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In an earlier post I talked about the Pianoteq software which I use for all of my piano sounds and I think I also mentioned that I have an SL-990 Weighted Key MIDI Controller Keyboard to play it (and all of my other virtual instruments) with.

With this post I want to emphasize important it is to use a weighted key MIDI controller such as this one (and in my research it's the best deal around for a full 88 key weighted keyboard - that's why I bought it.)

Really there's not much point in even getting Pianoteq unless you have a weighted keyboard because what makes it special (and more realistic sounding than sampled pianos) is that it is extremely responsive to the touch of the keyboard player and that touch is only going to be right if you're playing on weighted keys.

That's not to say that I only like using the SL-990 because of Pianoteq. I love the way it feels on everything. I think it helps give the sound of my virtual drum machine (I have been using Superior Drummer 2) a more "real" sound and I even like the feel of it when playing VSTi synths (some seem to disagree on this, but I like it.)

I think people often underestimate how important velocity is in giving music it's "feel." Real people don't play every note or every drum hit or every piano note with the exact same velocity so when we have static velocity in our MIDI it gives our virtual instruments a very "robotic" sound.

So much of the "groove" is created by the differences in velocity between the different notes. It's those differences in velocity that makes the music come alive. It's what makes it human. And I think the SL-990 Weighted Key Keyboard is a great way to get your "humanity" into the MIDI in your DAW.

If you've never played a weighted key keyboard, it's definitely something to check out.

As of right now this keyboard is out of stock at Amazon, but there are many other 88 weighted key MIDI controller keyboards you could buy instead.

I think learning how to set a compressor correctly is one of the more difficult things to master because the way it effects the sound can be quite subtle. The key to setting your compressor correctly is to make the changes less subtle (before eventually making them more subtle again.)

Before I get to what I mean by that statement, let me first direct your attention to my last post on the "Importance of Level Matching" because I think it's very important to think about this when setting a compressor. Sure, you can make things "louder" with a compressor but does it really work within the context of the song? There may be some times when you are, in effect, using compression to make a track sound louder but be sure to listen to the difference between using compression and just turning up the volume.

I also think my post before that (on technique being more important than gear) is also relevant here. It may be more relevant when talking about compressors than anything else actually. I believe it's far more important to know how to set your compressor than whether you are using a cheap (or free) compression plugin, a $300 MPA PRO VLA II, or a $4000+ Focusrite Red 3.

OK, now to get to what I mean about setting the compressor so that the changes are more obvious at first so that you can hear what you're doing more clearly. What I do is I think of it as a step by step process where I get each setting (Attack, Release, Ratio, & Threshold) correct one at a time.

The Compression Setting Process

Step One: Set the Release to as fast as it will go, the Ratio to as high as it will go, and the Threshold to where it's very sensitive (where the compressor is working on the input in a significant way.)

Once you've got those three knobs set in this extreme fashion you are ready to start adjusting the Attack knob to where you want it to be. The idea is that the above extreme settings will allow you to hear what's happening when you adjust the Attack much more clearly so that you will be able to get right.

What you will want to do is move the attack faster and slower and listen closely (mixing, when it comes down to it, is all about listening closely) to how it effects the sound. When the attack is faster it will cut out more of the transients and when it's slow more of the transient will get through. Which way you want it to be set depends entirely on the situation.

This is an important point. You need to forget about presets when it comes to compression. They are a waste of time. You need to be listening to how the settings effect what you are doing in each particular situation. The more you do this, the more of a "feel" you will get for getting the sound that you want quickly.

Another point I need to make is that with the extreme settings on the other three knobs, the overall sound of the compression will be really awful, you need to ignore that. Those extreme settings are so you can focus in on the sound of the Attack and how adjusting the attack effects the sound.

Step Two: Once the Attack is set where you want it, it's time to start working on the Release setting. To put it simply the Release is how quickly the compression stops working. This is an important setting as far as how your compressor effects the timing of your track.

