Feels Like Home

Intro

I became interested in recording piano ever since I started listening to the works of Kensuke Ushio.

Particularly his tracks from ‘A Silent Voice’, the tracks titled ‘inv’ feature amazing ambient piano tracks, these pieces were inspired by ‘Invention no.1 in C Major by Johanne Sebastian Bach, they are played at key events during the film and help characterize the female lead which has a magnificent effect in context and as a piece of music on it’s own, I would highly recommend both the soundtrack and film. Another idea that I wanted to try recording was something along the line of artists such as In Love With a Ghost, potus, and Snail’s House. I found myself in my spare time or walking from place to place listening to this downtempo style music, I wanted to attempt to create a strange fusion of ambient, downtempo music. I also wanted to try recording short vocal lines and playing with the timing to create weird vocal effects The lyrics I wrote for this track are very simple but I hope to achieve something similar the track, ‘Am I a GIrl? Am I a Boy? Does I Really Care?’. Despite all of this the song I recorded ended up going in a completely different direction. The music recorded on the piano was really big chords individually so I could splice and mix then how I want, similarly I did this with the vocals recorded as well. I’m still not sure where I belong as an artist or what I’m really good at, so I like to experiment and see what works and what doesn’t.

Instrumentation

The piano in these tracks interested me as I love the sound of the track ‘Inv’ by Ushio. The simplicity of the track with the serenity and wonderful sound made me very interested in how to achieve this sound, The use of the noises made by the piano, like creaking and the movement of the pedals alongside the room noise, for this reason I decided to try recording piano. To try and recreate this I knew I wanted to have a microphone near the pedals and hammers. I was prepared to record the upright or the grand-piano, in the end I decided on using grand due to the nice sound quality. For the microphones I used for the set up are, 2 AKG 414’s, a Neumann KM184, and a Rode NTR.

For the vocals I decided to use two microphones to capture two different tones

Mic set up

I had the top of the grand lifted and set with a pole so I could record the exposed strings. To do this I set up the two 414’s at the low end pointed directly at the strings and at the top end of the piano at the similar position. To capture the middle of the piano I placed a KM184 pointed at the strings (refer to video)

I did this to capture the full range of the piano whilst also recording some the ambience and room tone, such as the noise from the pedals, I like doing this

Mix 1

Mix 2

Conclusion

To Conclude I am happy with how the track came out, although upon a revisit I would like to further experiment with different microphones and microphone positions. I would also like to further experiment with perhaps more exotic and unusual instruments, I would also try recording more ambient noises such as room tone, maybe a conversation in the background or a similar room tone found in ‘Inv’. Nevertheless I am please on how this track came out and excited to start another.