CyberGene

There may be some truth to that in quiet playing since it’s only then when you can feel it and it can give you some counter-resistance reference against which you can adjust your force when playing quietly. But I still have rather high doubts when speaking about the typical emulation implementations. Kawai usually display translucent models of their actions in piano stores and if you see what the escapement simulation is, just a small rubber notch that the key-hammer system touches briefly, you’d see how that is more an excuse and a cheap gimmick than any real advantage. But again, I agree that it can have a certain effect and provide some feedback if you prefer to have one. I used to be obsessed with digital piano actions in the past and would consider all these small details as really important features because I used to be kind of “zoomed in” into them only. Once I moved into the hybrid digital with my AvantGrand N1X which gave me peace of mind (being a real grand piano action and so much better than the typical digital piano actions), I just accepted that regular digital pianos also have place under the sun and I’m more zoomed out now 😀 I think I am much more forgiving and can live with any of them to a degree. Even the simplest ones.

On a real piano the escapement notch might help you feel where the point is beyond which you can’t throw the hammer. Well, that’s standardized more or less (and is called aftertouch but it has nothing to do with what modern keyboards call aftertouch) and happens approximately 1 mm before the key bottoms out, out of 10 mm of key travel. That can be useful when playing the so-called “off the jack” technique where you need to release keys above that point in order to replay them. I guess Stu (and you?) mean that you can slightly rest upon the escapement in order to throw the key from there and thus control soft dynamics? But I still find this rather useless because digital pianos can ideally be made to generate a strike even if you hold the key after the escapement and then throw it. But I get it some people may like the notch feeling. I don’t. I think even acoustic piano builders would have loved to eliminate that artifact since it goes in the way of the smooth key movement and is a side effect, not a goal in itself.

I’m not sure what Stu exactly described, haven’t watched that particular video but he’s a salesman and I would take his opinion with a grain of salt. He has to justify the marketing that surrounds features such as rubber notches called misleadingly “escapement simulation”.

If we have to be precise, what digital piano manufacturer call “escapement simulation” is only a simulation of the escapement bump you feel near the bottom. Not of the escapement itself. The difference is huge and I’ve elaborated it a lot on piano related forums. The rubber notches that Kawai et al put are needless and don’t contribute to anything. In contrast, the real escapement in acoustic piano actions, besides the obvious purpose of detaching the hammer from the key-whippen-jack system, so that it can rebound from the string and allow it to vibrate, has very specific side effects such as changing the lever ratio from 1:5 to approximately 1:1 while you’re keeping the key pressed at the bottom and that prevents the rebound energy to push back against your fingers (besides the hammer energy being transferred into a backcheck spring extension) with the original lever-amplified weight, which is what ALL digital piano actions exhibit and is the most common criticism. The rubber notches do nothing that can emulate this. I’d remove them myself 😀

Only the wooden GF-series actions are marketed as premium by Kawai. Does the Nord Grand have a wooden action? Highly doubtful. Because if it has the RH3, then that's a rather low-tier action, sitting only above the entry-level RHC action. But I guess if you paint it red, it becomes premium 😀

I don’t listen to pop stations but I’ve heard that song hundreds of times. I don’t know how it goes, I believe just being part of this world naturally gets you exposed to all the popular things. You should really be making some special efforts to be able to avoid that 😀

That’s something I wanted to say many times but then who am I… Yeah, the sales pitch for JD is often his perfect pitch (pun intended) but he has such a limited harmonic vocabulary I’m wondering where it all goes.

Admittedly I'm not a huge DT fan but my wife is (she brought me to that DT concert last year) and she's also of the opinion that they progressively (no pun intended) deteriorated. She often plays the "Images and Words" to our daughter who in turn loves the "Wait for Sleep" track and often asks Siri to play it on our HomePods. And so, I listen to it often too and even tried to recreate it on the piano once and realized it's a very clever track. I checked who played the keyboards and yeah, that was Kevin Moore.

Here’s the one with the drummer hearing Nirvana for the first time: BTW, I think part of what he came up with was great but in the more intensive parts he played a very lame straight 1-2-1-2 rhythm and the Nirvana original is, well, much more original 😀 But I must agree I enjoyed it. Unlike the Rudess video.

I think I might have watched one of these where a jazz drummer had never heard of Nirvana. I’m not saying Nirvana are the world’s most famous band and I even remember hating them as a teenager (well I was a nerd who only used to listen to Bach at the time) but being a professional musician who has never heard Nirvana is very suspicious to me. The guy is either really narrow minded and doesn’t listen to any other music than whatever he’s interested in, or the whole story is made up.

