How to bring to life my sampled Piano Solo?

sergeidave

New member
Hi guys,

I'm trying to make the most of out the Piano available in EWQLSO Silver Edition library, but I'm finding that my final piano sounds sound a bit dull, weak and kind of small, all smashed together in the center. But then I listen to professionally recorded and mixed sounds for pieces of similar style and they sound full and clear, wide and spacious... Here's an example:

This is my WEAK and TINY sound on a piece of mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtuNsv3PfvA
This is the NICE sound on a piece by David Hicken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlnDOmBWDKU

How can I make my EWQLSO Silver piano sound like that Hicken's recording?? Or is it just that Silver can't be molded to get to that level?

I'm starting to get familiar with EQ and Compression because I thought if I added some dynamic range processing my sound could improve, but... either I'm not doing the EQ/Compression right, or dynamic range processing doesn't have anything to do with what I'm trying to achieve...

Finally, after reading that microphone position during recording is also key, I looked up what's out there regarding microphones for EWQLSO, and sure enough, Silver Edition only has a default mic position and no other options... So, if I wanted to make my Silver Edition piano sound wide and not all squashed into the center... what do I have to do? I was thinking, what if I double the tracks of my piano and on one track I get rid of most high frequencies to only capture low range notes... and in the second track I do the opposite... then finally, I mix both tracks, having the low range notes track panned to the left and the high range notes track panned to the right... I have a feeling that could make my piano sound bigger and wider... but is that just a wrong way to do this? Is there an easier way? Or simply I can't escape from having to upgrade my EWQLSO to a most recent upgrade or different library altogether?

Thank you very so much for you help in advance!! Any tips you might have for me will be immensely appreciated!

Cheers,

David
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DAW --> Cubase Elements 8
EWQL --> Symphonic Orchestra Silver Edition
MIDI Interface --> Focusrite Scarlett 2i4
MIDI Controller --> Casio Privia PX-200
 
Hi guys,
I was thinking, what if I double the tracks of my piano and on one track I get rid of most high frequencies to only capture low range notes... and in the second track I do the opposite... then finally, I mix both tracks, having the low range notes track panned to the left and the high range notes track panned to the right... I have a feeling that could make my piano sound bigger and wider... but is that just a wrong way to do this? Is there an easier way?


That's a messy approach.
Yes, there's a much easier way.

Pick up this plugin: https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/bx_stereomaker.html

The best mono to stereo plugin out there...and one of the few if not the only one that collapses perfectly to mono, with out any issues.
You can thank me later.

Only thing...right now it's selling at the FULL price.
During sale periods...you can get for less than half the price.
The nice thing is...you can use for free for 14 days... :)
 
I use this one on my keyboard tracks:
PS22 Mono to Stereo Enhancer Plugin | Waves

I found it does a terrific job of widening the piano across the entire space, with lots of cool and easy settings. I especially enjoy the setting which applies a much higher diffusion across the high frequencies of the keyboard, so the bass notes tend to be central, and the highs dance across left and right -- very nice sound. The visuals on it make it very clear how it is distributing frequencies across the stereo field.

$99 from Waves.
 
Interesting options to look into, guys. I will definitively take a look at those plugins, but I suspect I will try my hand at just experimenting with what I have first so that I'm not left wondering of all other possibilities even without plugins... I was just completing watching a 3-hour course about Digital Audio on Lynda.com, it's pretty awesome if you are kind of new to digital audio processing... That gave me some additional ideas of what to try with built-in resources available in most DAWs. Like I said, if it's not the best, at least I'll be able to say that I tried it...

Please let me know if there are some other ideas. Your input is very appreciated!

Thank you very much!
-- David
 
I used to play with splitting up electric guitar by freq bandwidths. When I decided to buy some VST compressors one day, I pick up some extras to make a sales deal.

His plugs are now hoping to get research donations and can be freely downloaded. Not all these are the pay versions, and the band splitter is the original free version fr33some vs thr33some
File location
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2g8tb45sx3znvjt/fr33some.zip

Listing of vst
https://delamanchavst.wordpress.com/effects/

Listing of VST/i
https://delamanchavst.wordpress.com/instruments/

The FM is good and the cowbell

Now my playing around with electric guitar was just about spreading out the highs and doing special processing on that. Something else for you to play with : )
 
How did you record it? I presume MIDI? One thing to watch is that in the other piece, the attack of the piano on the FFF notes is pretty obvious, while yours all seem softer and less percussive.

It could be that your MIDI range on each note sits in a much smaller range - possibly never going over 90, leaving the 91-127 range unexplored? Cubase, that I use has a feature to lift this, and it produces different sounding piano from the same source - Pianoteq in my case.
 
I totally get where you are coming from and hear the difference quite obvious. From my personal perspective...you can't polish a turd. It's like playing a bad ass Steinway and expecting to get "that" sound from a Kawai. You can screw around with trying to get it to be more mellow more like what you want. IMO if you don't like the sound of the piano when you play it straight into your headphones don't use it to record a song. There are a ton of piano VST's out there for free that rock...go over to KVR.com and look around..If you have an iPad there are also a ton for really cheap that are amazing sounding. Me I have a MOX8 and love the hell out of it.

Good luck dude!
 
Okay, first off, what you have is not BAD. The sound of your piano is very, very nice! The piece is well written. So if you want my advice, I'll try to help. I've played a lot of nice pianos in my youth.

Listen to the differences and tell me what YOU hear.

Hicken:
I'm hearing a very mellow Steinway (likely a 9' D by my ear) with a nice room reverb (and the verb varies in different points of the song.) Honestly, I think it's over saturated.

Badillo: I hear a very good digital representation of an A or B (by the timbre of the lower strings) Still sounds LIKE a Steinway, but you're losing a couple of feet and a little of the analog in the translation. It's a very good translation of a 7' grand. But it's not a 9' D.

...and there you have it. To make yours sound like his, over saturate a nice large hall reverb and get a great digitization of a 9' Steinway D. It'll get you closer. BUT, there are things you can do with a real piano that aren't available on most electric/midi keyboards...
 
Interesting options to look into, guys. I will definitively take a look at those plugins, but I suspect I will try my hand at just experimenting with what I have first so that I'm not left wondering of all other possibilities even without plugins...
-- David

The bx_stereomaker plug is free for two weeks, so it's a no-risk thing to download and try...and it will do what you want in about 10 seconds...
...but you go ahead and mess around with all that splitting/EQ'ing if you need to try it out and convince yourself, but IMO, it will not *improve*, it will just make it sound different. :)
 
I'm using a kawaigrand soundfont I got with my DAW in 2004 and maybe samples from Independence. Don't a lot of these have a res filter ? I wouldn't over look that
 
I downloaded a 6GB Steinberg D soundfont here a couple of months ago. Very well done. Not sure where the link went, but if you'd like PM me and I'll stick a copy in a dropbox link.
 
I can't believe I had it in my hands all along!
I use Cubase LE AI Elements 8... everything is there!
There are nice EQ, compression and even Stereo Enhancer plugins... I was just missing them!

Thank you all for your tips and advice!
Now that I seem to have the tools, I'll experiment away!

Cheers!
-- David
 
If you do split the tracks, you will find that all ghetto amber noise will end up on the low side and the upper harmonics of the low notes will be on the high side.

Each note on a piano has low and high frequency components, so you can't really split the keyboard into low and high notes.
 
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