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Mic Tip (GRAMMY-winning Edition): Recording Piano with Dragonfly

spacer One of the most in-demand mixers/mastering engineers in the industry, Phil Magnotti is an ardent (and most times, exclusive) user of Blue Microphones. A multi-GRAMMY award-winning Audio Engineer,  Phil has over 25 years in the professional audio industry with extensive experience in all aspects of recording, mixing, mastering, audio production, film mixing, and live sound mixing. His notable achievements include: 

  • 2 Grammy awards for Mixing/Mastering 
  • 2 Grammy certificates for Mastering 
  • 12 Grammy nominations 

 

 

 

Phil shares his award-winning tips for capturing the best sound with Dragonfly, along with tips for recording piano–

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I use the Blue Dragonfly on all recordings and it has never let me down. From saxes, vocals, pianos, cellos, acoustic guitars to drum over heads; I call it the swiss army knife of microphones. It as a silky top end and warm low end. Because the Dragonfly tends to have a very high output level as with all Blue microphones (they use no pads or roll off in there circuit design ), I would recommend using a –10db –15db pad on the mic preamp and maybe a high pass filter to ensure there is no clipping of the preamp. BUT don’t be afraid to put mic up close to recording source since it can handle as much as 138 SPL and the closer you get the better it sounds.

For piano, I use a pair of Dragonfly’s. I place them 4-5 ” above sound board. One on high end, close to hammers, but not over the string harmonics (very important ) and one on the low end of the piano about two three feet back from hammers.

Another cool thing to try is to place piano lid at half stick, this tends to get more of the refection from the piano lid and adds to the sound and can bring up the level as much as 4db to the mics.

 

Thanks for tips Phil!

Tags: blue microphones, blue mics, Dragonfly, expert, GRAMMY winner, How To, Phil Magnotti, recording piano, recording tips, recording tricks

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2013 at 8:55 AM and is filed under Dragonfly, Resource Center, Skipper Tip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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