Diki's right. Try adjusting your filters. Opening up the cutoff a lot of times makes a huge difference in the sound. If you want a warmer.., and more darker type of piano go in the - direction, but if you need to brighten the sound up a bit go in the + direction. You can also tap the high end a bit after adjusting the cutoff by moving the reso. in the + direction..., but be careful there as going too far will make the sound very metallic.

If you want to bring out the middle register too..., after making filter adjustments..., EQ the patch (obviously using at the minimal a 3-band) Also consider the speaker system of the unit you're using. It's not at all uncommon to have TWO versions of the same sound. One edited for internal speaker play, and the other tweeked for use with outboard speakers.

Good Luck.

I have to agree that the weakest sound on any arranger is the piano sound. The way I've always looked at it is that compared to all of the things an arranger does, I can tweak and learn how to live with the piano sound. There's no way in hell at this point in my career that I'n going to haul in another board for a better piano sound. Enough said.

Ciao,

Joe

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Songman55
Joe Ayala

Excactly Joe, 2 KB lugging not me ....on top of that all the
Hub Bub about sounds & their little nuances means nothing when they are all together & lost in the style mix ........recording seperatly is a whole different story.....

Sorry, guys... obligatory fanboy spew about to appear , but...

That's the reason I haul the G70 around. Sure, I'd LOVE a nice 26 lb. load-in! But first, the G70 piano is surpassed by very little, including several VSTi's I've tried, latency is undetectable (faster than any computer system I've used - I CAN hear and feel about 3-2 ms difference in latency, from messing with my sound card a lot, and that hardware responsiveness is tough to achieve on even the latest, greatest CPU's), and the attached keyboard is the best compromise between full piano and full organ available.

If it comes in a 45 lb. package, so be it. I wouldn't compromise EITHER of those features to save even 10 lb. of weight.

Utterly convincing piano, a decent B3 emulation (better than most), and a keyboard you can use for BOTH are my BASIC 'must have's' before any other consideration even matters.

That kind of narrows the field, IMO....

On my S900, I usually turn the brightness on the filter down to 52...takes the harder edge off a bit, and works real nice for jazz ballads.


Ian

I agree with Diki... IMO the best onboard arranger piano preset I've heard is from the G-70... The G-70's piano shares it's beautiful sound from the Fantom X's piano. So you're getting the piano from one of their top synths. You want to FEEL and HEAR a great piano patch.. Play the X8.., those weighted keys and that sound were a match made in heaven.

Roland's also trickling this down to the lower line too. That new GW-8 is supposed to have some great piano patches as it's using a sound set based on the Fantom/SonicCell.

I created a great piano voice just over a year ago, but alas, it's a Yamaha voice so it won't be of any use for Korg and Roland users. You can find it at www.psrtutorial.com You can probably do the same thing on Korg and Roland arrangers, but it does take a fair amount of time.

Cheers,

Gary

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Travlin' Easy

The piano voice you made is excellent Gary...I have passed it on to many of my clients...thank you.

Ian

Don, try the Multi FX #7..Enhancer...Start with classic piano and use enhancer...I think this is what you are wanting..

I wouldn't suggest that though. You shoudn't have to rely soley on the MFX to clean up a piano sound--although SOMETIMES sloppy preset effects settings can kill a sound. I would say most of the time all it takes is minute adjustments to the filters and sometimes a few changes to the ADSR. The MFX shouldn't be used as the MAIN edit for the sound IMO. I think the sound should be edited DRY first..., then in the end add that final touch by coloring it a bit with MFX if you choose.

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 09-11-2008).]