We’re spoilt for choice when it comes to pristine piano instruments for our DAW, but what about when you need something with a bit more character? We show you how to distress a piano in the box, for free.
The Sound
Piano is no different to any other source when it comes to getting a good recorded sound; that is, a well played, well tuned instrument in a good room before anything else. Following that, a well-mic’d, clean recording should get you most of the way there.
Sometimes, vintage recordings suffer from a compromised rendering of the instrument, but this is rarely because of a lack of musicianship or technical knowhow. Most instruments from these recordings suffer the intrinsic problems of noise, distortion, and limited bandwidth of vintage signal chains.
Breaking It Yourself
Some productions call for the wonky charm of an imperfect piano recording. We need to replicate contributing elements both from a vintage recording, and from the instrument itself.
These could be worn hammers with envelope shaping plugins, including standard dynamic processing, or unstable tuning with modulation plugins such as chorus and/or vibrato.
As far as our production is concerned, considering mono, and replicating distant miking techniques with ambience will help. Replicating other signal path related artifacts such as noise and low headroom (distortion) with white noise and saturation plugins, and limited bandwidth with filtering will add an extra air of authenticity. Tape speed variations and possible distortion are also easily achieved in your DAW.
The Imperfect Piano
Many DAWs offer a bundled piano instrument that sounds pristine, is easy to move and is always in tune! But if you want to give even the shiniest of DAW pianos cigarette burns and a toothless grin, step forward the distressed piano…
Photo by Ivan Samkov from Pexels