doubling the changes per second means going up an octave.) The pattern of the pressure changes determines timbre, or what the sound sounds like. These pressure changes, which when we put a bunch of them in order are what we call sound waves, are flying around your room at a little over a thousand feet per second. One wavelength is one complete cycle of from resting pressure to high pressure down through resting pressure to low pressure and back up to resting pressure, at which point the next cycle starts. How long a wavelength is depends on pitch. The lowest pitch we can hear has a wavelength of about fifty feet; the highest at under an inch. To get the wavelength, divide a thousand feet by how many cycles happen in the second it takes the sound to travel that thousand feet. (When we look at cycles per second we’re looking at how frequently the air pressure changes and so, quite logically, we call that number the Frequency - you thought that was a technical term but it’s actually plain English - and the number of cycles per second is called Hertz, abbreviated Hz. Thousand Hertz is called kiloHertz, abbreviated kHz.) What happens when these sound waves collide? They are, after all, bouncing into each other incessantly. They affect each other most obviously if they’re at roughly the same loudness and roughly the same pitch. If high density air collides with high density air you get very high density air - a really high number of air molecules in that space - and so they reinforce each other and the sound gets louder. If low density air collides with low density air you get very low density air - a really low number of air molecules in that space - and so they reinforce each other - by moving the eardrum farther, just out instead of in - and the sound gets louder. But what happens when high density air collides with low density air? The air molecules in the high density air spread out to fill the space. What you get is something approaching average density air. Average density air is silence. They partially cancel each other out, which means the sound gets softer. How in synch or out of synch the waves are with each other is called Phase - when they’re mostly in phase they mostly reinforce each other and when they’re mostly out of phase they mostly cancel each other. By the way, at any given location in the room some pitches will reinforce each other while others cancel each other. When you close mic you reduce the influence of reflections because direct sound is so much louder than reflected sound but remember that the audience is used to hearing those reflections. However, when you play back music you not only have the acoustics of the room you recorded in, you also have the acoustics of the room your speakers are in (if you’re not using headphones). Now we add that as a result of overtones/harmonics, a single note actually contains several pitches, all with their own wavelengths (though we usually view this as a single complicated wave that contains all those inter wavelengths). Also, with many instruments, particularly piano, how loud the overtones are compared to each other and compared to the fundamental (the basic note, the one whose pitch we’re naming) changes with loudness - as you hit a key harder, the upper overtones get comparatively louder. Here we’re talking about timbre, though there are other components such as hammer noise - or bow noise or breath noise. I”m showing you a corner of the iceberg but this gives you some idea of why moving mics around makes a difference.

[@notnotricharmander]

This is really great and useful content, thank you!

[@colingerard7863]

Hi Nahre. I adore all the insights we get from your channel and the guests you have on it, wonderful. Plus, I'm glad you've changed your lighting so it doesn't look as though you're suffering from kidney failure any more because of the colour cast you had in previous videos shot in this room. Sending good vibes from London and enjoy the rest of your day.

[@orangefoxable]

Great video! Thank you Nahre :)

[@ananthd4797]

Thank you for this video!

[@denniskessler7983]

Excellent. Thank you Nahre. I'm now ready to experiment. Better music ahead.

[@gorogorotodoro]

This is so informative, thank you!

[@kamiltamiola2066]

This is awesome! Thank you so much for sharing with us Nahre.

[@NahreSol]

Thank you!!

[@kiaruna]

I hope your channel will keep growing, your work and efforts deserve more attention !

[@robkalis]

Happy,thanks! "Systems" are here interactive explained and helps for homerecording ,thanks to all

[@sschmidtevalue]

Drapes and other sound-absorbing materials on the walls make a huge difference. I'm glad you found the right combination for you.

[@SouloftheTroll]

Wonderful job, and a great evolution from a couple years ago!! Brava!

[@joeguthriePIANO]

Been following you since you wrote with a tiny keyboard on the beach. Love your work and your exploration. Thanks for this.

[@PianoLandscapes4film]

This was truly insightful for me, as I record myself all the time. Thank you for sharing this.

[@TheStudioDrummer]

So cool! I have been doing this with mic'ing drumset for years but I love the idea of seeing it as different "Perspectives" By having these different mic positions ready and always recording, I can then mix in depending on the context.

[@kwolenberger5202]

You share good and interesting information. Always a lot to learn. Thanks

[@ricardosantos545]

Very good! Thanks

[@jameschristiansson3137]

Best music channel this. And there are a lot of good music channels.

