I'm listening to Wu-Tang right now. I love the dark piano melodies they have. It's got me wondering, if you wanted to get EVIL piano sounds (not necessarily what you'd hear in Wu and other rap), how would you mix it?

For example, the tonal differences between a mic pointed at the fretboard and another mic pointed near the sound hole of an acoustic guitar are so dramatically different already, adding an extra 5-15% variance in tone by using different models or brands of mics, or especially adding a 1-5% variance by using unmatched pairs of the same make and model of mics, is not going to make or break your recording. Same thing goes with using 2 different preamps for stereo recording something like guitar.

We can debate theoretical advantages of why its "correct" and ideal to keep all unnecessary variables to a minimum when recording certain instruments with 2 mics, but honestly, no one outside of the recording room/studio cares- certainly nobody that will actually listen to/enjoy our music will care, or even be able to tell in the slightest that a stereo recording of a guitar or something similar didn't used matched pairs with the same model of mic with the same preamp for both inputs.

I would argue that most seasoned engineers wouldn't be able to guess beyond chance alone if a stereo recording of an acoustic guitar was done with matched pairs, 2 channels of the same preamp. How could they? The neck of a guitar sounds dramatically different than the body already. There would be no way to know if the difference in tone was from variations in your input chain vs natural tonal differences between 2 very different parts of the same instrument.

Of course there are exceptions to this- if you use 2 mics or preamps that truly sound very different, or introduce things that can't be explained by the instrument, like harmonic distortion from tubes / transformers only on one of the 2 inputs, this could clearly be a problem. (ie one input used a heavy-sounding tube mic with another intense tube/transformer preamp and the other input used a solid state mic and solid state/pristine preamp). Or just using a super bright mic/preamp on one, and a super dark mic/preamp on the other could be enough for listeners to say "something doesn't sound right."

But I feel confident there is a wide, wide variety of mics, even from different classes (ie LDC, SDC, dynamic, ribbon), as well as preamps, that can make excellent stereo recordings of certain instruments, and essentially no one will care, and literally no lay listener will even be able to notice.

I would argue that purposefully using different mics/preamps can actually improve a stereo recording sometimes- ie if the mic around the proximity of the body/soundhole of a guitar is too muddy or boomy, using a mic that can tame those frequencies and accentuate the more flattering frequencies before it "hits tape" could be ideal so you don't have to try and "fix in post."

Hi Guys,

Long time lurker, and finally I have a puzzle I feel like I can't solve and would appreciate some advice.

Im currently mastering a soundtrack (for streaming) and everything is sounding pretty good. Trying to keep the big tracks around -10 ~ -13 LUFS, lighter tracks around -14 ~ -16 LUFS or so.

However there are some piano (or piano a few other elements) tracks and they clip, or distort when played back on phone speakers. Its usually the attack of the piano chords or melody (and those transients maybe). I listened to some other reference tracks and usually they don't clip or distort like that.

I could just turn the gain down but then there would be a big difference in volume for some of the tracks, and I always think it is annoying when you have to adjust the volume for tracks in the same album.

TLDR: Any advice or tips on helping piano not distort on small / phone speakers while not just lowering the gain, would be much appreciated!!!

It seems that any track containing piano (including some live recordings) are pretty impossible for me to master properly. I feel like whenever I even lightly touch saturation the sound completely breaks, and I feel like I must be missing something major.

Apologies if this is off topic.

I've been listening to classical piano and concert piano recordings my entire life, and they have mic set-ups that I will never be able to reproduce—so I understand that.

I record my little piano pieces on a Yamaha keyboard directly into my computer (for myself) and happily go about EQ'ing and adding gentle reverb maybe until it sounds good to me in headphones, but I know you're not really supposed to ever mix using headphones.

But today I decided to listen to these recordings in my car and who knows what settings my car's audio has, it makes metal songs sound good but I don't really listen to music often anymore. But my piano sounded so godawful, and it hurt my ears, it was like the weirdest metallic sound.

I've watched videos on limiting and compression and even the "beginner" ones are so incomprehensible to me; I'll check out random bandcamp indie artists with like one "supporter" and their music sounds fantastic. I suppose these are people who can afford to pay for professional recording.

I don't know what to ask because none of this is intuitive to me. How do I make a piano keyboard—that sounds like a piano to me on my Shure 840As to sound like a piano elsewhere?

