RECORDING MY PIANO MUSIC IN MY HOUSE

[chopinlover23]

Hey, I need some help.

I wanna record my piano repertoire on my computer and in my house, since recording studios are a bit expensive. The problem is when I record, some dog passes by our house and barks,or cars pass by and honk and it goes with my reocrdings. How can I record in my house without getting these unecessary noise. What are the right equipment to use?

THANKS!!

[richard black]

You need:

A decent microphone (well, a pair of microphones, but many single microphone bodies these days contain two capsules for stereo recording);

A means of recording without dynamics compression. Your computer probably doesn't do that by default but you should check;

A means of editing. You can get various bits of free, or cheap, software to do that on most of the common computing platforms (PC, Mac, Linux).

If you can edit you can do multiple takes and edit together versions with no external noises. You can also edit out those annoying moments where you put your hand in the wrong place or something.

[quantum]

Observe the times of day when these distractions are the most plentiful, and avoid recording at these times.  I like to record at night, when unwanted sounds are at their minimum.  Plan on doing multiple takes.  

If you are planning on using studio mics, you will most likely need a sound card / interface that will handle XLR inputs.  Preferably it should have Phantom Power for condenser mics. 

A lot of good info on mics can be found here:
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=10124.0

For recording software you could start with the open source Audacity:
https://audacity.sourceforge.net/

What kind of budget are you looking at?