What do people add to their digital piano recording to improve the sound? I’ve heard people on YouTube and it sounds like they add something to their sounds but not sure what…
Every keyboard/piano sounds different…
How are you recording? Generally, you should be using a direct connection from line-out or headphone-out to line-in on a soundcard or interface. (A microphone input is not “correct” for a line-level or headphone-level signal.)
Is there something specifically wrong with the sound (noise or distortion) or do you just want to enhance it? If you just want to enhance the sound, try a little reverb.
How are you recording?
Exactly. This is not a simple problem. If your keyboard is MIDI, you’re really recording the MIDI piano in the computer, not the keyboard. If you connect a MIDI keyboard to three different computers, you could get three different piano sounds.
If you are recording the keyboard Line-Out or Headphone Out (the way I do it), then most of the ambience and effects are already added. Concert Grand, Honky-Tonk, etc. My keyboard has doubling, sound over, harmony, etc.
But yes, the most natural sounding effect for a piano performance would be echo/reverb to increase the size of the performance space. Export the live performance as a WAV backup file before you do anything to it. We can’t take effects out of a sound file later. Once you mess it up. that’s the end without those backups files. Never do production in MP3, either.
You should be listening on a good sound system or top quality headphones when you adjust this. There’s nothing like trashing your performance by accident and you can’t hear it.
Koz
I want to enhance the sound and I’m recording directly from my digital piano with USB stick.
I’m recording directly from my digital piano with USB stick.
And that gives you a WAV or MP3 file?
Try the Reverb effect. There are LOTS of settings so try some of the presets first (Manage → Factory Presets…). And there are LOTS of 3rd-party reverb plug-ins although some are not free and some don’t work with Audacity.
Reverberation is the reflected sound that makes a concert hall sound so good. It’s like echo (AKA “delay”) but with multiple-different short-delays so you don’t hear a clear-distinct echo.
If it’s a MIDI (MID) file you can get a DAW/MIDI application and a nice Steinway Grand Piano (or other) [u]virtual instrument[/u] plug-in. And, you can still add some reverb if it’s not included on the sound of the virtual instrument.
Hi, I have made some attempts to record my music (I do it with Kawai ES110) and I completely don’t like the recorded sound. It is not even close to the sound that I hear while playing. Probably the core problem is the built-in sound recorder, but it has no USB port, so I don’t know any other way to record the sound. Can you please recommend any plugins, programs, or resources to read some theory about recording sounds?
How are you doing that? How is the keyboard connected to the computer?
The ES110 does not have speakers, so how do you hear it?