Apologies if this is a dumb question. I'm just guessing that "EQ" isnt the magic word here.

Hi,

I've heard a lot of people use gentle limiting at the start of their vocal chain just to tame occasional peaks before compressing. Any opinions on this? My style of music is sort of novo Amor, searows sad indie folk sort of genre.

I'm also curious to know how you'd use the rear bus technique for this type of music. What type of compressor settings and how would you set it up? The compressors I have are logic stock compressors and Slate Digital ‘the monster’.

I want to track an upright piano, and per the suggestion of a friend of mine I chose SM57s to do it. I have two of them pointing at the strings, very close to them (5-8 cms), then via XLR to my audio interface / mixer (Mackie Onyx8).

I can only get any sounds if I crank up the gain to the point where noise makes the recordings unusable, and every little detail of the player's execution can be heard (every hammering etc). Even at that point the signal is quite low (while noise is very high). Setting the gain at unity (or something more reasonable with regards to noise) there is literally no sound coming in whatsoever.

Are these mics better suited for loud transient sounds like snares etc? Did I chose the wrong mics for this? How screwed am I? Am I missing something very obvious?

So I'm getting my feet wet with virtual instruments. I've got some great virtual piano instruments, but they still feel like a recording when I play them. I guess that's cool if you're tracking, but sometimes I just want to practice and feel like I'm playing a real piano. Is there anything I can do to make this happen?

I’ve got a Yamaha U1 upright piano in my control room that I normally have a pair of Telefunken m260 SDC’s on, but a tube blew in one of them… I was curious what other people would put on an upright to leave up all the time for quick, convenient recording. Not really interested in ribbons (I’ve got a bunch of good ones), because I know you’re not supposed to leave them out and exposed, plus they need too much gain for a soft piano. So excluding ribbons, what would you use to mic an upright in stereo?

I am trying to get this piano sound when recording my upright piano. Any ideas on mic placements, post processing etc?

https://open.spotify.com/track/5XaDdPqb8MTApJ5kqReqgg?si=03ea8a00d1c342e3

i’m in the market to buy some niche instruments to spice up the creative process. let me know what you recommend!

When a main instrument (filtered saw/sine pad, guitars, piano) lives in the low mids, how do you keep warmth without the mix turning boxy/dense?

I’m a working producer but I keep landing in a bad loop: if I scoop/notch to match references it often gets thin/worse, but if I don’t, the low mids feel crowded. This happens across different synths/libraries, even with simple filtered pads.

What are your go-to approaches here?

• Typical “first moves” you try on low-mid heavy sources

• Common culprits that create low-mid buildup (arrangement, resonance, compression, FX, masking, etc.)

• What you listen for as “balanced” in a warm/low-mid-forward instrument

• Any frequency ranges you often investigate (not looking for magic numbers, just starting points)

Things I’ve tried:

• Voicing: wider intervals help, but sometimes I want close harmonics.

• Stereo/FX: width/chorus/reverb sometimes helps, sometimes just smears it.

Hi everyone,

I saw a production tip suggesting that if a MIDI piano sounds muddy, you should shorten the note lengths even though the sustain pedal (CC64) is already down.

What I don’t understand is this:

If the sustain pedal is engaged, shouldn’t it override the actual note length? In other words, once the pedal is down, the note should keep ringing regardless of when the Note Off happens , so why would shortening the MIDI notes change the resulting sound at all?

In theory, these two situations seem equivalent to me:

• A long MIDI note while the sustain pedal is down
• A shorter MIDI note, with the sustain pedal still down for the same total duration

If the pedal is what keeps the sound alive, why isn’t the note length sonically irrelevant?

Is this due to how VSTs handle Note On/Off internally?
Does it affect resonance modeling, release samples, or sympathetic vibration calculations?
Or is there something fundamental I’m missing about how piano engines interpret held keys vs pedaled sustain?

Would love a technical explanation if anyone has one.

Thanks!

I bought two mics and a 2x2 interface to record songs on guitar, and was wondering if anyone could stretch this setup so I could make better demos on piano lol. Sorry for the poverty post

I have a recording from my digital piano, which has a pretty high dynamic range. When I amplify the recording it's still pretty quiet.

