harshness on a mix

[rgraves]

Hey everyone, hoping for some help

I am working on a mix that I tracked a while ago with a grand piano and voice. The piano was very difficult to work with to start, and after LOTS of work I got a pretty decent sound out of it (Thanks Glen).

But now that I am mixing the project, both myself and the client notice that the piano is a bit harsh. It's not overboard or anything, but it is definitely bright. If you have the mix turned up loud, the high notes really come at you and make you say ouch, let's put it that way.

Of course this was all recorded digital. The piano in real life is bright, and the mics I had access to at the time were bright, so it was just a bad combination overall.

But it's all said and done, it turned out WAY better than I figured it would considering the circumstances, and overall sounds great, but it could use less brightness.

I was thinking there's probably some way to help with the EQ, but not sure how to soften "harshness" or "brightness" with EQ. Obviously it must be in the treble frequencies, but should I roll off all the frequencies at a certain point? Do dips in a particular frequency, or several ranges??
What about a tape plug in or something, doesnt that take the edge off a bit?? Cubase has "truetape", but I think that only works during tracking??

Anyone?

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Hard to say exactly what to do without hearing it and playing with it, but that kind of "harshness" is probably somewhere between 2.5kHz and 8.5kHz. I wouldn't recommend getting too carried away with EQ, though. Try the ol' parametric sweep in that area looking for frequencies that really jump out when you sweep past them with narrow Q gain. Note them and then target just those 2 or 3 worse frequencies (if ther are that many) with narrow cuts.

After you do that, you might refine the overall EQ with some very gentle curve shaping with a graphic EQ, but if you're lucky, just targeting those few troublemaker frequencies should smooth out your sound well enough without changing the "good timbre" of the track.

HTH,

G.

[noisewreck]

Actually, in this case I would do away with regular EQ and either handle this with a multiband compressor to rain on the irritant frequencies or a dynamic EQ. It would be much more transparent and you can get away with a bit more heavy-handedness than you would with a standard EQ as it would mess with the piano timbre too much and sound decidedly EQ'd or filtered.

[rgraves]

Oh, these sound like great ideas!

Multiband compression...I was actually gonna post a thread about this. I'm not entirely sure how this works exactly. The settings seem a little different on a multiband compressor, than on a regular compressor.

So, if I take a guess at this, I would assume that by using multiband compression I can compress and level out just a band of frequencies. That is obvious. But, how do the different gain options affect this? Like on my multiband compressor it has a gain setting for each band of up to 3 bands. Is the gain setting a "make up" gain?

Also, how do I tell how a regular compressor compresses frequencies? I usually use either the compressor in Cubase (the one that comes with Cubase SX3) or Waves C1.

Thanks

[XLR]

In a mix with just piano and voice I think you've got to be careful not to over process. The more processing you do on an acoustic instrument the more it becomes artificial sounding. Haven't heard the music, so can't say for sure but this sounds like a place for some gentle EQ rather than MB compression. Personally I'd stick with wide gentle EQ changes to avoid "artificializing" the sound. A simple high shelf done with a good sounding EQ would be my first try. IME some EQs can do high end rolloff without wrecking the realism of the acoustic sound, others can't, so you've got to be selective.

[Golden]

re record it.

[Ironklad Audio]

+1 on the multiband comp

i would do some eq sweeping from 2k on up to find the offending frequencies, then apply a multiband compressor that would squish only those frequencies where they get unpleasant sounding

[kapoyk]

As a general rule "garbage in is garbage out". Regardless if the performance was perfect, if you have bad sound going in, you will have bad sound coming out. That isn't to say you can't work with what you've recorded. First you should weigh the amount of time it will take to "doctor it up" versus rerecording it correctly.
Have a large arsenal of mics (rent, borrow or beg) including boundry mics (PZM), large diaphragm capsule and ribbon (to add some air to the piano tone). Move the mics around and try different combinations of mics. Don't forget the room abience. The room you are recording in has a lot to do with the resonance you will pick up. If your recordings are "harsh" I would have to say you were too close and were using the wrong mics.
Listen to the piano by walking around the room. Find the "sweet spot" and decide what mic will work best in that area. If the piano is consistantly harsh at the top end consider using some compression to level out the frequencies. If the piano is heavy on the bottom end you can use some gentle EQing to keep it from recording as mud.
It is all trial and era. Pianos are tough to get right. The key is patience and being open-minded.
Again, decide how much time you want to spend versus what you will get out of it. Do you want to tweek and get it "good enough" or do you want to rerecord and get this right from the start?