Electro 5D Grand Piano

[Sandy Mac]

Hello All,

 

I love the B3 and Electric piano sounds. But not happy w The Grands......they sound tinny and thin through my rig,

I have a Mackie mini mixer and a Meyer UPJ 1P.

As I said the B3 in particular is awesome.

Looking for a better grand piano sound live.

Thanks

Sandy Mac in Boston

[Stokely]

Have you tried all of the grands?  They sound pretty good to me.  They do suffer in mono, but that is nothing unique to the Nords.

I've mostly been using the White Grand, large version, but yesterday was trying out some others I have in my Stage 3 (which is far from all of them).   Most sounded pretty good to me on phones.   Part of the reason I settled on the WG was that it suffers a bit less than most in mono, but I'm still far from happy with it.  What can you do...  

I owned an Electro 6d a few years ago, so I can't recall the controls vs stage 3.   On the latter, there are some settings like "medium", "bright" and so on that change the tone--not sure if that is invoking EQ, velocity curve (which I think has a separate control) or what.  As you can see I haven't really dived hard into some of the settings    If you are using a stock preset with EQ cranked up as far as treble, that's something to check.

 

[eric]

If you monitor in stereo (speakers or IEMs), you will notice a huge difference.

 

Nord piano samples are excellent across the board. Individual taste will dictate which version people choose. Your monitoring situation is a very important part of the equation.

[Stokely]

Yep, it's a constant thorn in my side any time I have to go mono.  I like to monitor whatever FOH gets--I won't hear their mix, but I can hear any weird patch level things if they happen.   On the Nord, volume is pretty consistently lower on every patch except for the organ, which doesn't drop much if at all.   On my Modx, the CFX piano dropped lower than all other patches when in mono, so it was causing problems out front.

[ElmerJFudd]

Have you tried bypassing the mixer and/or swapping out the monitor just to see if there is a loss of data in the signal chain?  

[Delaware Dave]

19 hours ago, Sandy Mac said:

a Meyer UPJ 1P.

 

Based on this my assumption is that you are not running stereo.  Some piano samples that are stereo collapse to mono better than others.  My Kurz sounds pretty good in mono even though the patcn I use is a stereo patch. Other keyboards suffer more.  Does Nord offer a mono piano program?

 

[Stokely]

The only mono piano I've noticed, and that I see in the Nord piano library online, is an electric grand mono (cp70).   

I saw one vid by Pianoman Chuck who talked about the White Grand being best in mono out of them all, it's also the newest and these are both reasons I've been using it--but I haven't really tried all of them.

 

I had issues with the Rich Grand (9ft) on my Forte 7 in mono, it sounded "honky" as they all tend to--but I think there are some others on there that might fare better, maybe even the old triple strike.

There's a mono sample on my Yamaha but frankly I felt it sounded worse than the stereo ones in mono.   Same for the Hammersmith Pro mono mic position that I tested.  Problem with that one was that to get the whole piano you get too much room sound because the mic is further back.

[Mighty Motif Max]

I use the Queen Upright most of the time on my church's Stage 3. It doesn't suffer as much in mono as many of the samples do. They don't have the White Grand loaded in, so I haven't gotten to play with that.

[Stokely]

Ah, that's one I don't have loaded, so I'll try that one out   

[Mighty Motif Max]

2 hours ago, Stokely said:

Ah, that's one I don't have loaded, so I'll try that one out   

It's an old sample, but I've been pretty happy with what I hear out front when we have another keys player that week. The other folks largely use the 5-6 presets I've set up, so it's been helpful for me to hear how it really sounds out front, since our monitoring is in stereo but the final FOH mix is summed to mono. The livestream also has main keys in mono, but aux keys in stereo.

 

The presets I've set up for our church's NS3 88 are more or less the following:

 

Upright/Grand

- Panel A: Queen Upright L with Bright EQ, KB Touch = 2, Hall Reverb 2 on the Bright setting (usually a small amount, but this can be cranked up for ambient passages)

- Panel B: Royal Grand 3D XL with Bright EQ, KB Touch = 2, Hall Reverb 2 with Bright setting (usually a small amount, but this can be cranked up for ambient passages)

 

Bright Pianos

- Panel A: Black Upright L with Bright EQ, KB Touch = 2, same reverb settings as above

- Panel B: Bright Grand XL with Bright EQ, KB Touch = 1 (I think), ping-pong delay available on a switch, Hall Reverb 2 with similar settings as above

 

Rhodes/Wurli

Panel A: EP1 MK1 with Bright EQ, Twin amp sim, compression, Auto-Pan and Phaser 2 available on switches, mono delay with a medium delay time available, and Hall Reverb 2 w/Bright

Panel B: Wurlitzer 2 Amped, Trem with medium depth/rate, compression, Hall Reverb 2 w/Bright

 

All of the above have either a modified Supersaw Pad or Warm Pad 2 available to switch on in the synth section and a basic B3 with rotary, CV Chorus 3, and a small amount of drive (no percussion) on the organ engine, ready to switch on.

 

[Reezekeys]

Kind of a shame playing a mono-compromised piano through such a nice (and expensive) speaker.

[Stokely]

Are there any that are not mono-compromised?  I feel like I'm transversing Dark Ages England slapping coconuts together looking for that particular grail

My buddy says his Fantom with modeled V-piano sounds good mono.  I've heard recordings of his band from out front and it sounded fine.   I've sometimes wondered if modeled pianos have the same issue as stereo sampled ones seem to.

The mention of recordings made me think of something....I've always liked the sound of either of my Nords way better in recordings than I do while playing them.  To some extent that can happen with any keyboard due to stage monitoring not being ideal, but I've noticed it more with the Nords.   

[Reezekeys]

In theory... piano samples recorded in stereo using the "mid/side" technique should sound great in mono. There must be a reason that sample library producers don't use that method - maybe it doesn't work for close miking?

[zephonic]

15 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

In theory... piano samples recorded in stereo using the "mid/side" technique should sound great in mono. There must be a reason that sample library producers don't use that method - maybe it doesn't work for close miking?

I think they almost always use more than just two mics.

[cphollis]

A better sample might help a bit.  It appears you're playing in mono?  Real-world acoustic grands have a ton of stereo signal information, which will never sound as good in mono.  

 

However, you can do additional channel strip processing on the Nord acoustic grand sounds to make them sound really "big" in a live setting, mono or stereo.  The built-in Nord features are a great start (esp. on the NS4), but you can go farther with sophisticated EQ, compression, imaging, reverb -- each adds a bit to the sound.   

 

My current channel strip is a powered DI to a X32 (band mixer), that gets me access to a nice audio toolkit to shape keyboard sounds, including acoustic grand pianos.   Lots of recording and fiddling yielded a great sound that's "big" but doesn't crowd out other mix elements.