Crash Bandicoot - Great Hall piano solo (Demo 3 hosted)

[Level 99]

I guess piano tone is something that is relative. I understand melody's position on how honkey tonk piano accentuates certain parts of the mix, evoking specific feelings. In the end, I guess it is your call if you want to keep this sample or go for something more traditional. It is probably the relatively bad input I'm listening on but it does sound a little bit high-heavy, like there's been some scooping in the mids. Will have to listen on a few different setups to confirm, but the high shelf shimmer right now is alright as long as the mids and midlows balance it out.

I'm not hearing the timing thing melody is refering to specifically. I will say the timing is, overall, very good, but there's some places where the left and right hands could do with some more alignment. This is usually at the beginning of measures, but it might be worth the time to go through with a fine tooth comb and tweak some of the timing to be tighter. I'm not saying make it sound robotic, but you're the pianist, so you'd know best where to tweak timing tightness.

The volume dynamics are very effective, but I do think a little bit of volume boosting during the quieter, less-intense sections would smooth out the track as a whole. I found myself turning up the track at the beginning and then had to go turn it down at 3:24 when it gets loud. Maybe not using a master compressor, but automating the volume to be a bit louder for softer sections. The volume, when it is at its loudest, is great - its just a bit too much of a contrast for me between the loud and soft. (Could also be the fact that I listen to lots of loud music, so that this advice with a grain of salt...maybe a few grains).

Reverb sounds pretty lush, no qualms with it.

[melody]

i would not touch your eq at all except for a gentle, very slight mid-ranged boost. the only reason i'd hi-pass a piano is if i had to accommodate a kick or bass with lots of sub-bass frequencies, which you definitely do not. also, i didn't mean to imply that you ought to personally sample idle chatter, just pull a sample from http://freesound.org/

best of luck and hope to see this on the site soon

[Level 99]

i would not touch your eq at all except for a gentle, very slight mid-ranged boost. the only reason i'd hi-pass a piano is if i had to accommodate a kick or bass with lots of sub-bass frequencies, which you definitely do not. also, i didn't mean to imply that you ought to personally sample idle chatter, just pull a sample from http://freesound.org/

best of luck and hope to see this on the site soon

I meant her current EQ where the high shelf is is fine, just needs to even it out a bit on the mids (and again, it could be the listening setup I'm on at the moment.)

[melody]

i was responding to this, my mistake

One last question in this post: while you brought up the EQ and considering my previous mastering issues, should I keep the high pass detailed in the EQ screencap? Or would it sound more natural without it?

[Rexy]

Okay, after taking everything aside, and seeing Stevo's side of the story as well, there have been some adjustments done for Demo 3.

Having noted it's the execution that needed to be shaped up on, I've re-evaluated the track in several ways:

1) Note shiftings:-

- Having noticed how some parts shift in pacing too much, some liberties were taken to splice the performance and re-adjust according to the tempo shift. Hopefully it wouldn't become too wild in some of the more ridiculous parts.

- Some of the sloppier notes between the left and right hands were also re-aligned to better fit this pacing. None of the notes were dead on, but were brought to be close enough to make them still sound natural.

- Due to the nature of its recording, none of the performance was brought under a quantiser.

2) Reverb:-

- Roomworks was ditched in favor of Redline Reverb, which seemed to have a pretty Jazz Hall preset that I tried out:

The details of the preset are here in case anyone can be more precise with any more alterations to the ambience.

3) Equalisation:-

- The previous EQ settings were changed to just a boost at 0.5 at 800hz and 2000hz, giving the mids a subtle boost.

4) Dynamics alteration:-

- The velocities were looked into and changed around to better fit a less grating approach. I admit when performing I can be quite aggressive, but hopefully that would ease it for the better.

- The general volume issue was tackled by automating the volume channel for the piano itself. By boosting the quieter sections, comparing the resulting recording with the previous demo has shown that the quieter sections have become considerably thicker.

- The limiter was heavily reduced, though still maintained at its minimum threshold at -0.5db for pop prevention purposes.

And I guess that's pretty much it. If there's anything that I'm still doing wrong, please let me know

[Turtle]

This stuff is so far beyond my realm of expertise I don't even know.

That said, it sounds better than ever.

[Level 99]

Oh man. Oh dude. OH....OH...

I'm giving this some thorough listens because the tindeck mp3 applet was bugging at max volume, throwing some distortion in at loud volumes that doesn't seem to be in the actual file.

Your EQ changes are very appropriate. It almost makes it now sound like there are bowed strings playing at certain times, its a nice illusion.

Timing sounds really really good. Honestly, everything you cleaned up for this sounds friggin' awesome.

My final word: this is good to go. This is ready to submit. This is going on my ipod! Great stuff, Rexy. Thanks for being a total champ and seeing this mix through to the end.

[Rexy]

So you're saying it's good to go in its current form Stevo? That sounds like a good sign

I do appreciate the positive feedback, and I'm glad to hear that it could be very well ready. I should probably send a final PM to halc to be sure, but otherwise I'm glad all the technical advice is paying off. Thank you everyone =)

[Rexy]

Actually, after 5 days (complete with reminder) there's still no response from halc.

But having now realised that Stevo's a workshop moderator (how the hell did I miss that?), I'll go ahead and sub the whole thing. Let's hope it prospers o_O