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Thanks, Knotty. Tell me though: I've already tried the line out to the bass on an occasion a year or so ago, and I couldn't get the mix right. Is these something to do with powered vs non powered inputs? As I remember I had to do a kind of hit and miss with the thing to get it right. What am I missing? Because I'd like to be able to have a direct in with as much ease as just turning the thing on and setting the levels.

Sorry, you lost me.
Some bass amps have an XLR out. So I just plug this into one of the 2 XLR in of the H4.

You switch the Zoom mode to 4ch, and then you get 2 stereo tracks, which you can mix later in whatever tool you like. As long as your signal doesn't clip, or isn't too low, that's a pretty cheap option, and works quite well.
If you have something like a cheap SM-57, then you can put that straight on the speaker of the amp and get a decent signal that way too.

If I play with a horn, I have another SM57 for that. You get bleed all over, but if the horn plays close enough to the mic, you get a decent signal, that won't sound too reverby.

getting the mix right -obviously- is an art. Even with awesome scratch tracks. I simply don't have that kind of knowledge / patience / interest

Sounds really good. A great demo, nice balance of stuff. I would like to hear that in a restaurant. Can't hear the bass but I expect that is my crappy laptop speakers. Good luck getting some gigs with it.

I record into logic. The mics stay set up on the piano and if I want to record anything I just press go and it happens. If only the piano tuned itself everything would be perfect.

Ya, we'll see. The competition is pretty stiff around here, and I've been out of the loop for too long (ten years!), so all the places I used to play have either closed, changed ownership, or have changed clientel, so its all starting from scratch again.

But on a critical note, I'm sure you can here the flubs, missed notes, and out of sync things. Do you think club/restaurant owners would notice them to the extent that we would? If so I can pretty easily select some other tracks, or eliminate offending tunes (ie the head of Caravan and Green Dolphin are pretty rough at times). I just thought that they might not have the same critical ears as PW members would.

Thoughts?

Scep, this all sounds very good to me. First of all there are no flubs and such to get concerned about and you know how you typically lose time when you complicate things with lots of 16ths? Here you kept everything simple and it works perfectly. Plenty of space and good solid piano tone. Sounds great!

I find that the typical audience would be more concerned about the groove and the total sound and this was quite entertaining. There's a good groove with everything. Solid overall sound. I get reminded of a particular high end restaurant here which has a band with a similar music so I think you will do well.

BTW if I put my Zoom on the music stand like you did, I won't get this reverb sound so obviously the room that you were doing this in is providing the proper ambience. I can hear it in the recording. In my house, it would be completely dry sounding. It has to do with the angles in the space. It actually sounds like you're playing in a restaurant.

It's funny how everyone is trying to get gigs. I guess we can't just record for each other here. It's more fun with a real audience. I've gotten lucky. I can't believe how many gigs I have and word of mouth is providing some regularity. But I only take paid gigs. None of those "tip only" deals. I'd rather play for free at a jam session.

The bad news is that I need practice time...

How do you mic your piano? Maybe a picture would be nice. If I can't get good sound in a room, I might as well add it post-recording or maybe on my mixer.

Is the reverb added in Logic? Or a mixer before logic?

And what kind of mics do you use?

To get a better piano sound then you would get on the Zoom would require an investment of some $$$$.

The order of importance in the chain for recording acoustic would be:

1. the player-pretty obvious

2.the instrument...again pretty obvious

3. the mics and placement

4. the mic preamps

5. the A/D converters

6. the post editing-reverb, eq, adding gain etc.

I didn't include room acoustics because we're talking more Jazz (as opposed to Classical) which generally is more close micing and isn't affected has much by acoustics.

So what's the typical mic placement strategy? (for Jazz).

And what Mics? I have several SM58's. But when I was micing a piano for a monitor (at a gig), someone said I should be using SM57's.

But upon checking the the specs between SM57 and SM58, they're actually pretty much the same with very small differences due to the screen and even the video from Shure says there's little difference.

Thanks JW!

I think you misread my initial post. I mixed everything in Garage Band and added the reverb and bass boost after recording. Close micing (how do you spell microphoning without people thinking you're talking about mice?) won't typically produce any reverb save what you might hear unless you overuse the damper pedal.

