Original Message                 Date: 22-Sep-05  @  09:46 AM   -   mixing piano...mono or stereo?

Dominic

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Mixing Piano&&&&&and whether to have it in mono or stereo? When I have it in stereo and hard pan the desk pots left and right - it sounds bigger but obviously I lose central definition. When I have it in mono it takes up the centre nicely but sounds a bit weak. How do you guys mix a piano in with panned guitars, stereo pads, etc? Is there a trick like having the main signal in mono then sending a separate stereo signal to another 2 faders compressed or something along those lines to get the centre defined but still create a sense of space across the stereo spectrum?

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Message 11/15                 Date: 23-Sep-05  @  09:54 AM   -   RE: mixing piano...mono or stereo?

Dominic

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Even if I pan it to 9 and 3 o'clock it still dominates my mixes too much. I'll keep chipping away though. I know that hard panning can make the instrument lose up to 3 db but stereo painos still swamp my mixes. I still like the sound of having the piano bottom register in mono and the higher register in stereo with a stereo spreader.......sounds a bit Royksopp which is cool. Thanks again.

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Message 12/15                 Date: 23-Sep-05  @  01:02 PM   -   RE: mixing piano...mono or stereo?

monkeybasket2001

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maybe its an eq issue then- maybe try not mirror your pan but using offset settings like 11 oclock and half past 2.....

the short delay thing should work- just work on getting the mono version sitting well on it side and then bring up the fader of the delayed version until you can 'feel' the spread- you dont nesseraily have to have anything jumping out from the delayed side just the feeling that the piano stretches that far

greg

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Message 13/15                 Date: 23-Sep-05  @  02:01 PM   -   RE: mixing piano...mono or stereo?

k

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thats a standard technique and works on tons of things, you just have to be very careful about summed mono mixes, but dry one side and delayed version to the other works good on hats, toms (big tom breaks in rock tracks), guitars, percussion stuff like congas etc etc, but the mono issue.... if you listen to the mono track in my profile called FLYING DUB, further into the track the song breaks down and there is actualy a little hand drum bongo sort of pattern playing fast, but due it being panned like that it almost has dissapeared in mono

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Message 14/15                 Date: 23-Sep-05  @  04:20 PM   -   RE: mixing piano...mono or stereo?

psylichon

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you'd be surprised how high you can highpass a piano and still have it sound full in a mix. try up around 300-350 with a resonant highpass filter. A higher q will give you a nice boost at those crucial mids if you find the right cutoff frequency.

Also, beware of sampled pianos collapsed to mono... most that I've heard are sampled quite a bit out of phase so they sound super wide in the storeroom but pretty crappy in mono. Often it's the onboard reverb that's phasey, so make sure you kill that first, then make the piano mono, then put on your own verb. Maybe just take one side of it?

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Message 15/15                 Date: 23-Sep-05  @  11:31 PM   -   RE: mixing piano...mono or stereo?

k

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true, and that goes for many sounds but people tend to leave the eq flat adding to top/bottom or mid clutter

___________________________________

I had an idea for a script once. It's basically Jaws except when the guys in the boat are going after Jaws, they look around and there's an even bigger Jaws. The guys have to team up with Jaws to get Bigger Jaws.... I call it... Big Jaws!!!

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