Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Composer's Lounge HOW do you make piano sit in front of strings in a mix?

Dear Anyone.

I love writing New Age music but I can't mix a jello with a 5-star chef helping out, never mind a piece of music! So OK, piano and strings. How do you make the piano sit in front of the strings without killing the strings with EQ to do it?

I know you can make the strings quiet/six city blocks away with reverb, then chuck an elephant of compression on top of the piano (I'm exaggerating here, I know that much!) but that's not what I'm talking about. It's stuff like this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeUom8p71Sw&list=PLxGJ7J44maLVx5M23TeP1sKdiJuQooWnR

(The Fairy Ring by Mike Rowland). Absolute Phil Spector wall of strings you could sit a house on, yet the piano's quite happily and clearly in front of it. I've been trying to make 2 sounds - piano'n'strings or any other 2 - that solid and keep one in front of t'other for years and cannot see how he does it without EQing the strings so much they don't sound like strings any more. Mine end up sounding a synthy mess.

Please, can someone tell me how he's pulled this one off? Please use a bit of detail, not just 'Oh, he's used a bit of Compression' or whatever, I duno what he's used, so I can reproduce the trick?

It's not I'm trying to copy his sound, it's just I'd love to be able to keep my sounds that full and still sit them in front of eachother.

Yours hopefully

Chris.

EQ the schmotz out of the piano. If you don't know schmotz is low mid sound between about 200 and 800 Hz that tends to muddy the mix. The best way to find the center frequency of the offending sound is to set a parametric EQ with increased amplitude then sweep the center frequency until it sounds the worst. Then reverse the amplitude to cut that frequency until the desired clarity is achieved.

If you've not already done so, you also can help your mix to by adjusting the balance. The violins are usually to the audience's left. Shift the string balance over that way, and the piano will stand out spatially just a bit more.

One more suggestion. The piano in your example is heavily EQ'd to accentuate the upper mids (somewhere between 1 and 3kHz). If you listen to the piano closely you'll hear it's quite unnatural sounding.