Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards figuring out my home studio piano

I didn't see this specific topic, but I'm sure it's been addressed... my studio keyboard is a Motif ES8. It's been so long since I bought it and compared it with other boards that I don't know where it ranks. However, I've gotten pretty accustomed to it. When I'm a hired player for sessions and play both acoustic grand and the motif, it's an easy transition - probably because I'm never using an acoustic piano sound on the motif in outside studios.

My studio is another matter. I'm finally, after all these years, learning more about what will make me happy with my acoustic piano sequencing and recording. I use Synthogy's Ivory - and it's a constant battle to find the right parameters that will make the playing the most realistic, but also translate into what I need to hear on the tune or project in question.

Not being a purist, I had used the Yamaha sample for years,as it resembled the bright Yamahas I usually encounter in outside studios; a couple years back I migrated to the German for the majority of my playing, the impetus being a classically trained guy who teaches at a college nearby who searched for hours to find the sound and feel he liked best, and I like his choice of the German as a starting point.

I'm no expert but I've got some ideas and I like to experiment...

One thing that I think matters is what's between Ivory's out put and the end result. Think of what Ivory sends as being like the raw feed from the microphone of a mic'd acoustic grand. No recording engineer would simply copy that to a CD and call it "done".

So the rest of your channel strip maters. There are some very good software rervbs now that model the interiors of well known venues or even let you create your own rooms and same with EQ and compression. The effects should be subtle but to get it right I think people need to think about what they'd do with an acoustic piano. So apply that same thinking to Ivory. And use the SAME quality signal chain.

This almost certainly means running Ivory as a plug-in inside a DAW and likely also some other plug-in 3rd party compressors or convolution reverbs in the same DAW

And of course tell Ivory to send a "dry" signal from an appropriate mic perspective.

My equipment is not so high-end but I've been experimenting with e-piano sounds using the above kind of thinking. I though that back in the day, people likely connected their Rhodes or CP80 pianos to Fender amps and maybe put in a rack mount effects box or a guitar pedal in the chain. So I routed the output of an software EP to real hardware boxes and finally a real Fender amp and "WOW" it sounds real. capturing to a WAV file and then playing through studio monitor sucks the life out of the sound.

So if you want Ivory to sound like a professionally recorded acoustic piano, use the same equipment as you's used on the acoustic.

*many months later!*
I have a recording studio with a Pro Tools system - so I use Ivory as a plug-in in P.T., and it's quite nice. Regarding your statement "... tell Ivory to send a "dry" signal from an appropriate mic perspective" I would say typically that's how I would do it, but there are occasions the internal verbs provided work peachily. But often I use Trillium Labs TL Space when I want a warmer, concert venue or recital hall sound, and it's a great verb.

And Ivory has a serious boatload of tweakable paramters, but relating to touch and sound, the same as any high end sample set would have these days.

I forgot the most important element of all - an engineer who is experienced at mixing. One in particular I work from time to time seems to specialize in classical, so he knows some tricks to make it sound like it was recorded in a recital hall as opposed to a small room in a project studio!

FWIW I'm *still* tweaking the sound and response of my virtual piano. I suppose it will be a life-long endeavor....sigh.....