Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Acoustic vs digi (software) solo recording debate (again...)

I agree on that point, but one of the sound guys even said "then you might as well switch these midi buttons with your computer". Of course, I think that even the best tech/music expert would have terrible hard time to replicate the stuff you get with playing digital piano keyboard to midi switching with computer, but theoreticaly it's possible, or isn't it ?

At the moment I'll go through recorded stuff from studio and edit some, if there's something good will use it on the album, and the rest will come from software, because ,I mean, when I was in studio, especially in winter time, it takes a while till you manage to get your fingers into good condition to be able to play the best of your ability. And it's all time-consuming. One of the things that I like about recording at home is that you can do it when you want. on 5am in the morning, 18:00 afternoon or at midnight if wish so.

To add: Just tried out Pianoteq trial version and it doesn't sound too good to me so far. But it might be something to do with velocity (key levels). I use Roland FP7F as a MIDI controler and of course it offers very broad range on how to change keys from super light to super heavy.

Usually so far when played / recorded via FP7F inbuilt, I have used Medium setting from +5 to +7, but it might not work so well in this situation when using FP7F just as MIDI controller.

Does anybody have advice in this regard also? What's the optimal setting to get the most natural and objective key touch when using FP7F as MIDI controller? Thanks again.

Yeah, that's a common first experience, unfortunately. PianoTeq is a work in progress...



Getting a good velocity curve can be a tricky and slightly controversial endeavor. I've seen a lot of differently shaped curves for the same pianos and software. As a pianist, it's pretty easy to adjust to different curves, which makes it hard to determine whether we like one curve better than another. Playing with a particular curve you get used to it and then you start to prefer it.

Personally, I just go with nice smooth curves. Basically I bow the curve outward or inward. That's it. I've seen a number of curves that are kind of S-shaped. I never cared for them, personally. At least, not with my piano.

Well, at the moment I change the velocity in FP7F manual where it is available to go from fixed, easy, medium and heavy setting (from easy to heavy it's from -10 to +10).

I don't know about velocity curves. Can I change that in FP7F or in Pianoteq / other software?

Digital pianos typically have coarse velocity curves like you just described (hard/medium/light, etc.). VST's like PianoTeq typically have finer grained control. That is, they have a function in them that maps from the velocity your piano sends to the velocity you want triggered. You can pretty much map it however you want.

Hmm, does it mean that I can , for example, configure my velocity on the keyboard how I feel the best and then change the actual sound velocity in VST so that in result I have key touch as I like and also the sound I like?

Not sure exactly what you are getting at. The velocity curve on the piano controls the relationship between the speed at which the key is pressed and the velocity sent to the software. The velocity curve in the software remaps the incoming velocities to different velocities if you want. In addition to the velocity curve, there's a dial in Vintage D (and probably other VST's) called "dynamic" that I assume stretches or compresses the mapping from incoming velocity to used velocity.

It almost sounds like you want to configure the velocities and therefore volume on your hardware (or software) and then additionally remap the timbre so it starts to get bite at a different velocity. A couple of VST's have some rough controls to do this. For example, in Vintage D there is a dial called "tone" where you can set the color from soft to hard. What this does is remap the velocity at which each timbre layer is played without changing the corresponding volume. It's kind of like revoicing the piano. Between the velocity curve and tone dial you can pretty much get the response you want if you put a little effort into it.

Hmm, well, yeah, but changing key touch (velocity) doesn't just change the keys from lighter to harder, it also changes sound - when you go to harder, it get's more muddy than ,for instance, light touch which is too sparkling, then the medium might be the middle ground, but in key-wise at least in FP7F it's a bit too light at medium 0 setting.
The thing is that I'm not too keen on tweaking around the settings, I would like to not over complicate and get the optimal result without too much tech-savy things to do... So , my main point is if there's some sort of objective way to tell more or less if your setting is like acoustic piano, because I wouldn't also want to end up with too messed up settings. Thanks for help so far! And I'll check out velocity curve on Pianoteq demo.