In this excerpt from  Episode 2 of “Greg Wells Start to Finish,” Greg demonstrates how he uses two dynamics plugins to control a piano part. His choice of compressor isn’t surprising but to many his choice of limiter might be.

Greg starts by listening to his piano track and doing a few minor edits to clean it up. But the main task we see him doing is reducing the dynamic range of the piano. He says the part he played was quite dynamic, and the piano he was playing was on the punchy side. As a result, there are a lot of loud peaks.

He doesn't want to get rid of all the dynamics, but he wants to control them, so they sound good in speakers. He uses the Focusrite d3 compressor/limiter plug-in on the track to shave off the peaks of the loud, punchy chords. It will still sound like he played aggressively, but the peaks won't be jumping out.

Next, he inserts the UAD Neve 33609 compressor plug-in. He says it's incredible on any source. He tells the story of many years ago when he was working with producer Joe Ciccarelli, where Joe showed him how good the 33609 sounds on piano. He's never forgotten that.

To find out more about this technique visit the Puremix Blog where you can find more detail and audio examples.

Start to Finish: Greg Wells - Episode 2 - Recording The Piano

Now that Greg Wells & Bryce Drew have solidified the structure of the song "Lucky Number", which they finished writing in Episode 1, it's time to work on the production. To start off, Greg has decided to build the track around a scratch piano.

In this video, watch as Greg:

• Works with Bryce to determine the proper tempo for the song

• Explains why nothing is ever truly “scratch.”

• Picks out piano microphones

• Performs the song on a beautiful Steinway B 7’ Grand Piano at Sunset Sound

• Tracks and edits the piano

• Breaks down his approach to piano compression

Equipment & Software

• Focusrite d3 Compressor

• UAD Neve 33609

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