Different Sound

[flachboard]

Why is it that when I use my Yamaha S80 as a Midi controller for a track that I'm getting a different sound after I draw the notes in?
When I play on the Yamaha, it sounds so warm and nice. When I draw the same notes on Ableton and play it back, it sounds tingy and unpleasant.

[chrk]

Default velocity values?... when drawing in notes?

I think the factory default is 100.

Also look at 10. Editing MIDI Notes and Velocities in the manual about how to make the velocity pane appear if it doesn't already.

[flachboard]

Yes, I use the default velocity values when just clicking and creating notes in arrangement mode.
Do you think it's just that the velocity is too high?

[Richie Witch]

chrk is right. The difference in sound when playing in a part on a MIDI keyboard vs clicking in the notes with a mouse is significant, and it's because all clicked in notes are the same velocity, 100 by default. It's startling the first time you hear it.

Keep in mind that velocity does not just control volume, but also timbre. I real piano key or guitar string sounds different depending on how hard it's played, not just louder or softer. Things like decay time, resonance, brightness, etc, all play a part of different velocities.

So you are probably noticing the timbre shift between your varied human-played velocities and the default 100 provided by clicking the piano roll.

[flachboard]

Thank you so much for the help!!

[Richie Witch]

On a related topic, I had an interesting experience recently. I used Ableton's Grand Piano pack for my latest track, a piano interlude, but there's always been something about that piano pack that's never quite satisfied me. When the song was done, I went through some of the piano libraries that come with Kontakt and then started searching through the Interwebz trying to find a piano that really spoke to me. Every one of them sounded "off" somehow--like it didn't match the piano sound in my head.

After a long process I won't bore you with, I found that Sampletekk's "The Big One" is the piano library I've been looking for. So.... I replaced the Ableton piano with my shiny new "TBO", and .... it sounded HORRIBLE!!!

The reason? The velocities. The Ableton piano contains 1.5 GB of samples, but the Sampletekk piano comes in at over 11 GB. Every note in the Sampletekk library has been sampled 31 times. The range of velocities in the larger library means that it was interpreting my composition much differently because there were so many more nuances of velocity available. It is a library that sounds so sublime to me that I smile whenever I play it and I can sit and play for hours, lost in the beauty of its sound--and I don't even play piano!! LOL

So, the Ableton piano had to stay. There was no way for me to use the TBO without starting the composition from scratch, and since I can't actually play the piano, that wasn't going to happen.

[flachboard]

So to simplify and summarize, when I play the piano by hand, it registers around 45 usually in velocity. If I bring the velocity of the drawn notes down to 45ish, it should sound the same in theory, correct?

[Richie Witch]

Correct.

[flachboard]

Thanks so much for your help!