In this four part free video tutorial series, brought to you with the support of Waves, we show you how to transform bland piano tracks into radio ready sounding keys using EQ, compression and light applications of saturation.
Mixing pianos can be challenging as, by nature of the instrument, they can take up a lot of space in a mix leaving little room for anything else to play nicely. These videos show you how to sit a main piano part in a song in the style of a contemporary pop ballad.
How To Mix Radio Ready Pianos: Episode #1 Waves Q8 EQ
Pianos often sound quite large out of the box which in isolation can sound fine but in a mix can compete with other key tracks. EQ is the tool to address this. Watch this video to learn some basic EQ moves that commonly work well at thinning out the tone of main piano tracks.
How To Mix Radio Ready Pianos: Episode #2 Waves NLS And Manny Reverb Plug-ins
Live pianos, even the best sounding piano virtual instruments, occasionally need some character to help sit them in a mix. Waves NLS is a good place to start for adjusting harmonic content. Watch this video to hear how a tiny application of this brings the piano into focus.
Pianos can also suffer from being too up front in a mix. Level can be used to push it back, but reverb often does a better job of placing pianos tastefully. Watch to hear how a quick applications of Waves Manny Reverb can balance the piano in the mix better than reaching for the track’s level.
How To Mix Radio Ready Pianos: Episode #3 Waves PuigTec EQP1A
In this video we come back to EQ, this time using a passive EQ to further shape the tone of the piano to sit better in this particular mix. The first EQ set out to attenuate the weighty frequencies that caused it to sound too big in the mix. This application of passive EQ aims to shape the tone of the piano to sound purposeful in this mix.
How To Mix Radio Ready Pianos: Episode #4 Waves Puigchild Compression
Compressing piano tracks isn’t easy, in fact the results are often on a knife edge. Too much as you’ve got an over squished piano sound similar to what you hear in Rolling Stones “She’s A Rainbow”, not enough compression and you’ll struggle to maintain a sense of purpose for your piano tracks.
Generic compressors often catch and snatch the transients of pianos too hard. A better approach is to use a lazy sounding Vari-mu style compressor that lets through transients in musical ways. Watch this video to hear how to best set up this style of compressor on a piano.