Banjo VS Upright Piano

  • Thread starter Thread starter elbandito
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elbandito

elbandito

potential lunch winner
These two instruments seem to collide in my mixes, especially when working on live recordings. It seems the the banjo lives in the same frequencies as the mid/high regions of the piano and I'm not sure how to not have one swamp the other. Any ideas on how to make the banjo stand out without scooping out too much from the piano?
 
Put a high pass filter on the banjo to help accentuate some of that "pluckiness".
Don't use the same mic to record them, if you can use a "darker" sounding mic on the piano.
Add some reverb to the banjo
Play with the mic placement. (a lot of sound related problems can be solved by just simply...moving the mic.)

Just some ideas. It comes down to being a balancing act a lot of cases.
 
Thanks for the high pass filter idea. Ill try that.

As for the recording itself, it's already done. I'm mixing a live performance of a jazz band that i captured a couple days ago. I used different mics on the two instruments - a sm57 on the banjo and an at2021 on the rear of the piano. It's not that the two are bleeding into each other because they're not.
 
I'd compress the hell out of the piano. If it doesn't have much or any compression, you'll hear most of the hammer hit and none of the sustain of the strings. I'm guessing that could sound a lot like a banjo. I would imagine the hard part would be finding the correct Attack setting.

(learned that tip from a guy who used to run FOH for the Eagles back in the day).
 
Every stringed instrument sits in some portion of the piano. Some more than others when the attack gets similar. A multiband compressor with the piano may isolate it from this similarity with the banjo. You certainly have very very different mics in this case. Perhaps taking a close look at each ones bandwidth on the recording will give you a clue how to separate them.

Another suggestion would be to use two different types of compression. An optical on one and a VCA on the other. If the banjo is a strummed part then I would use the VCA on it. However if its classic finger-picking, the optical will be faster for it.

This can be a lot of work especially if they are being played in the same octaves.
 
elbandito said:
These two instruments seem to collide in my mixes, especially when working on live recordings. It seems the the banjo lives in the same frequencies as the mid/high regions of the piano and I'm not sure how to not have one swamp the other. Any ideas on how to make the banjo stand out without scooping out too much from the piano?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, scooping the EQ on the piano, or reducing its level in the mix are your easiest options. Song arrangement can be helpful--muting one or the other in the mix at certain times. Panning them to opposite sides may also help a bit.
 
Thanks for the great advice, folks. The mix is finished and it came out pretty good. :)
 
Hey, I've got a (potentially) stupid question: Do you all think that sidechaining the banjo to the piano thru a compressor to duck the piano whenever the banjo hits, would be an effective way of dealing with this problem in the future? The thought just occurred to me and I thought that I'd run it by you all to see what you thought. I've already finished the mix, so this is just idle speculation.

:guitar:
 
Bump for this cool idea that may or may not work. I haven't messed around with sidechaining too much, so I'm still trying to work this out but would love to hear some feedback on this idea.
 
I would guess it will sound kinda artificial and play some tricks with your ears. It may work but my gut feeling is that it won't help much a and will probably sound weird.
 
aalina said:
An upright piano is less expensive and is specially meant for the starters in piano lessons till they show interest for further lessons.
Click to expand...

An upright piano fits in most peoples houses,it's not necessarily for starters.
 
no suggestions but I wanna say that I saw Chick Corea and Bela Fleck do a concert .... just the two of them .... and they'd get into trading these long sweeping passgaes and very often you really couldn't tell which was which.
It really surprised me how much the grand piano and the banjo sounded alike. I've remarked upon quite a few times since.
 
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