Piano track left/right hand mix adjust.

  I know there are many ways of doing this but wanted to ask the experienced midi recorders what is IYO the fastest easiest way to take a piano midi track (using Cake real piano or equiv.) and adjust the volume between the right and left hand. I know I could move each to a separate track or edit the midi data velocities but wonder is there a splitting filter,method or mapping that lets me do this the another way? Is there a way to drag selected notes only to another track (removing them from the first track)or do I have to copy the whole thing and erase what I don't want in each?

What is IYO the fastest easiest way to take a piano midi track (using Cake real piano or equiv.) and adjust the volume between the right and left hand. 

That's simple. just insert the channel tools FX on the audio track that outputs the MIDI sound and then you can raise or lowert the volume of the left and/or right channel.


If your suing an instrument track, just insert the channel tools on that track. Either way is very fast and simple.


CJ

If you can live with changing the velocity, go to Select | Select by Filter.  In the note range, leave the lowest number that is there by default on the left, and put C5 (Middle C) for the highest number on the right—or use B4 or whatever note you want for the highest note in the left hand. This will select all the left-hand notes.

Then you can scale velocity to make the left hand 80% or whatever percent you want.

Note that many piano sample libraries make the lower velocity notes less bright which is correct if you want the effect on playing softer with your left hand.  If you don't want to lose the brightness of the higher velocities, then CJ's method is probably what you want.

You don't - you insert it in the Fx bin on the associated audio track

You might even want to try something like a multiband compressor and bring up the low end that way, but if it's an exposed piece of piano you'll have to take great care setting it up otherwise it can end up sounding quite unnatural.

In a busy mix where the piano part is somewhat "buried", this will be less of an issue and you'll be able to drive the MBC a little harder and not notice it in operation

When someone talks about left and right hand in the context of a piano it's likely he literally means hands, as in the left hand plays on the bass side and the right hand on the treble side of the keyboard. That's not at all the same as left and right channel of the stereo image (even if the piano is mic'd player perspective, bass notes still also sound on the right stereo side and vice versa). Note velocity is the correct way to handle this.

Another (but likely more involved) approach is possible if the piano instrument in use has a means to attenuate the sounds triggered by lower notes. Or you use separate piano instrument plugins for the notes of left and right hand.

OK I tried what I thought was a easy way to control both right and left hand (not channel) volumes. I copied the midi track, Deleted the right hand notes from the one track and the left hand from the other track.Problem is the "volume slider" on the midi tracks don't work as expected (surprise). One didn't do anything while the other pulled both track volumes down/up. Do I have to change channels or something to do this? Of course it couldn't be as easy as I was trying to make it. I'm pretty good with audio but don't have a ton of experience with cake's handling of midi.This just seems like it should just work. Update: Of course If I opened 2 pianos synths and sent each hand to a separate synth/ output it works fine using the synth's audio out to regulate the volumes. Why do the midi sliders not work like a slider should ? Is there a way I can do this with just one synth & two tracks?

Figures. Seems like things that should just easily work. SO if yo have more than one track going to a vst one track slider works them all?? In TTS you can have a bunch of tracks with volume control over each but not true pianos? This just baffles me as to why it wouldn't/shouldn't work. My setup is simply 2 midi tracks (attempting) to go into 1x true pianos and have easy quick volume control over both tracks.

xxxsoundxxx


Figures. Seems like things that should just easily work. SO if yo have more than one track going to a vst one track slider works them all?? In TTS you can have a bunch of tracks with volume control over each but not true pianos? This just baffles me as to why it wouldn't/shouldn't work. My setup is simply 2 midi tracks (attempting) to go into 1x true pianos and have easy quick volume control over both tracks.

TTS is a multi-timbral synth, so it's like sixteen synths stuck together.  True Pianos is mono-timbral.  You could not have two midi volume sliders controlling one channel of TTS, only two separate channels (the equivalent of two separate synths).  In the same way you need two instances of True Pianos to get the same effect.
 
I use two instances of TP if I want to control relative left/right hand volume, and split the midi track.

What do you mean "each hand?" 

Each midi track is for a specific set of notes?  
Do you mean left and right channels (stereo) with low notes on the left,... as is output by a piano patch?
 
Most current piano keyboards have velocity selectable curves to accommodate playing style.
 
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From an audience's point of view a piano is a mono source with the room deciding the "feeling" of stereo placement. It is a strange sound to have a piano spread wide. Same with drums.
 

As written, split the track.

Then bounce to tracks to get the audio clip, and add a volume envelope. This way you can make non-destructive adjustments.

You can create the envelope by writing fader adjustments with mouse or control surface.

Then if ya wanna you can edit the midi, if velocity affects the sound (layers).

For a good sounding approximation you could just use a tilt eq like the softube (tonelux- love it !) or i believe bootsy has a free one and plugin alliance has an elysia tilt eq that is also free.

There is a difference between channels and hands.

You have sound of your right hand on both channels and sound from your left hand on both channels. Reducing volume of a channel is not the same as reducing the loudness of a hand playing a piano. That's like trying to change volume of only the lower strings of a guitar by twiddling channel volumes.

  CJ, I am not trying to adjust left and right channels. I am trying to adjust right and left HANDS. You know like what the right hand plays on one set of volumes and what the left plays on the other volume. Unless something else comes up, the best way seems to be opening 2 true pianos and dividing the midi track in two tracks. Seems there is no way to have one midi track into true pianos and split the volume between hands (not channels)on track sliders. You can do all this wild crazy amazing stuff with X2 but something simple like this prevents me from doing what I want. It's mostly just my luck. Doctors can put faces on people without one, new eyes,limbs,livers,kidneys etc. but when I go to the doctors about my ankle they all say nothing can be done. My Luck.

Maybe I don't get correctly what he means, but to my understanding CJ's suggestion assumes that lower notes (left hand) are more prominent on one channel and higher notes (right hand) on the other. You already mentioned in a previous post that this is usually not the case. The room image of a piano usually comes from room mics which will feature low and high keys pretty much equally in each mic. Thus changing channel volumes of a stereo piano won't do the trick, it will just attenuate one side of the room information, but not low or high keys. 

You do find piano libraries which spread low to high keys across the stereo image, but that has to be subtle to make sense. If overdone to the point where CJ's suggestion works sufficiently it will sound awkward. Even if you are dealing with one of those, you'll find most of the piano key range pretty much right in the middle of the image and if both hands are playing close together they will also be close together in the stereo image.

EDIT: oops, I guess I shouldn't post while having my coffee - I was replying to jm24, it feels redundant now that some other posts already cleared things.

Yep, if you use a plug with sympathetic resonance, distributing to two plugs is not ideal, moreso if you play with much sustain pedal usage. I'd opt for note velocity editing, personally.