A disclaimer: the guy is a genius, no denying. I like him and I was at a Dream Theater concert last year and enjoyed it. His playing was brilliant. I’d prefer listening to DT than Alicia Keys. I just stumbled upon the following video: Could be me waking up with the ass up (that’s a Bulgarian saying, do you have a similar one?) but the vibe I get from the video is, how stupid pop music is and how Rudess is sooooo much better musician with his perfect pitch to be able to instantly add some supposedly real music on top of that crap. That lady looking like she’s seeing a live reincarnation of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Scriabin and Rachmaninoff at the same time. Again, the guy is fantastic IMO but I just hear some fast diatonic shredding and arpeggios. It just sounds silly, boring and completely out of place. Any decent jazzman would be able to produce much more interesting comping (or even improvisation lines) on top of it. What do you think? Am I overreacting? 🧐

Must have been a late 19th century piano. The 1840s pianos really had light actions and they were also rather quiet because they were played in salons. It was with the Lisztomania and the ever growing needs for the pianos to be louder and suitable for larger and larger concert halls that piano builders started making them larger, having cast iron frames with longer strings under increasing tension that required heavier hammers, etc and AFAIK that trend reached its peak in the late 19th and early 20th century, when they also started adding counterweights to compensate the overly heavy action but that increased the inertia, so it’s a vicious circle…

Pianos during the Chopin era had narrower octaves and very light/nimble action. RH3 is the opposite of that. But maybe they lightened it and made the keys narrower? Otherwise why just go to great lengths to sample that Pleyel which I’m certain will sound pretty odd to unprepared ears, while keeping a crappy digital action. By crappy I mean all digital actions, not just RH3. But RH3 is not the first choice of classical pianists anyway. Nor is Korg a brand known for good digital pianos that are suitable for demanding classical/jazz pianists. But let’s wait and see.

I thought there were new Korg Module modules. Seems these are just Korg modules.

25kg is way too heavy for me these days. And if it’s for a studio, I’d prefer a controller with software.

Maybe you’re using the “Common MIDI channel” setting? That’s in the main menu where this setting is either off, or a channel number is set. When off, the Numa will act as a 4-zone controller and only those zones that are MIDI-enabled will send data. Internal zones would receive data on the MIDI channel with the corresponding zone number. When not off, and set to a specified MIDI channel, the keyboard will send/receive keyboard events from the entire keyboard on that channel, regardless of the zones and their status. Also, when not off, you have additional settings on whether CC and program changes are off, sent, received or both. BTW, I discovered a bug when in Common MIDI channel and local control is off. Sustain pedal would still be sent (not OK) but not received (OK). However, if I enable CC receive (or send/receive) and the DAW is looping back the MIDI, so that I can hear the Numa, the entire hell breaks loose and the sustain events get looped back and forth for a machine gun like effect. I’ve reported it to Gianni and he said they will look but I still haven’t got any answer.

Well, I guess so, they sell tons of these, so maybe they know what they’re doing. Personally I’d prefer categories like pads, leads, basses, etc. which are universal and timeless, rather than style names that can be out of fashion in 10 years. I’m pretty sure for a youngster the “rock” label sounds like “rhumba” to me 😀

I’d never purchase a synth that has a selector with music styles I don’t care about. But even if I cared, it would still be such a silly idea. Reminds me of those old keyboards with Foxtrot, Polka, Rhumba and other grandpa-invites-grandma styles. Keyboards should be absolute and abstract. I’ll decide what a sound is for.

@rtme I agree with your conclusions. I believe I’ve shared all of them here and on PianoClack (I’m that forum’s owner/creator). The low velocity piano timbre, the UI which can make it easy to lose your edits, etc 😕 However, I purchased mine as a lightweight rehearsal piano, while I have an AvantGrand N1X as my main piano which is why the Numa is perfect for me. But I also think it may not be the best choice as your main piano.

Sometimes I think what diluted jazz to its current state is the mass YouTube-ization, and I don’t mean YouTube literally but rather in more general sense all that ready chewed know-how that is omnipresent in various methods, prescriptions, patterns, licks, calculations, scale-to-finger internalizing and whatnot, you name it. Of course all types of music have strong theory backing it but with jazz it’s ridiculous. That’s probably the art that has suffered the most from turning it into a mass craft. That’s not a rant against jazz though, don’t get me wrong 😀 I have myself swallowed a lot of jazz theory and it brought me knowledge and fun. But also somehow killed the joy too. Or, maybe it’s just one of those days for me again… sorry 🤦🏻‍♂️

These chips are just insane for audio. I’m wondering if Logic might be even more optimized for that CPU being Apple’s own DAW. I previously used Cubase and then switched to Logic and they are vastly the same although I find it easier to work with Logic.

I’ve found that when I’m harmonizing songs where I have the tonic chord and the tonic note in the melody, then 6 chords work better than maj7 but that’s the only exception where I’d prefer them. And I like a voicing that’s more quartal, e.g. top to bottom: C E A D G C

I came up with another approach. If you have an m7 chord, you can actually play an m7 chord that is a semitone higher but transpose each of its notes a semitone lower.

WTF is this sh1t 🤦🏻‍♂️

Yamaha for me too. 1. Real CFX 2. Real U1/U3 2. Montage M8x P.S. Taking in mind Bösendorfer are owned by Yamaha, I’d happily swap the montage for any Bösie and would go on stage with three real acoustic piano “patches” 🤣