Ultimate piano for Mainstage

Question

Level 1

14 points

Ultimate piano for Mainstage

I'm a working keyboard player in the process of a gradual transition to Mainstage. I'm using MS2 live for gigs that involve a lot of new programming, but still using a hardware rig for piano/rhodes/organ work.

One area where I'm still confounded with Mainstage is getting a really satisfying piano sound. My standard is a Yamaha S90 - I like it, though I think it should be possible to do better.

When using Mainstage, I'm using the EXS24 Steinway, but there are two basic problems:

1) getting the gain structure right is difficult. It's tricky to get the channel strip and master levels set so that it's a strong signal but never clips. My Apogee Duet is actually part of the problem, because its output level control is pre-D/A conversion (which means that turning it up can result in D/A clipping)

2) gain issues aside, nothing in the EXS24 library is as satisfying to play as the Yamaha S90's premium piano voice (YMMV). Partly that's the sound, but it's also the "responsiveness" issues - velocity sensitivity and overall volume range based on touch.

Does anybody have tips on how to get a good "piano player" experience from a piano hosted in Mainstage?

OK, more caveats. I have Native Instruments Komplete, and I've experimented with using Akoustic Piano in Mainstage. I have circumstantially found that Mainstage concerts with Akoustic instances tend to behave badly - which I attribute to Akoustic being too much of a CPU and resource hog to "play well with other virtual instruments."

Can anybody share an experience with finding a really satisfactory piano sound to host in Mainstage? (without destabilizing other patches in the same concert)

Thanks,
John

Macbook core 2 duo, 4GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Nov 1, 2009 9:43 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 1, 2009 5:03 PM in response to jazzalactic

Personally, I don't find the pianos in MainStage/Logic to be very inspiring. They seem pretty dull to me for rock/pop/bright jazz use. I use the Yamaha grand from Ivory. To me, it's the best piano ever...nothing else comes close...and pretty similar to the S90.

I've only used it on a gig a couple of times so far, but it seems to work great. I even use it from the internal hard disk with no problems. I think I took the Bright Rock preset and turned off the release samples and I was good to go. No CPU or ram hogging. Also, I have a couple of patches made with Ivory: straight piano, piano with strings, piano with synth pad, etc., and it seems to be smart enough to know it's all the same samples.

I have a Duet as well, but haven't used it for a gig, instead I just used the headphone out jack on my MBP. Seemed to work fine.

Hope that helps.

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Answer 2

Nov 2, 2009 11:24 AM in response to jazzalactic

There are a lot of options out there. I agree that Mainstage's pianos are not very good. I have akoustik piano as well, I have got them to behave in mainstage but they do rely more on cpu resources for their resonance modeling. Some of my favorite pianos come from Sampletekk. Their TSO, White Grand JR, S7G and Rain Piano are all pretty good. Nord actually uses modified smaller versions of many of these pianos for their Stage. Sampletekk regularly holds group buys too so look for discounts. These smaller versions are the perfect size for live use, but have way more sample detail than Mainstage's piano samplesets. I have not personally used it live, bur Moddart's Pianoteq is pretty intriguing as well.

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Answer 3

Nov 4, 2009 7:17 AM in response to ermatlock

I use the White Grand, I haven't found anything better yet. I'm dying to try the ivory piano though.

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Answer 4

rdellapi

Level 1

100 points

Nov 4, 2009 7:25 AM in response to jazzalactic

I've been using Ivory Italian Grand for a while now, first in MS1 and now in MS2. It is a memory hog but it sounds AWESOME. I was able to save memory in MS1 by putting the Ivory channel strip at the Set or Concert level. In MS2 I use channel strip aliases to keep the memory usage down and so far it's worked well. If you have the RAM, I say go for Ivory.

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Answer 5

carsimm

Level 1

5 points

Nov 5, 2009 11:51 AM in response to jazzalactic

I use Ivory.
I created a custom jazz Bosendorfer patch and cut down some of the extra CPU hogging elements. It's a really great instrument. I use a Glyph 1 TB Raid stripe 0 external firewire drive to store Ivory (this is what Synthogy said to do for best results) and have been gigging with it for close to two years. I have not moved to MS 2 as it seems to have issues (according to many of these posts), and I have had a stable system for some time. Touch wood. Apogee Ensemble has been great also.
I would highly recommend it.

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Answer 6

jazzalactic Author

Level 1

14 points

Nov 5, 2009 4:45 PM in response to jazzalactic

Thanks for the suggestions. I suppose I need to check out Ivory - although I probably also need to educate myself as to whether there are resource-hogging functions in Akoustic that I should try turning off.

Is it the "Ivory Grand Pianos" package that people are using?

Hmmm...that requires a $40 separate dongle purchase, right? Yuck. At least NI seems to get the idea that an instrument with a huge sample library is hard to pirate.

Any suggestions as to how to test drive ivory? I would never buy a hardware synth without playing one, but AFAIK, it's not possible to go to a music store and play Ivory (my local shop has a lot of stuff, but not that). It's frustrating to see a site full of recordings purportedly made with Ivory, as if listening to a recording could possibly take the place of playing it.

Thanks,
John

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Answer 7

amyjer1

Level 1

0 points

Nov 5, 2009 7:44 PM in response to jazzalactic

I like Ivory a lot and used it in many recordings. For live use, I recommend Pianoteq 3 because it is more flexible in terms of playability and tweakability. Because it is modeled rather than sampled, Pianoteq has 127 levels for velocity and you can adjust the sound in so many ways. You can try it for free at www.pianoteq.com. Good luck!

Jeremy

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Answer 8

dhjdhj

Level 2

194 points

Nov 7, 2009 4:43 AM in response to amyjer1

I would support that suggestion --- Pianoteq 3 is wonderful

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Answer 9

sisko65

Level 1

0 points

Nov 8, 2009 8:26 AM in response to dhjdhj

I use TruePianos.
It´s a bit like Pianotec but it sounds better (for my ears;-))
Uwe

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Answer 10

Nov 9, 2009 11:33 AM in response to sisko65

Wow...I just downloaded the TruePianos demo and was knocked out. This is the first piano that compares with Ivory. And no, I didn't like the Pianoteq very much. It wasn't as musical to my ears.

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