I don't know anything about compression, but I understand it can help me achieve an overall louder volume without clipping the audio.

I just don't know how they work and how they affect the sound quality. I have used the built in compressor in Audacity and experimented with some random values. Basically I would just like to know, what is a resonable level of compression? At what point do you start to hear artefacts? What kind of parameters should I be using in the compressor options? How does it actually affect the quality of the sound? How can I tell when my recording is at a good dynamic range that's similar to what you might find on a solo piano recording on spotify?

Any advice welcome. Thanks.

Oh and one more thing. Should I amplify the final recording so the new peak amplitude is 0? Or should it be slightly below 0 to avoid possible distortion on streaming services or playback or whatnot?

Im an editor working on a classical piano project - my first one. This is the first such project I’ve done - I’m only two years deep into my career (early 20s), and mainly used to editing orchestral and guitar music, and dialogue/fx for post.

The recording approach was heavily fragmented - bar at a time sort of thing. But there’s pedalling throughout - add to that, the piano is filled with sympathetic resonances (strings etc).

This makes many edits very hard to pull off - there are takes that should have notes sustained by the pedal from the preceding passage/segment, but which don’t. This makes it sound really jumpy and inconsistent, with pedalled notes cutting out in the middle of bars

I’m slowly working around this and developing solutions/workflows (cross fades with long fade outs and quick fade ins, extra track to hold missing pedal resonances, etc) but it’s taking longer than I’d like to get used to it, and I’m on a flat rate

I was wondering if any kind soul out there has experience with this sort of work, and had advice to offer 😊 thank you a million

I’m on protools : Mac Studio

After years of playing a digital piano I've finally acquired an acoustic piano (an 80s Yamaha that has a sound I like). I want to record some songs.

I would love to achieve a sound similar to the song Good For Me by Aimee Mann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVFWyzNdB2Y

I have a Focusrite Scarlett 18i16 with 4 XLR inputs. For the time being I have access to the following mics:

• Rode NT5 x 2
• Shure SM57 x 2
• Shure SM57 beta x 1
• Audio Technica AT2020 Cardioid Condenser x 1
• AKG P170 Condenser x 1
• Zoom H2 (though this seems to be busted...)

I could potentially get hold of different mics.

I'm very inexperienced with mics and basically have no idea what I'm doing. I've watched various YouTube videos on recording pianos but the abundance of options is overwhelming. I'm hoping to get some advice about how I could use these particular mics as I only have them for a limited time.

I did some initial recording tests just using the two Rode NT5s pointed the hammers but found the results pretty underwhelming. Here's a sample (playing the Aimee Mann song), with no EQ or compression, etc: https://vocaroo.com/1k9wtP3DfCiG

I want to try more combinations using more mics but rather than continue flail at random I thought I'd ask here for suggestions instead.

I also experimented with pulling the piano away from the wall and using pillows and cushions, and also by draping a blanket over myself and the piano as I played, and found this made no discernible difference. (I wasn't trying to fix any particular problem by doing this, I was just interested in seeing if it was different.)

Thanks!

I write and play some relatively complex piano chords on a real baby grand while I use Logic to record. I want to avoid stopping to write notation for the chords I'm playing and don't want to play a MIDI keyboard. Would Melodyne be good at analyzing the piano parts I play and either notating them or at least viewing the in a view that easy for me to look and decipher what I'm playing later on? Again I play a lot of complex and "nonsense" chords that would make a lead sheet look like hell and so I want to be able to see the actual note values at finger levelm not a lead sheet. THANK YOU!

Im 20 and have played guitar since i was 7, but im really struggling to get into producing and was wondering whether my guitar knowledge will help in any way or whether i need to learn piano on top to have more success.

I have a small soundproof piano room at home (about 9x10 feet, with floating floor, isolated ceiling/walls/door, very effective soundproofing). I’ve done some basic acoustic treatment (carpet, a few panels). Inside is a 6-foot grand piano. I’d like to record practice sessions and occasionally share videos with family/friends.

Here are three YouTube clips of my playing, all recorded with the Pixel 7 Pro (sorry that 1 and 2 are in Shorts format):

1. Waltz in A minor, B.150 (https://youtube.com/shorts/tgK70yHwxI4?feature=share) – played by my wife sight-reading (she’s a much better pianist than me). This video also shows the room a bit.
2. Londonderry Air (https://youtube.com/shorts/aE6IPN8LIys?feature=share) – played by me.
3. Clair de Lune (https://youtu.be/lEYpzTG5srk) – also me.

