Known for his emotive, minimalist compositions and genre-blending artistry, French composer/instrumentalist Yann Tiersen’s latest tour comprises an opening set of solo piano followed by a second half steeped in modular synthesis and electronics. The challenge facing sound engineer Jamie Harley was to find a way to blend the two very into a seamless live experience – DPA Microphones’ DPK2015 Piano Stereo Kit was the answer.
For the piano part of the performance, Harley used the stereo pair of DPA 2015 Wide Cardioid Microphones included in the miking kit. ‘Yann plays in a very textural way,’ Harley explains. ‘He’ll hold notes and build layers of tone. If you’re not careful, things can get mid-range-heavy quite quickly. I was really interested to see how the piano kit would handle that, and it worked extremely well.’
The 2015 microphones were positioned inside the piano to maintain tonal balance across the instrument’s full range. The wide cardioid pickup pattern of the mics allowed Harley to capture the natural resonance of the piano while minimising bleed. ‘Having that directional control is a godsend,’ he says. ‘Especially when you’re working with a very quiet, delicate instrument on a large system. You need microphones that keep everything tight and focused exactly where they need to be.’
‘We experimented with other solutions for low-end weight, but in the end, I didn’t need them,’ he continues. ‘If you position the microphones correctly and tune the system properly, you get more than enough warmth and power from the piano itself. Most importantly, it doesn’t muddy the mid-range.’
Touring demand reliability, and Harley found the DPK2015 kit to be both durable and practical for life on the road. ‘It’s absolutely rock-solid,’ he says. ‘The kit comes in a great case, and everything is well thought out. It held up brilliantly throughout the tour.’
With each venue presenting a different piano, acoustic environment and system configuration, consistency is one of the greatest challenges for Harley. ‘Every piano is different,’ he says. ‘Some are brighter, others are warmer and still others are more aggressive. Your job is to listen to the source and reproduce it as faithfully as possible through the system you have. DPA makes that job much easier.’
After this tour, Harley is confident that the DPA DPK2015 Piano Kit will be a staple of his toolkit. ‘I had a really lovely time with the 2015s,’ he says. ‘They worked absolutely brilliantly, and I’d take them out again without hesitation.’
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