EQ slightly out of tune piano?

R

Russtopher

New member
So here's one - I'm working on mixing a song where the upright piano is *just* a bit out of tune. And what's worse is, it seems the bass notes are the ones out of tune, and almost everything above middle C is OK.

Luckily, this piano is NOT the main instrument, it's there as a color thing in small places. It does add a lot to the song, but I'm worried about the slight out of tune issue. I've got it lowered in the mix just so it adds a bit to the song as intended, so I can fudge it a bit. Trying to bump up the tuning in Cubase LE has not done anything worthwhile.

I've pulled down 3Khz like for out of tune guitars and vocals (I Googled first, believe me :)) but it still bugs me. It might not bug the band, but since I'm working on it...

Any advice?
 
Short of auto-tune or manual pitch correction, what is there? EQ may help to a subtle degree but I doubt it. Have you tried a *good* auto tune plugin or program? Melodyne is great. And of course, Antares AutoTune is reputable. If neither of those work then I'm not sure what you can do besides accept the sound you have, or tune the piano and retrack.
 
Russtopher said:
So here's one - I'm working on mixing a song where the upright piano is *just* a bit out of tune. And what's worse is, it seems the bass notes are the ones out of tune, and almost everything above middle C is OK.


Any advice?
Click to expand...


When was the piano last tuned? You might want to consider someone coming in and tuning the thing a bit... :D:D
 
You can't autotune the pitchy low notes of the piano if high notes are playing at the same time on the same track. Autotune only works on tracks where one pitch is being played or sung at a time. Retrack it.
 
You also can't use Autotune if one of two or three strings sounding the same note are out of tune . . .

If it fits the style of the song, mask it with a chorus effect.
 
Celemony's Melodyne is more in-depth and flexible than auto-tune but I'm still not sure exactly how well it will work in this particular situation. It's worth a try. As XLR stated, your best bet is probably to re-track it...
 
Thanks everyone, I know there's no "quick fix" (if there was, everyone and everything would sound like gold :D) and I don't know if there's an opportunity for the band to re-track. I haven't tried the "chorus trick" and as the piano bit is only in the bridge, I wanted to see if there was any way to fudge it (not so much fix it) and have it sound OK before sending it back to them. I'm mixing it as a favor, more for my own experience, so I wanted to play around a bit with it first.

If I can't do anything I like with it, it's going back to them to hopefully re-track.

Thanks again all :)
 
Russtopher said:
Thanks everyone, I know there's no "quick fix" (if there was, everyone and everything would sound like gold :D) and I don't know if there's an opportunity for the band to re-track. I haven't tried the "chorus trick" and as the piano bit is only in the bridge, I wanted to see if there was any way to fudge it (not so much fix it) and have it sound OK before sending it back to them. I'm mixing it as a favor, more for my own experience, so I wanted to play around a bit with it first.

If I can't do anything I like with it, it's going back to them to hopefully re-track.

Thanks again all :)
Click to expand...


Anytime, dude!! :)

Glad we could help... :D:D
 
You can't autotune a polyphonic instrument like a piano. Unless it is playing one note at a time, but even then it's really not going to work out too well. The reason being what has already been stated, that most notes on a piano have two or three strings. If one or two of them is out, it's really like having three different notes playing. This is part what is causing the piano to sound out of tune.

You would have to retrack, replace the piano part with a sampled piano part, or do what you did, which is bring the piano down in the mix.
 
if it's the bass notes that are out of tune, you might try using the EQ to pull the low end way down and make the bass notes sorta 'dissapear' a bit.
 
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