Your Piano Method?

[Warren Beck]

Hello.

Something you may wish to explore are the new Yamaha Avant grand pianos. They are just out and lovely. reasonably priced about $25000 for the grand and I think $1500 for the up-right. Research them on Yamaha's site for further details. BUT for their release in Canada my facility was one of the three chosen to partner with Yamaha for this event (the other two being in Vancouver and Montreal). Many artists are (Yamaha rep tells us this) choosing these units for their feel of a true acoustic grand, the action is identical to an acoustic grand, the sound is very good (8 speakers to get the sound out), and the cabinet vibrates to give the player feedback. Recording it is simple (I had to do this for 2 straight weeks). set up the 414's and the 4006's and it works exceptionally well. The units do not take up huge room, and are affordable.

Regards,

[hearingdouble]

For chords in the back of a mix, I think it would be hard to tell the difference. But anything forefront, or indeed with any kind of intricate fingering / significant variations in dynamics, samplers just don't cut it. (Yet. Ask again in 10 years time!). The main issue I think is to do with how the overall piano sound comes together: you can sample each note as many times as you want, but on a real piano the various sympathetic vibrations mean that (say) a C sounds quite different if played on its own vs. while other notes are being held down. As far as I'm aware, no sampler to date has a sophisticated system of sympathetic resonance. At the risk of opening a can of worms with my choice of metaphor, the 'summing' of various notes by the body, board and strings of a piano sound very different from individual note samples played back simultaneously.

If you can't afford a piano in your studio, but have a track with a mission critical piano part, have you thought about hiring? If you have some kind of mobile recording rig, and you live near a university or a decent school with a reasonable music faculty/department, chances are they'll have at least one decent piano, well tuned and kept in an ambient recital room. As someone's mentioned above, it doesn't have to be a Steinway or a Yamaha (or a Bosendorfer or a Bechstein...). A decently sized, well-tuned grand piano of any make, played by a good player, will not be the weakest link in your recording chain.

[sage691]

Originally Posted by spicemix

Badly recorded real piano is all too common...as opposed to a well-recorded bad piano...and I'd probably rather have samples in that case.

Well, I'd probably much rather hear a "bad recording" of a really great player on a real piano than some perfectly polished sounding, trite, non-expressive cheesy 3 chord pop performance of an emulation any day of the week. I think not too many of you guys on here must be really serious piano players; because, if you were, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

Once again, you cannot forget about the PLAYER and the intimate relationship between the way an acoustic piano "feels" to him/her, and how that will seriously affect the performance. Yes, I understand there are total dog pianos out there with sticking keys, buzzing sounds, etc. -- and that should have been thrown in a landfill long ago. But there are upright pianos in decent playing condition that can be scored for under $2000, and that I would take anyday over any sample library out there.

But I agree that if all you want the piano to do is "back up" other instruments in the mix, then for sure samples might even sound better. But why do you even need expensive sample libraries of Stienways or Bosedorfers for this ? Any cheesy piano sample from a casio keyboard will basically achieve the same thing, and may even sound better than the expensive libraries.

[12ax7]

Try THIS:



With VST !

[joeq]

I think not too many of you guys on here must be really serious piano players; because, if you were, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

I agree 100%. And I'm a drummer!

There is a difference between a Keyboard player who wants a piano sound and a Pianist who wants a piano.

At a studio where I engineer we have a lovely Yamaha C7. It is the centerpiece of that studio's business. We get a lot of jazz, blues and of course, classical which would all be compromised by a digital piano. It is true that these instruments 'bring their own bread' - though in today's market paying off an investment of that size will take some time.

We recently worked with an amazing artist doing a solo blues piano project. He brought along his digital piano which he intended to use on a couple of tunes for 'variety'.

Needless to say, it stayed in its case for the entire week.

Before one session we listened to a CD that had a sampled piano, (in a band mix) and it sounded very nice and almost believable, but when we turned on the mics for the first time that day and heard the Yamaha again...

It's not snobbery or elitism, it's just a fact of life. Not everybody needs a real piano, but for those that do...