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Hey there,

I'm mixing a singer-songwriter track that was recorded at another facility. The whole piece is voice, guitar, and piano. The voice and guitar sound great and were recorded well. The piano, however, was apparently played off of an inexpensive Yamaha synth and, well, it sounds like it. Unfortunately, the piano is also the dominant instrument in the song.

For this particular project, re-tracking the piano isn't an option. So, my question is, has anyone discovered any effective strategies for dealing with synth-piano to help it sound less artificial? I've tried a variety of compression and equalization approaches, and they help...some. But, regardless of the processing (I've even tried harmonic exciters and transient modulators on this track!), the piano still just sounds...plastic. Any suggestions for getting past this?

Thanks so much.

Jed

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pr0gr4m Wed, 02/22/2006 - 20:10

It's very hard to make a crappy synth piano sound like a real one. VERY HARD. Piano's have so much dynamic range and tonal quality and if the synth patch doesn't, you can't add it in.

Sorry I don't have any tips or tricks to help you out with. The only thing I could offer is that if they recorded the MIDI data for the piano track, you could feed that to a nice piano sampler plug-in or a better quality synth.