The Attack knob tells the compressor how quickly to start compressing (when the sound goes above the Threshold) and the Release knob tells it how quickly to stop compressing the sound after it's been triggered.

Similar to what I said about setting the Attack, when you are setting the Release you need to be listening closely to how it is effecting the music. Forget about presets and try to forget about math (about where it's "supposed" to be set based on BPM or whatever) and try to get a feel for where it releases so that it fits in with the groove of the song. And that doesn't necessarily mean "perfectly in time" either, in fact it pretty much never means that. Don't set it like it's a metronome. That's not groovy.

Step Three: At this point you should have your Attack and Release settings where you want them to be. Now it's time to lower your Ratio knob and lower it until you get it where you want it to be.

One way of approaching this is to lower the Ratio until you no longer hear the effects of the Attack/Release clearly and then to start raising it back up until it's where it sounds just right.

Presets and formulas aren't going to do you much good when trying to set the Ratio. Memorizing that you're supposed to be at 4:1 for this and 2:1 for that may help you get you pretty close to where you want to be, or it may just stop you from doing what you need to be doing most: listening closely.

Step Four: Once you've got your Attack, Release, & Ratio settings right you will be ready for the final step of setting your compressor which is setting the Threshold.

If you followed my advice and set it to be very sensitive then the compressor is probably working pretty much all the time and this is great for being able to hear what you're doing so that you can effectively set the first three knobs but it's probably not what you really want.

You should make the threshold less sensitive until it's higher than you want it to be and then you should lower it until it sounds right (this is sort of like what I just said you should do with the Ratio where you lower it until you don't really hear the effect anymore and then raise it until it's just right.)

It's unlikely that you would want the compression to be on all the time. There should be moments where it's not doing anything (the quieter moments.)

Conclusion

I'm hoping that you find this "process" helpful in opening up your ear. It's really all about allowing you to hear what each setting is doing more clearly so that you can make a more informed decision about where the settings should be to get the sound you want. My motto is that mixing is all about listening closely and I think using this process makes it easier to listen closely to the effects of compression.

It's natural for us to initially hear louder as "better." If we hear a track at one volume and then pop in a plugin that increases the volume we're probably going to think that plugin made the track "better" at first because it's louder. But over time we may find that it didn't actually make it better at all. Maybe we figure this out when we go back to the track the next day with fresh ears.

This is (in as simple of a way as I can put it) why level matching is so important. When we add an effect to something we want to zero in on what the effect is doing (so we can hear whether we like it or not) rather than just being dazzled by an increase in volume.

In order to make sure we are hearing the effect itself rather than a volume increase (or a decrease if the effect makes the sound quieter) we should adjust the output of the effect so that the volume level matches the volume when the effect is bypassed.

In short: by using level matching we are tuning our ears in to what really matters instead of being distracted by a superficial change in volume.

It's easy to get obsessed with gear. It's easy to think that the real key to making great recordings is using a $5000 microphone plugged into a $4000 preamp. And sure, it probably does make it a bit easier. But I really think that the equation on what it takes to make a great recording is something like 90% technique and 10% gear (not accounting for the quality of the music itself which is of course far more important than either in the grand scheme of things.)

I believe that as long as you have gear that can "get the job done" you need to stop making excuses and stop dreaming about pro gear and start learning how to use what you got! I'm sure there are plenty of GearSlutz out there who would point and laugh at my setup because I use a $300 preamp and a $800 microphone (on the other hand, I'm sure there's people reading this who would love to have an $800 microphone!)

But I really do not blame my gear at all when my mixes don't sound the way I want them to. I know that the real problem in such a case is not the gear, but me. It was me not knowing how to set the compressor or position the mic. Knowing how to use the compressor is more important than the quality of the compressor and knowing how to position the mic is more important than the quality of the mic!

This is why I think it's a huge mistake to spend all of your time shopping for your next upgrade in gear instead of learning how to work with what you've got.

One of the worst (and most common) examples of this is when people spend many hours testing out lots of different plugins instead of working with the ones they've got. I've been to sites where you can download hundreds of different free plugins to try out. This is an evil site that I plan on never visiting again. We're taught that more choice is always better but at some point it becomes paralyzing.

