Recording a piano

Maybe go into a music studio and rent a keyboard

they let you put it onto a disk

A real piano would sound much better. I wonder how SGX did it..

to get a good piano sound, youd have to get a professional recording. otherwise it will sound tinny.

What do you mean tinny?

the recording will not sound very full. amateur recordings always compress and remove parts of the sound recorded, except if you buy uber expensive equipment.

Depending on what kind of song it is, sometimes an electric piano or keyboard can sound better. Most of the good EDM tracks I have heard use "fake" pianos and sound great. I wouldn't go to all the trouble of trying to record a real one.

Yeah, I guess I would use my keyboard, but keyboards aren't very wide and don't share the same notes and same amount of octaves I need out of a normal piano. Plus, my keyboard doesn't have dynamic capabilities. There's just one main volume.

I don't think I could use my piano anyway, even if it was tuned. It's an upright piano, and I think a recording would sound much better with a grand piano tone.

seeing you situation, i would probably just use an artificial piano synth

That's what I started doing, but I realized that the higher pitches sound like a metal rod hitting a tin can.

I end up having a lot of trouble with higher octave piano keys, and any amount of EQ doesn't really help, but I believe it is more that I cannot find a good softsynth piano to use.

The problem most people have with e-pianos is that they do not sound real enough, and mostly it is because the samples or machines they use don't accurately emulate the natural sound. The first thing to remember when making an E-piano sound is that it is digital, so it will by default sound flat, because 99% of synths only creating a signal at one octave. What makes pianos sound natural is the warmth of a note, which you can achieve very easily, which leaves room for creating a more unique piano tone.

I particulary enjoy adding a touch of overdrive to the high end frequencies.

Most signals will only generate a note at one particular octave with synths--you can check this on winamp, actually, you don't need anything special for it. Real instruments resonate at just about every octave when you hit a note, just that the current one is most dominant, so the first issue is making the sound more full and warm. You will need reverb for this, and you can increase it when you want the pedal hit.

Put some EQ and compression with that, and you should be able to get a better sound.

For the second part of your question, yes, you can match the tempo with the live recording. You can use a metronome and set it to the BPM of your song if you have trouble keeping time.

I included a demo... I hope this helps some It wouldn't let kme include it in my post, so it will be at this url:



It was made in just a couple minutes, so it isn't very good, and I over exaggerated the reverb to help get the idea across, but I hope it helps.

Thanks for all the info!!

Is a bmx file used in Buzz? I use FL.

The piano in 4F73R M3 is sequenced midi. My friend MC made that intro for me. (I kinda wish credit was given on FFR where it says what artist did the song, but I'm not gonna bug Synth about it) MC used a very nice piano soundfont he downloaded off of the web and painstakingly sequenced it with lots of small tempo changes and velocity programming.

If you can find a good piano soundfont somewhere (they can often get up to 100 mb) that could work pretty well for you. Otherwise, if you need to record from a real piano, I suggest getting an extension cord , or get something like a minidisc recorder. Record at the piano, then transfer it to your computer.

I'd suggest looking for a nice soundfont. It would be the easiest and most flexible way since you are using FL.

Are piano soundfonts free and legally downloadable?

i can't remember if this is the web address...



there should be thousands of free vst and soundfonts.. but i dunno if they are any good.