So Dave F, if I stick with the H4 and some mics, should I get the SM57 or SM58 or something else? I'm still looking for the simplest way to get quick recordings, but with a bit of control over the balance of instruments. I figure I could record 4 tracks, one for bass, one for drums, and the unit for the piano.

Being that the Dave F is a big spender, I'm sure he'll say go for condenser mics

But we're not doing studio recordings here though. Just enough to emulate a 'live' sound and I already have 3 SM58's.

Scep, do you have a mixer with reverb? I just got myself an Allen & Heath ZED 10FX so it can function as a pre-amp. Then you can output it directly to the Zoom H4. At least there some pre-processing you can do.

I hate having to set up a computer for a quickie recording. Pre-amp to Zoom would be pretty simple.

Hey, nice stuff here beeboss. That Bach is paying dividends in your technique!
You weren't playing some drums on this one? Was it the Nord? And that bass player he's really good--you should try to gig with him sometime.

I would not use the Shures. They are industry standards but more for live playing--vocals and such then critical instrument recording. That's not to say you can't get a good recording if you have a good mic pre and decent converters/computer interface but the 58s are dynamic mics. For recording you should be looking more at small diaphragm condenser mics. Large diaphragm condenser mics are good too but are more dependent on room acoustics with regard to recording piano.

As far as which ones...man that's a hard one. I know what I have works great but they are a lotta dough, they've come down in price but still expensive. The DPA 4011s. They are, like the Shures, pretty much an industry standard small condenser mic.

I don't think you need to spend that because they are a lot of inexpensive mics that manufacturers are selling that are made in China that work very well. I don't have exact model names and numbers but AKG 451s work well. So does the Shure SM81 and Nuemann 184 I think it is. This might help. Sorry the link doesn't transfer, you have to c&p.
http://home.earthlink.net/~rongonz/home_rec/microphone.html#condenser

Also browsing Gearslutz, in the live acoustic section is helpful. They debate mics, mic pres and converters ad nauseam...

Thanks Dave, I'll look into that site, and see what they say. From what you say I should be looking for is a small diaphragm (or is it really diagram?) condenser mic, and probably a Chinese knockoff at that. I'm really not into spending much on a mic at all. The recordings are really just for me to listen to and perhaps post up occasionally, so no real critics will be listening to them (except you guys!).

For what we do here though which is not CD quality stuff, spending $300-400 apiece for mics seem like overkill doesn't it? Even the Zoom H4 recordings sound pretty good with existing mics but it just needs some pre-amp processing to control ambience. My main issue is just the lack of ambience with close mic-ing (putting the dash there for you Scep since it bothers me too ).

I'm really curious about Beeboss' setup since it sounds really good.

Unfortunately, the Nord Piano is not really a 'solo piano' instrument per se. Though good enough for typical jazz.

The positive with a condenser unidirectional mic might be that I can increase the volume of an acoustic piano without feedback. Now that's a good reason to buy one since acoustic piano amplification in a gig is a common thing. I definitely don't know how to set up a mic for piano at a gig. I just poke the SM58 in one the holes in the plate...

Yeah it is diaphgram--spell check gave me the wrong word and I didn't check it...

I'd think you'd be able to get a very good pair of either small or large condenser diaphragm mics for a $1000 or under. I know that's still a lot of money but it is the most critical part of the chain next to the piano. It is hard to rationalize it when it's just for enjoyment and you're not putting out a CD or something like that. That's why the handheld recorders like the Zoom and my Sony are so popular. This would be the next step up.

Re: mikes
In my latest production, wherein I recorded a piano bass duo, I used the Didrik De Geer (hand-made, only 24 in existence so far) mikes, they cost $14.000 each (!!).
Which scared the c-ap out of me, "must not drop them, must not drop them". Luckily enough they came with the studio (which also had a Hamburg Steinway D), for the bass a Neuman M149 as well as a DPA was used. All recorded into Pro Tools, where it was all mixed, eq:d, reverb:d . . .

All this high-tech stuff makes me appreciate my H2 even more.

The Didrik mikes:

hehe that is so weirdly cool and funny, like you'd find in a Martian's science lab.
So if I just use a Zoom to record, and then process in Audacity, do I use reverb before or after I normalize in Audacity ?

record
normalize
eq, and (if)compression
reverb