How to add body to a piano chord without muddying it up?

10 hours ago, SSC said:

As for everything else being worthless? Yeah, stuff like the nebulous terminology used when trying to describe something that isn't really concrete. I think it's dumb to say "this chord sounds muddy." What the hell is "muddy"???? It could be that the chord is lacking certain frequencies, that some notes are less present than others, that there's other stuff going on that overshadow it, and so on. I think it's important to be as precise as possible when talking about music, specially something that has to do with timbre or how things can be perceived.

 

I know the context is that chords played on the bass register of a piano have less definition due to the lack of mid/high frequencies (you can get a lot more technical if you want, but a good experiment is grabbing a spectral analyzer and playing chords on the piano in different registers and seeing visually which harmonics are stronger in each register. Fascinating stuff.)  Yeah, but this isn't automatically a bad or a good thing. It's a characteristic of those chords in that instrument in that register. However, OP isn't sure that "muddy" means that, but they're assuming it does and going from there because it's what made sense to them.

 

Dead on. It's the gall I have with music critics too - trying to describe what music sounds like verbally. It doesn't work except at a gross metaphorical level which, I suppose, we have to make do with, relying on some common understanding of the words used.

If something doesn't sound right it's up to the composer to find out why. It can be the chord layout; can also be the instrument, performer, dynamic level and on. Experiment until getting the desired sound. 

6 hours ago, Quinn said:

Experiment until getting the desired sound. 

YES, 100x YES.