I just stumbled onto an epiphany (for great piano sounds)

[T Boog]

I have a few great sounding (though free) piano vsts in my collection. However there's something I like in the tone of the TTS1 piano. It has a certain upper chime that works great in my mixes. However, there's something missing from it in the mids so it sounds a bit hollow and lacking in rich midrange. It lacks the thump & resonance of a great piano. 

So I decided today to try the Soniccouture Hammersmith piano on my track(which sounds very rich and resonant). I inserted the Hammersmith and placed it right under the TTS1 Piano track. Then I copied the MIDI notes to the Hammersmith track. I muted the TTS1 and just as I thought, the Hammersmith sounded rich & resonate but it didn't have that great upper chime of the TTS 1. 

But as I was going back and forth between the two pianos, I happened to try them both together and it immediately sounded amazing. 

But then, using my ear, I low passed and high passed the Hammersmith and I boosted it at 1K just a bit and it sounded outstanding. I also compessed it a good bit and set it lower in volume than the TTS1. And lastly, I nudged the midi notes on the Hammersmith forward a bit and it made it sound even thicker and richer. Now the piano sound has the best of both worlds. It has the rich low mids & mids of the Hammersmith and the upper chime of the TTS1.

I also tried panning the two pianos slightly left & right but that made it sound worse. Besides, the pianos are already in stereo. And both pianos placed right up the middle sounds fantastic. It just sounds like one big resonant piano. 

Anyway, I'm sure some of u have tried this before but it never crossed my mind. I've doubled many things but never a piano. I'm still blown away by how great & easy it worked. It was actually hard to get a bad sound when blending them together. Anyway, I won't forget this trick 👍

Cheers! 

 

 

 

[mettelus]

You can get some nice results with layering. There are quite a few A/B-style Kontakt libraries that focus on melding two instruments in this way (two different instruments typically for the A and B).

One weird epiphany I hit on several years ago was recording a vocal track. I didn't quite like a condenser take, but then didn't quite like a dynamic take either. I ended up testing runs with both mics simultaneously and layering that result similar to the OP, and the results were far better than I anticipated. It was much simpler to work with the content I wanted from each mic that way. Decades ago, I used to run two very different dynamics at once (live) through mixers (they were literally taped together) so I figured the dynamic/condenser combo wasn't that far of a stretch from what I had already done long ago and was worth the try.

[T Boog]

38 minutes ago, mettelus said:

You can get some nice results with layering. There are quite a few A/B-style Kontakt libraries that focus on melding two instruments in this way (two different instruments typically for the A and B).

Cheers Mettelus. Well I'm familiar with playing layered sounds, like Piano combined with other instruments. I just never thought about blending two diff grand piano sounds together and separating the best parts of each.

Man if u put a 32 band eq on each piano, u could get downright surgical 😄

Seriously, I was amazed by the power it gave me over the overall tone. And if I nudged the TTS1 to the left of the Hammersmith it had a diff sounding attack than vice versa(of course). And the phasing relationships when eqing them gives a lot of tone shaping control.

I look forward to experimenting with this.

[mettelus]

1 hour ago, T Boog said:

Seriously, I was amazed by the power it gave me over the overall tone.

+1, the real issue with EQs is they are great for removing frequency content, but fall short for content that is vague or not even present. Pianos unto themselves are incredibly versatile due to their designs so they can be a good choice to fill gaps in other stringed instruments. When you have two different pianos in play you pretty much have all the bases covered!  

For almost 20 years, I left the original (not a great pickup by any means) pickup in the neck position on my main when I replaced the bridge with a PAF Pro just because when those two were melded together it had a dramatic effect on tone that you could not get from either solo. When I went with a Super Seven Switching design I shifted them to D Activator Neck/Bridge... although there is versatility in the switching setup, the tone differences are not as profound as when the PUPs "don't match." The best "mismatch" I can get is with the neck coils in a parallel configuration and the bridge coils in series (then the two HBs in series... my "default"), just because those PUPs sound so similar.  Every guitar that has separate tone/volume knobs per pickup since I have left the neck stock, but beefed up the bridge to get that effect back (that PAF Pro is now in the bridge on a 335 and is jet black, so the guitar looks like it has a hole in it instead of a pickup at a distance).