My advice is: Stop looking for perfection in your gear and stop looking for the latest plugin and start working on improving your recording and mixing technique.

And that's not to say that there's anything wrong with upgrading your gear or looking for a piece of gear that you really need. All I'm saying is that you need to get yourself to the point where you are focusing on recording and mixing (and not on acquiring gear) as quickly as possible. It's easy to drag out the "looking for gear" phase way too long.

I used to do a lot MIDI programming (placing the notes into my DAW with my mouse) rather than recording the MIDI from my keyboard playing (whether it be keyboard parts or drums.) I found this to be a faster approach to get what I wanted because I'm an awful keyboardist and have a lousy sense of rhythm.

While this approach gave me technically correct results, the sound was very robotic. There are a variety of techniques one can use to try to get the of programmed notes to sound more "human" (such as varying the timing and velocity of the notes) but I don't think that's the best way to go about it.

Instead, I've decided it's better to play my keyboard and drum parts. I'm still not very good at it (although I get better the more I do it) but I find if I take enough passes (which is of course very easy with MIDI) that I can get it close enough. And if it's still not quite good enough then I can use quantization to improve the timing.

Quantization

You may be thinking that quantizing the notes defeats the entire purpose of recording my playing in the first place but that's not true. First of all, a lot of the "human touch" is in the changing velocities, not just in the not perfect timing. Secondly, you don't have to (and you shouldn't) quantize 100%. Instead, I play around with the quantization percentage (and other settings, with REAPER - my preferred DAW - there are a variety of quantization settings to manipulate) until I get the feel that I want where it still sounds "human" but it's not overly sloppy like my playing tends to be without it.

Playing One Bit At A Time

If you're a bad keyboardist like me then you may want to borrow my technique of playing one bit a time. For example, instead of playing both the left and right hands of a keyboard part - I may play each one separately and then add them together. Or when playing drums I may do the kick and snare in one pass and then the hi-hat in another.

Looping

Another technique I use to make the process of getting a "human" sounding MIDI recording a bit easier is looping. For example I may play 8 bars of my hi-hat playing and then just loop that to wherever it needs to be. This tends to give enough of a "human feel" while not taking a huge amount of time.

Keyboard

I think it's essential to use a velocity sensitive keyboard if you want to get a "human" sounding MIDI recording. And it's preferred to have a weighted key keyboard. I use the SL-990 MIDI Keyboard and I definitely highly recommend it. It comes close to the feel of playing a real piano and it's not crazy expensive. No, it has no built in sounds - but so what? Built in sounds are crap anyway in most cases. It's meant to be used to control the drum machines, samplers, and synths you have on your computer and it works wonderfully for that.

Pianoteq

Combine the above weighted key keyboard with Pianoteq piano software for an extremely realistic piano playing experience. It's really an awesome combination.

"Everything In It's Right Place" is my general philosophy towards mixing (and also the title of an excellent song by Radiohead.)

What I mean by this is that the ultimate goal when mixing a song together should be to find a "place" for every part of the song that's essential (and this is an important point because with most mixes there are elements that are not essential that should be cut out of the mix in order to leave more room for everything else.)

There are three basic things that I think about when trying to make the mix work: Frequency/EQ, Dynamics, & Panning.

Frequency/EQ

It's important not to have multiple elements of your song fighting for the same frequency space. When you have lots of "fighting" among instruments/vocals for the same frequency space it ends up making all of those elements harder to hear. It sort of turns it into "mush."

The first instinct of people is often to try to boost certain frequencies with EQ to try to get an instrument more clear. Sometimes people will solo an instrument and get sounding just right with EQ adjustments (often boosting some frequencies to get a "brighter"  or "fuller" sound) and this can make the instrument sound great on it's own.

The problem is that unless you're doing a solo instrumental recording, that instrument isn't going to be heard on it's own, it's going to be heard in the context of the full mix. And what usually happens in this scenario is that as soon as you bring in everything else the mix sounds bad.

