Hi everybody,
I'd like some directions from those of you who already recorded acoustic piano and voice.
I'll make it clear.
I had to record a romanza for piano and tenor, written by a friend of mine.
I HAVE CHEAP GEAR (2 SM57 used on piano, 1 Sony F-720 used on vocals, a Yamaha MD8 multitrack, no effects).
What I wanted to do was have a decent recording, with low noise and good separation between piano and vocals.
It turned out HELL!!
Input signal was too low, so I had to I place micros VERY close to piano strings, but it wasn't still enough.
So I had to raise the gain a lot, and then I had a lot of background noise, I recorded every little movement (the pianist on the stool,the turning of the score page!!).
The tenor was evanescent, being the romanza very variable in loudness (many "piano" and "forte").
I tried several placing for micros, and in the recording I did this way:
- piano with raised top cover, at 45 degrees (sorry for my english);
- micros under it, on the opposite side of the keyboard, facing 45 degrees low, one over low strings, the other almost inside the armonic "hole" to the right of high strings;
- singer behind the piano, with micro pointing away from the piano, straight to his mouth, 35-40 cm far from him.
- the room was small, with wooden floor, and all the walls filled with books to the top.

Now my question is NOT : "what's the right gear for such a recording?"
Instead I would like to know how I could have handled the recording better and how could I have the maximum from my stuff,
even though it's cheap.

Any help will be highly appreciated.
Thanks,
Leonardo