Janet
Danny, you know what? I was sitting there thinking, 'Now how would Danny do this piano?' And I mean, I dialed that thing every which way for just hours...and then I came up with this and thought, 'well, it's close...maybe he'll notice that the piano is thinner.' And it worked!
Actually, you know me...I never even gave that a thought...just played it, fiddled with the volume levels, the reverb and edited the drums a bit (thanks to Rik)...and here it is. But I sure do appreciate your confidence in me. :) (and glad I got lucky on this one!) Thank you. :)
Hahaha, too funny! I may not always comment, but I'm always listening. :) Yep, I definitely noticed. In some things Janet, you can leave it the way it sounds best to you. You only have to thin it up when you have a bunch of other things going on...and even there, it depends on what else is there as well as whether or not your piano is a focal point or not.
The other thing that makes it tough is, you PLAY your piano where most of us sort of just accentuate little lines here and there and may do arpeggiations etc. This in turn, for we that do it this way, makes it easier because we usually don't have as much left hand orchestration as you do. That's really where most of the problems come in because your left hand is walking in bass guitar land, so you either have to tame it.....or mr. bass is going to just be this low end instrument masking or maybe even dissonantly (is that even a word? lol it is now!) screwing things up due to the lower notes being all mixed together.
Especially if you're octaving on the left hand. If you don't thin out the piano, we're going to get mud and too much low end pushing through. But in a song like you did here where it's not loaded with other things, you can get away with that big piano sound. Just for your head, here are a few things to watch for in the future.
1. The more low left hand you use and the busier it is, the more it can mess with a bass guitar. Especially if it's a walking bass line.
2. If you use lower strings or a cello or something, again, low notes need to be controlled or you won't be able to tell which is which.
3. When you have guitars in the mix...whether they be clean electric, dirty or acoustic, you may need to thin out the piano in the ranges where the guitars may be crossing your path frequency wise. This is where automation is your friend. If there is an important guitar line going on where you are playing in the same register, you need to determine which instrument holds precidence. Whichever it is, you need to thin out the other or at least back down the non-focal point instrument using your volume fader so they don't fight for the throne.
4. When you're all alone or coupled with another instrument that doesn't share your piano range, you can allow for bigger instrumentation on all fronts. It depends on which instruments you're using and how often they may cross each others paths.
So just keep that in mind. 9 times out of 10, if you are trying to mix and notice you keep raising a fader on something to hear it, then raise another fader to hear something else, then raise the other fader you just raised, you're experiencing frequency masking and something needs to be altered. Once you remove the frequencies that may be the same in two or more instruments, the whole mix opens up for the better and the clearer. So just remember that in the future as it can really make a difference for the better. :) I'm proud of you for what it's worth....you're definitely growing artistically as well as in your production skills. :)
-Danny