The key is not to applying EQ adjustments when a track is solo'd because it doesn't matter how an instrument sounds on it's own, only how it sounds within the mix. What you really need to do is to get the instrument to sound good with all of the other parts going on at the same time. And usually the key here is not so much EQ boosts on an instrument mix but EQ cuts on the other instruments that are getting in the way.

Dynamics

I'm not a fan of over compression. I don't like the modern rock sound where everything is compressed to the point where it's just one continuous loud sound. I can't stand it actually.

But I don't mean to go off on a rant here, what I'm trying to talk about is the elements of dynamics and why you need to think about this when you're mixing a song.

I think it's important to first think about this when you're arranging a song. Why try to "create dynamics" in the mix when you could create it with the arrangement of the song in the first place?

What am I talking about? To put it simply I'm saying instead of having everything going on at once, you should have different parts come in at opportune times. If you listen to great recordings closely (and this is something you should be doing if you want to make your own mixes) you should notice how different elements come in at different times during the song. For example if you have a great guitar riff it doesn't go through the whole song, it comes in at certain times where it has the most impact and so that it doesn't get stale by just repeating endlessly.

But this is only one type of dynamics, what people usually think of when this term is used is compression. And yes, compression is important but too many people are abusing it and creating really lifeless mixes because of it.

Most instruments (including vocals) will sound better with compression applied and it's important to realize that compression is not some new thing unique to modern recording. For example, The Beatles used compression on virtually all of the parts of their songs (but they usually used it in a much less intrusive way than is usually the approach today.)

I really recommend starting off with a "less is more" approach with compression. When you start to hear it as an effect, that means you've probably gone too far. (I'm not totally against the idea of using compression as an effect, if it sounds interesting - that's cool - but the sort of over compressed "one volume" modern rock sound is truly awful and I hope it dies a horrible death as soon as possible.)

I also recommend using your ears. Presets and recipes are of very little use when applying compression. You must listen closely to how the settings are effecting your song and then adjust those settings accordingly. I do not want to go into the details of what "attack," "threshold," and "ratio" mean (at least not in this post) but you should really understand what these things mean and, most importantly, what adjusting these settings sounds like.

Panning

I look at panning as a way of creating a "space" for each element of my mix to live. This is especially important when you've got parts that have overlapping frequencies. You can help make those parts audible by panning them away from each other.

But, while I think panning is an important tool - I try not to rely on it. In fact, I like to get my mixes sounding clear when in mono before I start to think about panning for my stereo mix.

Overview

I want to go into a lot more detail on mixing in the future, with this post I am just giving a sort of overview of my approach towards mixing. I think the "takeaway" from this should be that applying adjustments while a track is solo'd is not a good idea and that you should think about cutting EQ from other instruments before boosting EQ on the target instrument. Clarity comes from removing what's not necessary from a mix.

I recently got REAPER POWER! from Amazon and I've been extremely impressed with it so far. It's helping me to see how much of REAPER's capabilities I've been missing (you can try out REAPER for free by the way, and a personal use license is only $60.)

I keep finding out about new things I can do with this software and new ways I can streamline my work flow so that I can work in a more efficient way. When you're trying to do something creative you want to be able to do all of the technical things as easily as possible.

If you're a REAPER user (and I don't think I'm ever going to go back to using any other DAW) then I definitely recommend getting this guide. It's great.

As you may have heard, The Beatles music is finally coming out digitally but not in the way most people assumed it would (as downloads on iTunes & AmazonMP3) but instead on this Apple (Beatles Apple, not Mac Apple) themed Beatles USB stick. Along with the 320kbps (high quality) mp3s, this USB stick also includes The Beatles entire remastered stereo catalog in 24bit FLAC and that's what interests me.

As you probably already know (since you're reading this blog on home recording) 24bit is the standard for digital mixing and mastering these days. It's not until the final stage that the music is exported to 16bit for CDs.