[@skylar1242]

I haven't even started watching, and it's already my favorite video. Thank you for this!!!!!!!!

[@alexeypotlov]

Nice content, thanx for it!)

[@RobertSuchorski]

Hi Nahre Thank you for this video, it-answered a lot of my questions which are not easy to find anywhere else. Thank you 👍👍👍

[@meneereenhoorn]

This is amazing content! :D

[@Ernieshaus]

As always, enjoyable and informing, super practical for hands on stuff 👍 Vielen Dank, muchas gracias, thanks for the effort and for sharing ✌✌✌

[@jimmynguyen227]

Awesome video, I've always been curious how a real piano gets recorded with quality sound. You've gotta put up more of your compositions, i love how they sound!

[@rafaelmolina9431]

Awesome, awesome, awesome video!!!! Congrats!!!

[@loislelland3732]

Thanks so much for this video! Super helpful as a piano home recordist.

[@arcanetwix]

Wow so amazing!!! Super interesting!!

[@GregorPQ]

"Lies" Funny how an insult can be a great compliment;) Absolutely love this, but it's too short! Can we have a longer one, maybe including an interview with the wizard, pretty please?

[@jazzfan7491]

Great video! Big subject but I feel like the "sound" of recordings -- especially classical recordings, though that's not an area I'd call myself an expert in -- changes with trends over time, and also seems related to record labels having a "house" sound. In general, I dislike what to me I sense is the tendency of classical recordings to sound like what you would hear in a very big hall from the back rows. A lot of reverb I guess, is that I'm talking about. This video made me go back and listen to one of my favorite recordings of all time: Martha Argerich's Chopin preludes, on DG, from 1975. I would say the sound there is like a small hall. Then l listened to some Rubinstein Chopin Nocturnes, I believe from the early 60s. It sounds like you are sitting right next to the piano. To me, this "intimate" sound is perfect for those Nocturnes. I think one reason I've never been able to warm up to Maurizio Pollini recordings very much is he (to me, anyway) always seems to be recorded as if he's on the other side of a football field. Maybe I'm listening to the wrong records. By the way, for what it's worth, the record that to me has the very best sound I've ever heard is a recording by the Cuban tres player Eliades Ochoa, "Tribute to the Quarteto Patria". It's a great record too. That was surely recorded in Cuba by the state record company Egrem, which is probably pretty cash poor; my point is that I doubt very much that the fanciest equipment is what really matters in making a recording sound great.

[@kblam1]

Nahre, I learned so much from this video that I can use. Thank you for sharing.

[@NahreSol]

I'm so glad, thank you!!

[@googgnik]

fascinating episode. This opened a window into the effects of recording that will make me a more sophisticated listener

[@raidkyu]

my first real piano is on the way, so this is super helpful! 🤘🏼🥰 thanks!

[@tapeexperiments]

Yay! Thank you.

[@microcolonel]

Ambisonic mixes of piano recordings are beautiful. I happened by a session with ambisonic microphones recording a grand as well; they had prototype MEMS-based third-order ambisonic microphones, and standard first-order ambisonic microphones.

[@JohnMassari]

Excellent video!

[@DudeSmokedd]

insane thanks!!

[@ms77619]

Love this video

[@kevinlentz7604]

Nahr what a very and great Video so insightful for so many things

[@recordclassicalmusic]

This was such a great video!

[@thecatofnineswords]

oh to be able to borrow an audio engineer of this calibre for your home setup. serious envy

[@seancregomusic]

Recording a piano is supposed to be the most challenging instrument to capture accurately. At home, I took 30 samples with my H2N in 2ch surround, and I have found a position that is "convincing enough" for my tiny audience and my purpose. (I was actually going to go into a professional studio to record modern music for someone, but health issues cancelled it. I was so bummed!!) And the recording/playing itself is another entire skillset to learn. You can know something "perfectly", but once that red light comes on, you can completely forget how to play. Or you notice mistakes that you never noticed before, and so on. People are often shocked that their favorite artists use MANY takes to make a single recording, even if it's "easier" pieces! Playing something perfectly straight through in one take is exceptionally rare and impossible in my opinion (regarding recording; live performance is a different thing altogether.) Your last comment about how stressful recording is...very, very true. It's a completely different way at looking at your playing and it's harsh! Recording is also a great PRACTICE tool. I will often have my students record themselves, and they find that they hardly are playing the way they thought they were playing! (No surprise there.)

