Recording a Difficult Piano Track

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ced20

New member
I just posted this question in the Newbies section but realize I probably should have here. So here it is....

Hello, I'm new to this website. I've owned an 88 key Korg Triton Workstation for years now but I still have a lot to learn about recording techniques. All of the music I have ever recorded has been directly within the sequencer of the Triton. I'm currently interested and in the process of looking for a DAW.

One of the challenges I've had with recording is making a smooth transition between a difficult piano piece with pedal on the same track after I've stopped recording. For example, say I've played half the song and stopped, then started recording again the last half from the point I left off. It's tough to get a smooth transition between the two without hearing it.

I don't find it a problem when I'm playing a track with one note at a time or with little pedal. Only for more difficult piano pieces with pedal. So my question is are there any techniques out there anyone has for this?
 
crossfades can work for what you want, where you have 2 seperate tracks and make them overlap and you move track 2 so it's overlaping the end of track one, fade out track 1 whilst fading in track 2 at the same time. It sounds much more natural than just using one track and trying to stick together different takes
 
Is it difficult to do crfossfades in the Triton workstation? Once you get going with a DAW, you'll find edits like crossfading are very simple and intuitive. There are other factors of a DAW program that require a steep learning curve, but once you get over that, you'll enjoy the freedom to edit how you want.

When I record my piano parts, I record both audio and midi into Cubase. I'm not a great piano player, so I edit the midi part to fix my flubs, then play it back while rerecording the audio track again with fixes in place.
 
Hey Chili... I'm actually not sure how to "crossfade" in the Triton workstations sequencer. Yesterday I ended up recording the second half of the piano on a separate track. I started playing a few bars before I stopped the first piano track and gradually decreased the volume on the first track. It worked out fairly well.

Im excited to start working with a DAW and think I a lot of the editing will become more easy as I can see you can zoom in down to every detail within a bar. The Triton Studio has those capabilities but I don't think it is the most user friendly in making very detailed edits.

I know Im getting off topic now but did you start with Cubase? Since I'm new to DAWs I've been considering Reaper just cause of the cost. But am willing to try try any of the others.
 
I generally record overlaps too but I use them differently.
If I record the first and second half of a song separately, I'll make sure I overlap by at least a couple of bars.
That way I can choose one of several fade points. If the first one sounds unnatural, I'll extend both recorded regions back a beat or two and try again.
I find that much better than recording the parts in such a way that you're committed to one single transition point, whether it works or not.

I generally don't do long fades; They'll usually be very short fades between notes.
Hope that's useful.
 
ced20 said:
Hey Chili... I'm actually not sure how to "crossfade" in the Triton workstations sequencer. Yesterday I ended up recording the second half of the piano on a separate track. I started playing a few bars before I stopped the first piano track and gradually decreased the volume on the first track. It worked out fairly well.

Im excited to start working with a DAW and think I a lot of the editing will become more easy as I can see you can zoom in down to every detail within a bar. The Triton Studio has those capabilities but I don't think it is the most user friendly in making very detailed edits.

I know Im getting off topic now but did you start with Cubase? Since I'm new to DAWs I've been considering Reaper just cause of the cost. But am willing to try try any of the others.
Click to expand...

Yes, I started with Cubase because it came free with an interface I bought long time ago. I've upgraded several times along the way. A friend gave me a Sonar 8.0 for free. He used to work for Roland and had to write music for demos or something. I tried it and had some problems with my UAD stuff and 32/64 bit and all that. I ended up switching bck to Cubase. Not that it's any better, just I was already comfortable with it.

A lot of people here use Reaper and they swear by it. I haven't tried it, but I'm willing to believe those who have and like it. And do please pay for it after you've tried it. We encourage people not to steal software at this site.

Cool man.
 
I've never used my triton's sequencer because an external sequencer that has easy editing is soooo much easier. I record quite a lot of piano, and the latest one uses all midi piano rather than real. Same pianist, and editing the sequences so much easier. Lost pedals are very common, and just putting in a pedal off command at bar x is very simple. Faffing around in the triton sequencer is far more tricky and to be honest, I've never tried to even do it as it just looks hard.
 
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