Mixing Piano - Mono To Stereo, Thinking OUTSIDE The Box

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[ProclaimJesus]

This is amazing! Thank you. Really helped

[billpomerleau]

That's a wild technique. Totally brought all the bottom and warmth up that you'd hear in a real stereo capture. Thanks Matt.

[kelvinfunkner]

love the "darkness" it adds to the track too....really fits the emotion of the song....excellent call and a complete surprise to me...I don't think I would have ever thought of trying that!

[SideEffectsZg]

Hi Matt! Another fantastic tip! Been following your channel for a while, thank you for all the great content!

On this topic, I recently came up with a technique for making stereo information out of a mono raw track that I've been using quite a bit. It involves using deliberate comb filtering and doing the opposite comb filter on each side. The way I do it is I set up a very short digital delay with 0% feedback. That will create a comb filtering effect canceling some frequencies out and usually sound worse than what you started with. However, I fish around for a delay time that doesn't sound too bad on the source material. I'll put the delay on a separate aux labeled widener. Then I'll send the original track into the left side of the widener track and into the right side I'll send the same original track with inverted polarity. What that does is it filters out a completely different set of frequencies than it did on the left side and makes for a very wide sounding image. You can control the stereo spread of the effect with the delay return fader. What I find great about this approach is that you don't really notice the nasty comb filtering that much because all the frequencies that were cut on the left side were boosted on the right and vice versa. It keeps the volume of the instrument consistent and only affects the spread. Also, you don't get the precedence panning effect! Aaaand, if you combine the mix into mono, the delay effect cancels itself out since the sides are out of phase with each other and you're left just with your dry mono channel. So, it's also perfectly mono compatible unlike many pseudo stereo techniques which make the track sound horrible in mono (well, not Matt's octave trick - that's also why it's genius).

[themotownboy]

Great, unique idea! I just hit the "Subscribe" button!

[witnessthelightmusic]

Genius as always!!! Thanks Weiss ... I'll take your advice!!

[DJ]

these were REALLY good ideas for stereo creation, especially the EQ one. you rock dude thanks

[RedSpark_]

That sounds much more realistic! I imagine it folds down to mono well too. I've been using short ambience/room/early reflection reverbs instead, but that does change the sound in a way that might not be suitable for everything.

[mcsweet]

Hey Matt Thanks For the Video. What`s your opinion on using musical timing in general and specifically for compressor attack and release. I use a Music Calculators then A/B to get a feel of what it does to the groove of the Song

[mrdoti]

Sorry, I’m totally in the car driving watching this, probably not the safest idea, but I just got to the part where you’re talking about using the delay and it being louder on the left no matter what you do. I thought I noticed it yesterday, watching your previous video And I noticed that on the delay the left was stuck at 250 ms and you were adjusting the right just like you did in this video. I was a little confused because I figured the left would be at 0 ms and the right would range between five and more milliseconds…. Again I apologize because I’m currently driving in traffic so this was sort of just a quick ramble. I’ll look back at it and take a closer look when I’m off the road.