[@farinellafarinella2292]

Watching this I feel clueless. All the recording gears are so expensive. 😓

[@acuriousergeorge]

I agree with all you said, but there's always an exception. The pianist Valentina Lisitsa videotapes her recordings, and while she may do multiple takes, her chosen one will be an unspliced version. Check out her Beethoven Sonatas online. She recorded all the Chopin etudes and the two day recording session was videotaped. The producer would make her play each etude many times, say 5-10 as I recall. But most of the time I could not tell much difference. He'd saying something like "Bar 84, you were a little weak on the E flat." She also did a 3 hour video learning a new piece - the Warsaw Concerto.

[@seancregomusic]

@@acuriousergeorge no, she uses spliced videos all the time. She and I have actually chatted about it in the past...

[@unclemick-synths]

@@farinellafarinella2292 the Zoom H2n is not very expensive but is very versatile. It is a little bit bright but EQ can help during post production. Reaper software for post production is also not very expensive but very versatile. As shown in this video, mic positioning gives a lot of control over the sound. People often rush to hit Record instead of taking time to experiment and find the best mic position.

[@Goldfinger721]

Super interesting! 👏👏👍

[@wiggesobk]

That was very impressive and interesting!

[@salahhamze]

I really appreciated this video. One thing that seems to do really well on social media is the type of micing that Gibran Alcocer does. You hear a lot of the hammer and it has a very atmospheric feel. I wonder what kind of setup he has.

[@andrewtessman9921]

This was a lovely, enlightening video; very insightful to the technical aspects. Thank you for sharing! As organist, I'm curious what his advice would be for our "studios" (churches).

[@PierceStudent]

I love watching these experts in action. Recording experts.

[@Sh4dySam]

Thanks so much for this! So comprehensive! Going to share this in my music production class if that's cool with you =]

[@skane3109]

Such interesting insights that are only possible by a collaboration like this. Thank you Nahre and Alan. And I loved what you played of your new song ‘Farewell to a Songbird’ . Can you share with us what inspired the title?

[@dmacrolens]

Thats what you really want to know? The deep mysteries! 😂

[@skane3109]

@@dmacrolens Mea Culpa. 😔As i grovel in mortification, I must admit I have little interest in the technology and art of how to mic a room. However, I AM fascinated to listen to how two world class artists collaborate to break down and solve problems. I guess I could have started there. Beyond that, my instant excitement at hearing Nahre’s ‘Farewell to a Songbird’ sidetracked my attention and intrigued me to understand more of the context, such as who or what is the ‘Songbird’. Again, mea culpa. mea culpa. No soup for me!😂

[@danielnaimowicz9397]

Excellent

[@fineartz99]

Captivatingly exquisite; Profound subtleties

[@povilasl5383]

thank you for the video! it made me understand that I don't understand anything about recording live instruments!

[@tjalling1489]

So i basically just learnt how to record my piano like Nils Frahm does. Holy, that i just what i needed. Thanks!

[@YMESYDT]

Not only is he a genius, but INCREDIBLY generous with his knowledge

[@antoniomonteiro3698]

we liked this one - more :)

[@junlee7237]

when was this recorded? fantastic video btw!

[@stevenreed5786]

you're not micing the instrument, you're micing the room

[@Sasa-88]

Jazz mic 🎙🎚😍let me sit🪑and listen to uuuu 4 ever 💗

[@Petch85]

I just love talking about all the little things that changes the sound. But we have to remember some things changes the sound a lot, and others just a little. Thus if you add a lot of distortion, reverb and other effects afterwards this can change how much the mic placement changes the overall sound on the final track including a lot of instruments. Thus try to evaluate what changes would actually make a huge difference on your track. Also 90-95% done, means you are done, you are trying to find the top of a soft hill, not a tip of a needle on a field. Try to listen for the mistakes in your favorite songs the same way you do your own songs, you will find a lot of "mistakes" and some of them will be the part of what you love about the song.

[@HWLee-vu4hv]

Super interesting!

[@miwo35]

The idea with the microphones at different distances / perspectives had already been implemented by the visionary Glenn Gould in his Sibelius recordings.

[@ntsikelelondlovu]

This video is so informative but short! 😅 I honestly would've enjoyed it even if it went on for an hour (or two).

[@tubeo94]

As an engineer i learned so much from a piano channel. Thank you so much.