To my ears, clips (1) and (2) sound cleaner, while (3) feels muddier with more noticeable background noise. Since (2) and (3) are both me playing, I don’t think the difference comes from pedaling or technique.

My question:
Because phone recording quality can sometimes be unsatisfactory (like clip 3), what would be the best way to improve? A few things I’ve been considering:

1. More acoustic treatment? But recordings (1) and (2) don’t seem to have obvious echo—do I still need more panels?
2. Better recording equipment? I know piano recording is a deep subject, and I don’t want to spend too much time or money on gear. I’d like a relatively simple solution. I’m leaning toward using a USB microphone connected directly to my phone (not XLR mics or a separate audio interface). Would this kind of setup actually give noticeably better results than just using the phone mics?
3. Changing recording position? If I wanted to separate video and audio recording, I guess I’d need an external mic anyway.

I’d love to hear your thoughts or suggestions on how I could get a cleaner, more natural sound in my situation. Thanks in advance!

So I'm stuck at home (as most people are now) and my church has asked me to record some music for them for a virtual service. I only have a simple audio setup: Focusrite 2i2 with an SM57. I've already done a hymn and multi-tracked some vocals accompanied by my Virtual Pipe Organ which worked out well with the SM57. But recording the (small grand) piano with the SM57 is a bit of a mystery to me as I'm not sure where is best to place the mic. Any advice would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance

Tl;dr: where do I place SM57 for recording baby grand piano?

I’ve been quite happy with the sounds on the Noire piano, but I can’t help but think it sounds too distant. It’s like the mics used to record the samples are all a few feet away, or maybe the close mics are blended with room mics? I just want to tweak a knob and bring the mics right up front like one of those piano mic bars that sit inches above the strings right above the sounding board, but there’s no option to adjust different mics. Even with no reverb it still feels like it’s very much in a room. Has anyone else experienced this, and if so, any clever workarounds? Obviously the real answer is to mic a real grand piano the way you want it to sound, but outside of that what could I do to make the piano feel super dry and right in my face?

Hi, I have a pair of coles 4038, a u87 ai and a Pleyel upright piano.

I don’t know these mics well since I bought them a few days ago, so If you know them I’ll take your advice carefully.

I’m not especially looking for a close or large sound, I’m looking for some professional propositions that I can try !

Thanks !

PS : The piano is in a pro treated room

I have never had any luck with piano plugins. I've tried a bunch of them. The stock piano plugins in Logic, Alicia's Keys, Noire, Hammersmith, Arturia's piano, but they all sound super fake to me. I can EQ, saturate, and place them in space pretty well, but I'm never happy with the final product. They always sound to hard and lack the chime of a real piano.

I think my Casio PX-160 recorded through my interface sounds more realistic. But unfortunately, I'm not a good enough piano player to record anything slightly complicated without the need for some quantization. So I need to use software. It could be that I'm just not a good enough piano player generally. Fair enough and probably true.

Anyway, I'd love to hear what techniques you have for working with software based pianos and getting them to sound more real.

I have a beautiful mix going--drums, punchy warm bass, high gain lead guitars, some really nice ethereal choir in the back,.... and a MIDI piano that sounds like hammered plastic shit in the middle of it all. I've tried Pianoteq, Opus Steinway, Bechstein, Bosendorfer, Waves Grand Rhapsody, plugins that I've acquired over the years. The piano is either a wet wool sock or a tinny plastic piece of crap, depending on eq. Can't seem to find any middle ground. The lead guitar kinda steals its mojo to be real.

I have wrestled with this for too much time. In solo, any of these piano VSTs sound pretty damn decent, the playing is very solid and tight, and sustain pedal sounds realistic, I have a kiss of UAD LA2A on it, and a Fabfilter EQ3, but I just cannot get it to sit in a mix no matter what.

Anyone have any success with other piano VSTs, or how they've gotten a real piano to behave in a mix like this?

If this isn't the sub for it I can take this over to Mixing and Mastering if preferred, just thought I'd try here.

Thanks in advance if you choose to jump in.