Hoping to get help if I may.
 
My current project includes a song that is more acoustic guitar based, with moderately strong drums and deep bass, and bluesy type guitar fills, with some strings throughout. A little Pop in flavour I guess. For the middle quiet section I have added full grand piano under lying some pretty full on vocals, softer drums and bass.
 
My trouble is the bass notes of the piano, which I don't want to remove because it adds such timbre and dynamics to the section, causing conflict with my real bass. It just sounds messy. I've used the eq analizer and tried shelving, lifting, cutting, just about every freq, but can't find a happy medium. Short of either pulling some of the notes from the piano, or dropping the bass from the section all together, I'm out of ideas.
 
Im hoping one of you may have some way you tackle these two instruments together. I've used plenty of piano parts before, but I guess nothing as full on this. I want the bass to underpin the whole feel of the grand piano.
 
Any ideas for me try?  Thanks so much.

First, are the notes clashing because of wrong notes or is the bass playing a completely different pattern than the piano? If the pianist is playing the correct part with their left hand, the easiest fix would be to have the bassist learn what is being played in that section, punch-in, and fix it. It will probably be a faster fix that way than to try to re-capture the magic of the piano performance. If you have already tried some surgical cutting of frequencies and it didn't work for you, this is probably going to be your only choice. Someone else?

Thanks Sidroe. No. The notes are not clashing as such. It's just the sound of the bass guitar, which is not midi, causing a misfit of sounds with the bass notes from the piano, which I played in through True Piano, so it is midi. I've already played around with all the notes to try and change things around a bit. With some success.
 
It's a problem of the sounds of the two 'combining'. Just like acoustic guitars, which I usually finger pick, and the bass. I find, probably because of the way I play guitar, that I have to remove a lot of around the low's and low mid's from guitars to stop the interferrence with my bass parts, but in this case, I simply cannot find an eq solution. I remove enough bass from the piano parts, and my beautiful full sounding piano is gone. Same with the bass, if I pull enough from it to work with the piano, there's not enough left.
 
Just can't find a happy medium between the pair. I was hoping someone who does a lot of work with piano, and bass, may have a process they find useful. Failing that, I was thinking of turning the bass into midi and going down that route, but I really like my bass sound. An old Ibanez Roadstar from the early 80's. It's worked well with everything so far, except this one section, of one song. First time I've gone for a very roomy full grand piano sound.

I typically would play the left hand in a higher register so as to avoid conflict with the bass.  If your piano part is midi, that's an easy fix.  If the piano bass part is important to the song I'd consider changing the bass guitar to a root at the beginning of each measure, something simple which should get it out of the piano's way.
 
HTH
 

Hello,
Almost sounds like the Bass and Piano are hitting lower notes that are "resonating" around one another.  Where as the fullness and breath of the lower piano note is competing with the bottom and punch of the bass. Generally, EQ helps.. Maybe not looking at(EQing) so much at the fundamental note area but maybe at the lower and upper harmonics of the main notes of one of the instruments  will maintain the presence and allow the instruments to play nice.
 
If looking at this via a spectrum analysis (Quad Curve if X3 or Analyst) may show you where the fundamental regions of presence are but also look at the lower and upper regions and try tweaking there.. IE lots of fundamental energy at 240hz.  Look to tweak at 580,120 and 60. 
 
Also, I have seen folks here talk about using a side chain process with EQ and Compression to "duck" an instrument to address the issue and/or some type of gain automation may also be helpful. Good Luck

Thanks Paul G. Yeh. I guess that's would I should do.  I've recorded the piano part to the music. Maybe now I should go back and re-do the bass for this section, to the piano part, as I don't want to change any more of the piano notes, which sound awesome on their own.
 
I've not struggled this much with a mix before. I just can't get these two sound to 'gel'. I'll cut a new simplified bass track for this section and see if it works.
  
 
Been at this all day

EQ is the solution. Just roll off the lows off the piano. You can kill the low end quite a lot, high-passing around 200 Hz. It's standard procedure when the piano is not the featured instrument.
 
I've even gone as far as separating the left and right hand parts in the MIDI track and running them to separate instances of a soft synth. This lets me pan the left hand out of the center, which makes more room for the bass guitar, as well as separate EQ for the left hand and even automation to bring the left hand up and down as needed.

What bit said. I think you can still perceive this in terms of how you would cut lows on guitars so the bass becomes the low end of the guitars if you get my drift.
I use a vst piano and real bass all the time and a HPF always works for me anywhere from around 85hz up to 200'ish depending on material. Id also consider rolling of the lows on any reverb you have on the piano as that wont be helping much. Aside from a different arrangement im not sure what else you can do. You could clone the bass part to another track....on the first track keep all the lower end, cut everything else and compress lots and use a hpf on the second track to mix in the upper mids even with perhaps a tad of distortion. That way you may be able to lower the overall bass guitar in the mix but still keep the definition. Ive used that before to good effect, but it really depends on the track.
 
You could always post your track for the chance of some more accurate suggestions from everyone.
 
Good Luck
 
Bibs

Thanks bitflipper and Bibs. I already rolled off to around 150hz and it works mostly, but I felt I was loosing too much of the timbre of the piano. The idea of separating and panning the left hand sounds like a great idea, so I will give that a shot, and have another look at the reverb too. Maybe that's where some of the problem lies. You've also given me the idea of maybe sidechaining light compression on the left hand, from the bass.
 
I think you guys have  given me some great ideas and something else to think about. I'm taking a break now, because it's been driving me nuts. If I can't resolve it, I will put up the track and see if someone has a better idea.
 
thanks guys. Your time is greatly appreciated. Dave.

Have you tried nudging the left hand piano notes back or forward a few ticks? Given that most of the energy of a note is in the attack, it may help if the attack parts of the bass and piano notes don't coincide too much. I've sometimes done this for kick and bass notes which coincide, with varying results.

Also I wouldn't be afraid to change the piano part to make it fit better with the bass. I know what it's like to get attached to a part you feel is perfect, but sometimes it just doesn't work with the rest of the track and you have to let go. Moving some of the notes around might just result in a happy accident that you like even more - happens to me all the time.

I consider the arrangement to be the first and sometimes most important part of mixing. Sometimes I'll run around in circles trying to get two clashing parts to play nice with EQ, an in the end I'll just get them both up onto the piano roll and have them weave in an out of each other. You sometimes end up with some very engaging melodies and textures. I would even consider creating a MIDI track for the bass part using the Melodyne audio-MIDI conversion, so you have a reference on the piano roll that you can compare to the piano part.

This is all, of course, only if you really want to preserve those lower frequencies on the piano instead of cutting them as others have suggested.