Make Your Piano Stand Out in the Mix

The piano sound can be challenging to blend in the mix due to its complex tone dynamics, mainly if it's not recorded correctly. Therefore, in the following tutorial, we will show you a different approach that can help you make your piano stand out in the mix.  

Piano Chord Processing

In our SoundBridge: DAW, we have prepared a short sequence. It contains some basic rhythm, a bassline, and a piano chord sequence. Let's hear the full mix as well as the unprocessed piano sequence.

~Full Mix-Unprocessed Piano

~Piano-Unprocessed  

PianoCentric by Waves Audio

The piano from the example above should sound soft and warm, but we think it can have more clarity and sit better in the mix. With the help of the tool called PianoCentric by Waves audio, some EQ-ing, and a bit of reverb, we are pretty sure we can fix that. But let's take one step at a time. The PianoCentric is a quick solution for processing and shaping your piano or keyboard recordings, with options varying from gorgeous full-range piano to low-fi-filtered sounds. That being said, let's look at its interface.  

 

The Interface

As we can see, there are not so many parameters to control with PianoCentric. The left and right sides are reserved for Input and Output values and are followed by appropriate metering indicators. The main portion of the effect shows a big knob which is the core of this effect. If the big knob is in the center, then there is no processing taking place. But, if you move it to the left, there are lots of things going on. For example, you will start to hear some filtering compression, and the sound becomes more mono.

This is the way you want to go if you want your piano to punch into the mix. If you choose the right side, the sound becomes smoother and wider with more warm characteristics. Finally, we can see two little knobs on the right side of the big one, which is useful and has a nice sounding delay as well as a doubler effect, which can help your piano to sound even wider. Since we have finished briefly introducing this effect, we can hear how our piano sounds processed with PianoCentric.

~Piano-Processed with PianoCentric

After processing it with PianoCentric, we still feel that this piano needs more space, which can be achieved with some reverb. So that's what we are going to do. Let us hear it now.

~Piano-Processed with PianoCentric and Reverb  

Audio Examples

Finally, let us hear the whole mix with processed piano.

~Full Mix-Processed Piano