Topic: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

Can anyone suggest a starting preset and then EQ to get a really rocking 50's 60's rock and roll piano?

Thanks

PS: Using Pianoteq 6 Stage

Last edited by pax-eterna (19-10-2017 03:50)

Re: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

Wow, well over 50 views and no-one has a clue about this style of piano? Must be all 20 year olds!

Re: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

As a 64 year old contributor to this forum, I offer (rather sarcastically) the following way to make a piano sound like the 50's and 60's sound you desire:

Turn DOWN the dynamic range to only about 10dB.  Yes, you heard me right!!  Please don't kill the messenger, but there is essentially zero dynamic range to vintage rock pianos!  But they do cut through a mix this way!

Before you chastise me for being an old guy, please DO try this, and you will find that it works!  Actually, it sounds horrible to my ears, but then, pianos of 50's and 60's rock sound horrible to my ears!

Cheers,

Joe

Re: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

Thanks Joe, well sarcasm aside haha! I'll give that a go. I am 60 myself, but come from a totally standard piano playing background, never played R+R before and none of the pianos in PT6 (or 5 for that matter) seem to be quite right. Well going on the demos I have been given haha!

Just thought I'd ask on the forum for folks who ARE experienced in this form. As you can see from my posts I don't ask a lot, even though I have had PT for several years now. I have found the presets pretty much satisfactory.
Thanks again for your reply

Last edited by pax-eterna (20-10-2017 00:25)

Re: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

Hello Mr. Pax,

Are there any particular recordings of 50's and 60's Rock piano you would like to emulate?  If you listen to Little Richard or Jerry Lee Lewis you will hear extremely bright sounding pianos with essentially zero dynamic range, even when they are spanking or kicking the keys!  Whenever you hear a bright sounding piano that cuts through a mix, you can rest assured the sound has been compressed like nobody's business.  At the same time, even though these artists are killing the piano, the pianos are never too loud (i.e., the pianos don't dominate the mix).  All of these traits can be duplicated by killing the dynamic range (setting the slider to 10dB or less) in Pianoteq.

Cheers,

Joe

Re: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

Cool...should I also run a compressor over the final mix out?

Re: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

pax-eterna wrote:

Wow, well over 50 views and no-one has a clue about this style of piano? Must be all 20 year olds!

You really didn’t define what you wanted, what a “50’s or 60’s rock and roll piano” was (in your imagination), or specify any particular recording anyone could refer to to derive an idea of the sound you were seeking, so you can’t expect many or very good or specific answers.

Some possibilities- -
As Joe mentioned, low dynamic range. Also, potentially, harder hammers, especially the mezzo range, Equalizer presets “vintage,” “radio” or “tube,” or a custom setting of your own, wider unison width (higher value on slider), an instrument preset that already sounds fairly appropriate (like several of the  U2 instrument presets), moving the condition slider from “Mint” to more worn, using the EQU3 parametric equalizer in the Effects section, the parabola of which can be widened or narrowed with a right-click to access the setting, etc.

If you can’t find a quick and easy answer from someone else, you can dedicate some of your own time and imagination to exploring the possibilities in order to achieve your goal.

Last edited by Stephen_Doonan (20-10-2017 14:24)
--
Linux, Pianoteq Pro, Organteq

Re: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

pax-eterna wrote:

Cool...should I also run a compressor over the final mix out?

Regarding a compressor over the final mix:  The Dynamic Range slider in Pianoteq is essentially a compressor when you set it to such low values as I am recommending.  Therefore, if you were to use another compressor -- on top of this compressor -- you would run the risk of "pumping", an artifact of excessive compression where the already-compressed piano part suddenly gets too soft, all at once, and then too loud all at once.

Joe

Last edited by jcfelice88keys (20-10-2017 14:38)

Re: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

Stephen_Doonan wrote:

You really didn’t define what you wanted, what a “50’s or 60’s rock and roll piano” was (in your imagination), or specify any particular recording anyone could refer to to derive an idea of the sound you were seeking, so you can’t expect many or very good or specific answers.

