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  • panning solo piano

    I'm wondering what advice people may have re the PowerPan settings, for using on a solo piano where the music is divided between two tracks:- 1. Main ( R + L hands in the more chordal /accompanying sections )  2. Highlight ( RH melodic parts, played at the same time as track 1 -Main ).

    Thanks,

    Kay.


  • Hello Kay

    Hope you are well and oviously the coming spring proposes making music / playing piano...[;)]

    1. In Generall: Panning has always something to do with the context of the rest of the orchestra. So I can't give you the setting.

    If your Piano is playing as a soloist you don't have to use a Panner perhaps. The piano plays in front of you just it is recorded at silent stage.

    If your Piano plays as a soloist together with an small orchestra try with a "width" of 50-60% and shift the angle a bit to the right or the left > do it with you monitors.

    If your Piano is the soloist  of a large symphonic orchestra you could try an angle (a width) of 20 - 40%. Shifting the angle to the right or the left means panning it a bit to the right or the left or leave it in the center - just you like it

    2. Your particular situation:

    I don't know whether your two tracks should sound as one piano it does or as two different pianos.

    If you want to have one Piano but with two tracks then take two Panners (each track gets one) with the same settings.

    If you want to have two Pianos give each track a Panner as well, choose a witdh from situation I told above and shift the angle from one Panner a bit to the right and the other to the left.

    so you can splitt up the two signals a bit to each stereo channel.

    Hope this helps

    Good luck

    Beat


    - Tips & Tricks while using Samples of VSL.. see at: https://www.beat-kaufmann.com/vitutorials/ - Tutorial "Mixing an Orchestra": https://www.beat-kaufmann.com/mixing-an-orchestra/
  • Hello Beat, 

    Thank you for your good wishes !  I hope that you are similarly inspired by the coming spring.

    I'm really glad you replied !  I checked out your VS presets before writing but didn't find one with piano.  I'm a bit tired now - too tired to listen properly so I'll re-read and try out your suggestions tomorrow.

    Yes- I do want the two tracks to sound as one piano.  I simply removed some particular melodic sections from the first track (main-using both hands) and placed them onto the second (HiLite) as I wanted to be able to - literally - highlight them with automation in Logic.

    That means that for - shall we say 40 % of the piece, the music is on one track only (Main -using both hands) and the other 60% uses both tracks at the same time.

    I've tried out many positions of the Panners, without being 100% convinced. Here is a screen shot of my current one:

    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5949854/Powerpan%20Main%3AHiLite.pdf

    In a way, there are so many possibilities that it's confusing !  I changed the Pan Law in the PowerPanner just to see what the differences were and found that not only does the placing change, the sound also changes ! 

    Kay.


  • last edited
    last edited

    @Kay von Randow said:

    ...In a way, there are so many possibilities that it's confusing !  I changed the Pan Law in the PowerPanner just to see what the differences were and found that not only does the placing change, the sound also changes ! 

    Kay.

    Hello again.

    Yes the sound changes as well. The smaller the angle the mono is the output signal.

    With "WIDTH" we can narrow  stereo-width.

    This is the "effect" we get with sounds which are played far away.

    If you are listening to a playing orchestra (distance = 200m) it sounds more or less mono. Both of your ears get the same signal.

    But if you are listening to a playing orchestra just in front of it you get different sounds from left and right (violins left < > basses right) = super stereo.

    So we can say:

    The farther away an instrument the more mono it sounds.

    Use the "WIDTH" for simulating instruments which should sound farther away - together with a "farther" depth of a convolution reverb...

    But it isn't that easy, unfortunately...

    Taking the situation of a piano and a symphonic orchestra:

    Even if the piano stands in front of a symphonic orchestra -compared with the orchestra it sounds more mono than the orchestra itself.

    So in the situation of being a piano-soloist together with a symphonic orchestra we have to narrow the stereo signal of the keybord because 

    it appears much more smaller (less stereo) than the orchstra.

    So as I mentioned above in my first answer: The parameter "WIDTH" of each instrument depends on the context.

    A help could be: Choose an Angle (WIDTH) as you would see the instrument as the virtual listener.

    Further, do this for all the instruments which are playing in your mix.

    So best would be to draw the stage layout first. Then it's easy to make e basic setup for each PowerPan effect.

    All the best

    Beat


    - Tips & Tricks while using Samples of VSL.. see at: https://www.beat-kaufmann.com/vitutorials/ - Tutorial "Mixing an Orchestra": https://www.beat-kaufmann.com/mixing-an-orchestra/
  • Happy 1000 Posts [:)][^]

    This was just my 1000st answer here in this forum (since 2003)

    Thanks for being so kind with me all the time!!! [:$]

    Yours

    Beat Kaufmann


    - Tips & Tricks while using Samples of VSL.. see at: https://www.beat-kaufmann.com/vitutorials/ - Tutorial "Mixing an Orchestra": https://www.beat-kaufmann.com/mixing-an-orchestra/
  • Beat, I really want to thank you for your clarification.  Unfortunately I've not had any time to put what you say into operation since my daughter's leaving school tomorrow and my time is not my own at the moment .............too many preparations and celebrations !

    Just wanted to let you know that I do appreciate what you've written.

    Kay.