This post will hopefully be enlightening for both the traditionalists as well as people in realm of electronic production. Then there are folks like me that play somewhere in the space between and are challenged with marrying classical and traditional sounds with the electronic side. So if you are of one camp or the other, you may want to use these tricks to reach across the aisle. These really are not so very new, but not everyone thinks to use them. If you are using them already, you may still find it interesting to see how I am applying them and why.
No one ever said that your recorded piano has to sound like a traditional piano or an accordion has to sound like an accordion. I mean, they make pedals to change up guitar sounds right? So why not take some of those same effects and apply them unexpectedly! I often apply effects originally meant for bass, guitar, and organs and apply them to my vocals, for example. I can do this in software (plugins) or onstage with my pedal collection and an effects loop.
The first time I even tried to do this was actually by a friend's suggestion. They wondered what adding a flanger effect to the grand piano in one of my earlier songs would sound like. He knew, rightly so, that it would no longer quite sound like a piano. While it's not uncommon of course to add effects to a keyboard, I don't often hear these on traditional pianos. Wurlitzers, Rhodes, and other funky vintage keyboards have a vibrato knob, tremolo knob, or something similar that gives them a variable "waviness." So why not a piano? For me, the whole idea is to make people wonder what that instrument is. Perhaps it still feels familiar but the listener can't quite place it. At the time, that was a revelation for me. Even today I want people to pay attention and ask, "Wait, what IS that???" The song was "Breaking David" and I think back on it whenever I feel that a piano, guitar, accordion, etc needs to sound a bit less like itself.
Even a deep reverb can have a really cool effect. On "Hit Save," I was using a very, very old (antique actually) accordion and the buttons were noisy. They'd stick and unstick with a loud clack that almost resembled hitting the rim on a snare drum. When I added the reverb, that clack gained an echoish quality, adding some additional drama to the song. Sort of turning lemons into lemonade! Speaking of, I also suggest that if you get some background talking or noise in a recording to keep that take somewhere, even if you decide to redo that take. Keep it as an option because those noises, with echoes, filters, reverbs, and other effects, can add the right ambiance to a piece, that little extra something you were looking for. I have often saved the background noise on a scratch track for the beginning or ending of pieces.
The last one I'm going to hit today is another affected piano sound. For the song "Corner," I wanted to add a piano solo, but the grand sound on its own did not fit the feel of the piece. The piano part ended up getting a very watery delay effect (I played around until I found the right one in Z3TA). This kept the piano from feeling too out of place when put up against the fluid electronics and vocoders. It gave it a dream-like, almost underwater or sci fi movie ballroom feel.
I didn't add any sound clips today, but I did include links to these songs if you are so inclined. These effects are very easy to spot within the songs once you know what you are listening for, and frankly I would be posting this later than I had originally intended if I'd added the clips. So, for the sake of time, I'll wrap this one up today! (Note that on "Corner," the piano solo comes in about 2:45 if you don't want to bother with the whole song.)
Other later posts will continue to discuss different plugins, effects, tips, tricks, etc for electronic and other music recordings. Please send me your suggestions for posts in the comments, via my website, or to my twitter account sarahschonert@sarahschonert.
Visit www.sarahschonertmusic.com to learn more about my music.
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