I am a big fan of pianos that speak with more than just their melodic notes. I’ve enjoyed the works of Sigur Rós for many years, and in more recent years Ólafur Arnalds as well. One thing they both manage exceptionally well in my view is the relation between the music and the noises around it. Ólafur Arnalds has beautifully detailed piano sounds in his work, and they all feature all of the creaks and moving wooden parts of the instrument. So I wanted to capture that in a piano as well.

So for my go at it I recorded the piano with seven microphones (three stereo set-ups shown in the walkthrough video) up close and with multiple articulations – normal, felt, muted, and plucked (normal and felt feature four velocity layers, and along with muted notes feature samples in pedal up and down) + release triggers and pedal sounds. These different mic positions and articulations are important for me because not only do they add a good degree of flexibility within the same instrument, but they also explore some of the different sounds that you can get from the piano.