Some possibilities- -
As Joe mentioned, low dynamic range. Also, potentially, harder hammers, especially the mezzo range, Equalizer presets “vintage,” “radio” or “tube,” or a custom setting of your own, wider unison width (higher value on slider), an instrument preset that already sounds fairly appropriate (like several of the  U2 instrument presets), moving the condition slider from “Mint” to more worn, using the EQU3 parametric equalizer in the Effects section, the parabola of which can be widened or narrowed with a right-click to access the setting, etc.

If you can’t find a quick and easy answer from someone else, you can dedicate some of your own time and imagination to exploring the possibilities in order to achieve your goal.

Well, thanks...I am in three bands at the mo, plus a solo show thingso time is something I don't have a lot of. I also need to program up synth/string/other parts and at the moment am working on (for all the projects I am in) around 500 songs. The R+R band thing is a new one so I was merely looking to try and shave some time off.

But thanks for the inof in your post, it was useful.

Re: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

Does this work on any piano? I personally use the YC5 because of it's nice bright timbre. Steinway will do as well. Traditionally this kind of music is being played on Yamaha pianos (C7, U3), although I heard some other promising Nord and Pianoteq examples. I'm speculating for years now, if the Kawai sound and Rock and Roll go together. I've never heard of anybody, playing RR on a Blüthner piano or something similar.

Otis

U4, YC5, D4, K2, Pianoteq Standard 5.8.1, Win7 x64
Dell Latitude, Intel Core i5 2520M
CPU@2.50 GHz

Re: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

Thanks Otis, I don't have the Yammie - got the Steinway D, but the presets in it are very similar to PT5, albeit they play a bit better.

Might have to investigate getting the Yammie (I assume that is what the YC5 is?) haha!

Re: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

Move the condition slider on the YC5 to the right. When you start hearing Jerry Lee or Little Richard you're there. The dominating pianos in those days were Baldwin, Steinway and Yamaha. I think they're on most records that I've listened to. There is much more to it, like the hardness of the hammers, the unison width and so on. I have to try a couple things myself. The condition slider is a good starting point though.

Otis

U4, YC5, D4, K2, Pianoteq Standard 5.8.1, Win7 x64
Dell Latitude, Intel Core i5 2520M
CPU@2.50 GHz

Re: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

Cool, I'll try the demo with that setting!

Re: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

Sometimes I have the feeling that the sliders are producing a good result, when they are somewhere in the middle. Underneath the middle , in the middle and right above the middle. A low dynamic range of 10 dB won't work for me, because it looses a lot of richness in the sound. The Unison width slider is almost all the way up to the right side, but that's the only one.

Here are my settings:

Hammer hardness:
Piano: 0.7
Mezzo: 0.95
Forte: 1.18

Dynamics: 37 dB

Unison width : 7.00

Condition: 0.68

I do have Delay, Comp and Reverb (Medium Hall) activated. It just says Preset, but it doesn't say which one.

This sound works for me and maybe I could finetune it a little bit more. I also could fumble around forever on this, but I wanna play the piano and not get lost in endless configurations. Does anybody know how I can save this on an USB stick?

Otis

U4, YC5, D4, K2, Pianoteq Standard 5.8.1, Win7 x64
Dell Latitude, Intel Core i5 2520M
CPU@2.50 GHz

Re: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

I had the Equalizer (Presence) activated and turned it off now. Sounds a lot better.

U4, YC5, D4, K2, Pianoteq Standard 5.8.1, Win7 x64
Dell Latitude, Intel Core i5 2520M
CPU@2.50 GHz

Re: 50's 60's rock and roll piano EQ?

Ha!  Not exactly a rockin' 50's piece but I like the 50's vibe from the U4 upright. This is just a tweak of the condition slider from the recording studio preset.
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lir0VtYDYVM
-Perry-