4 Quick Ways to Make Recorded Keyboards Sound Better

Many home producers have problems recording and mixing keyboards. These can be tough issues to tackle, because keyboards can sound like pretty much anything, so there's no hard and fast rules when it comes to mixing and recording keyboards at home. However, there are a few general tips that you can keep in mind that will help you make your recorded keyboards sound more natural and real.

Plug the keyboard through an amplifier. Many home producers plug their keyboards straight into their computers or recording rigs and press record. Hey, that's fine if you've got a good, natural sounding keyboard, as many of you undoubtedly do.

However, if your keyboard sounds a little foreign and a little strange, you can often remedy the problem by putting it through a guitar or bass amp and miking that signal. It can make the keyboard sound more "live" and allow it to mix with the other instruments. Give it a shot the next time your home recorded keyboards aren't sounding too great.

Keep frequencies in mind. One of the easiest mistakes to make when putting keyboards into your recording is putting a whole bunch of them into your song, thereby muddying up the sound. It's fun to repeatedly overdub keyboards, but it can sound bad if you don't think about the frequency range of the other instruments.

Let's put it another way. Your song is a room, where higher frequency sounds are up towards the top of the room and lower frequency sounds are on the floor. Keyboards can sit anywhere in the room, depending on the type of keyboard, but if they're in the same place as a bass or a guitar, you'll just hear muddiness instead of the distinct sound of either instrument. Try to keep this in mind as you record and mix your keyboards.

Pan it . When home recording keyboards, you can also make the mistake of forgetting that you're recording in stereo. Back to our room analogy: panning sets things to the right or left in a room.

If you were to go to a gig with your band, you wouldn't set the drums up behind the guitar amp and put the keyboards in front of the bassist, would you? No, that'd be dumb--you'd be unable to hear something well. In your recordings, you need to provide some separation, especially for home recorded keyboards that are doing melody or backing lines.

For some reason, most producers pan their keyboards to the left. Not all the way, just 40% or so. If you have multiple keyboards, you'll probably want them on opposite sides of the stereo field, but above all else be sure to keep your panning in mind when you record or you'll have a mess on your hands.

A touch--not a ton--of delay effects. Delay effects can be great for making a keyboard sit well in a mix, but the key is to not overdo it. Use a very light delay in most songs. Resist the urge to go all Pink Floyd on your tune--it's almost always unnecessary.

You can also add some delay, flange, or other delay-based effects if you'd like, as these can make a keyboard sound wider, more distinct, or cause it to hit a wider range of frequencies. Whatever you put on the track, have a reason for putting it there. Try to time your delay effects to the song, too. Just take 60,000 (the number of milliseconds in a minute) and divide it by the BPM of the song, then keep dividing by 2 for smaller and smaller effects.

This will make the delay effects sound better on a keyboard, and they'll be tailored to your song--a very professional effect.

Do you have any other tips for making recorded keyboards sound better? Post in our comments section below.