When The Beatles music was digitally remastered for the new box sets (and now this USB which is a digital version of The Beatles Stereo CD Box Set) it was done so in 192kHz 24bit quality but of course we ended up hearing it in 44kHz 16bit quality (on the CDs.) These CDs still sound fantastic to my ears, but certainly I'm curious to hear the music in it's full quality.

The 24bit FLAC files included on this Beatles USB are not full quality, they are only 44.1kHz but they are still the highest quality versions of these remasters now available because they are 24bit rather than the 16bit that is on CDs.

There's a chance that The Beatles will eventually go the Blu-Ray route like Neil Young's Archives and include the full 192kHz 24bit files for our listening pleasure, but for now The Beatles USB represents the audiophile peak for The Beatles stereo catalog.

I recently purchased my first Floyd Rose style guitar and at first I was a bit lost as to how to tune it. I actually got a bit frustrated and regretted my purchase of it at first. But after some research and some trial & error I figured it out and I'm now very pleased with the guitar (it's a Jackson.)

It seems like a good idea to share what I've learned about how to tune a Floyd Rose guitar what follows are some step by step directions on tuning such a guitar as the steps are a bit different than with a "normal" guitar.

1. Make sure all of the fine tuning screws are about half way up (so that you can adjust either way if you need to.)

2. Loosen (unlock) the nut.

3. Use the tuning keys to tune the strings (I recommend tuning them slightly sharp as they tend to go a bit flat at first.) There's a specific way you should tune the strings. Start with the low (bass) E then go to the high (treble) E then go to the B then the A then the G and then finally the D. Then you start again at the low E and continue this process until it's staying in tune.

This will take awhile at first and you need to have some patience. But it's worth it in the long run so stick with it.

4. Once you've got it staying pretty well in tune you should tighten the nut (lock it.) Don't screw it closed too tight.

5. Fine tune with the fine tune screws. This is how you'll be tuning the guitar from now on unless it goes very far out of tune or you have to restring (in which case you'll have to start this process over again.) The big positive is that Floyd Rose guitars tend to stay in tune more so than others do once you get them set. That's what I've been experiencing with mine.

Changing The Strings

Speaking of changing the strings. You should change them one at a time. Because of the way you string a Floyd Rose guitar, that's easier to do with other guitars. If you try to change them all at once you could run into some irritating problems with the bridge.

Pianoteq is a different kind of piano sampler because it's not actually a piano sampler at all. Instead it's a piano "modeler." I don't know exactly what that means technically but what I do know is that it sounds more realistic than samplers do to my ears and it also takes up a lot less space on the computer!

On top of the very realistic sound that you can get with this VST instrument, there's also the great variety of ways that you can adjust the sound (you can change the tuning, the mic position, you can choose from a large variety of different pianos.)

But what you really want to hear is an example of what it sounds like. That's why I'm including Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" as played by Pianoteq below. I've actually only got Pianoteq 2.3 (Pianoteq 3 is the latest version and it's what's available now) and I still think it sounds amazing. In fact, I think it sounds so good that I haven't bothered upgrading to Pianoteq 3 even though it's supposed to be even better.

***EDIT***

Due to a bogus copyright claim by WMG, the PianoTeq version of "Moonlight Sonata" was taken down by YouTube. Apparently it sounded so realistic that they thought it was actually a recording of a pianist playing "Moonlight Sonata" that they have under copyright. I think that's actually pretty good proof of how great PianoTeq sounds.

Obviously the song itself (being a Beethoven composition that is about 200 years old) is not under copyright, so the only explanation is that they thought the recording itself was under their copyright. Of course this wasn't actually a recording at all. It was the PianoTeq software "playing" the song.

***END EDIT***

I recommend the SL-990 weighted MIDI keyboard to take full advantage of the power of this piano modeler software. A huge part of what makes Pianoteq sound so real is that there's basically an unlimited amount of variety in the velocity (which is different from samplers which have a limited variety as far as velocity goes) and of course you need a weighted keyboard to take advantage of that aspect. The SL-990 is what I use and I love it.