a great warm jazz piano sound?

[sphinxxx]

I have gone through a bunch of piano sounds and here are my thoughts, pertaining to JAZZ piano.

1) Kontakt's NY Grand is very good, probably the best overall piano sound I've heard.

2) Ableton's piano from the EIC2 collection is very good, but perhaps not as good as kontakt's.

3) The "5 Meter Grand" combinator sound from Reason 5 is unbelievably warm & full, but a little "too much"


What stumbles me is how the Reason one sounds so good for jazz, at a fraction of the file size of kontakt's pianos? This leads me to believe there is some way to get that warm piano sounds using effects, but I really don't know how to achieve it. I suppose it's hard to know what I'm talking about without having heard the reason sound I'm referring to. It's very warm with an extremely soft touch, but the sound is just too muddy, especially on large chords. I believe this is from the overprocessing.

Anyone have thoughts on this?

[dsu]

If you have a few hours, download the PianoTec instrument since you can use it for 20 minutes at a time without licensing it. Basically it is a piano in a box. You can adjust the string length, tuning, various properties of the sound board. Some people don't like the Pianotec instrument sound, however it is a great way to explore how to tune and voice a piano which is something that a sampled instrument does not offer.
http://www.pianoteq.com/

[ChrisMack99]

Try your third option, but use EQ8 to take out some of the frequencies so its not too full.

[Casual Beats]

Have you checked out Ivory yet? - http://www.synthogy.com/index.html
here is a page with some Jazz demonstrations - http://www.synthogy.com/news/announceme ... -0509.html

[HeadrickProductions]

true piano is another that is not bad

I think that ableton's is terrible, reason's stock is bad, as well the ableton partner instruments is really thin as well if your looking for a real piano sound. They're not bad if you just need a piano sound to throw effects on, but not for jazz, classical, blues, funk, etc.

Best of luck looking for that perfect sound

edit the reason patch your talking about is pretty solid, just tweak the patch within record. The eq in ableton lacks. You can find some good free eq vst's

[crumhorn]

The ableton piano is very well recorded, but the transition between layers seems wrong to me, too many layers at the louder end of the spectrum and not enough at the quieter end. not enough gradation of tone when playing softly.

Ivory has versions of all the samples tweaked for softer playing styles which suits jazz styles very well and they have a nice subtle reverb that can simulate a club ambience quite well, but Ivory pianos are very resource hungry.

You can get some lovely effects by layering a sampled piano with pianoteq.

[sphinxxx]

thx for all the tips guys.

I will have to check out the pianotech and the ivory. Resources are not really an issue since this is for studio work. I should also try tweaking the reason patch I was mentioning. I like how full it is, but the effects seem to ruin the dynamics a bit.

[Saxer]

have you heared the fazioli of imperfect samples? it's my favourite for warm and moody piano...

http://www.imperfectsamples.com/website ... /index.php

[wehkah]

Hi Folks,

here is a good free rhodes kontakt 4 instrument:
http://www.dogsonacid.com/showthread.ph ... 36&cache=4

a list of free epiano vsts (lazysnake is very nice):
http://freemusicsoftware.org/category/f ... tric-piano

add some tremolo, phaser, saturation and/or eq for best results. i often use guitarrig 4.

cheers
T

[sphinxxx]

Thanks this sounds great. I will try it out with some jazz. It sounds like it has a nice mix between clean and moody.

have you heared the fazioli of imperfect samples? it's my favourite for warm and moody piano...

http://www.imperfectsamples.com/website ... /index.php

[luddy]

It's really interesting about sample sizes and piano sounds. A lot of the Roland pianos sound very good to my ears, and their sample sizes are typically a fraction of the 'gigasampler'-style piano libraries. I think the guys who get this right just have a lot of experience making sampled pianos sound good.

The e-instruments Studio Grand East Village is really nice for a jazz sound IMO. It's a pretty big library, though. The version that's specific to Live (i.e., an instrument rack of Samplers) performs pretty well and is really well done. Worth a look...

-Luddy

[crumhorn]

It's really interesting about sample sizes and piano sounds. A lot of the Roland pianos sound very good to my ears, and their sample sizes are typically a fraction of the 'gigasampler'-style piano libraries. I think the guys who get this right just have a lot of experience making sampled pianos sound good.

The e-instruments Studio Grand East Village is really nice for a jazz sound IMO. It's a pretty big library, though. The version that's specific to Live (i.e., an instrument rack of Samplers) performs pretty well and is really well done. Worth a look...

-Luddy

A lot depends on the style of playing and the context IMO. For slow contemplative solo piano styles looped samples can start to sound a bit unreal. Ivory (which I love) has no loop points at all, each sample is recorded in it's entirety until it decays into silence.

For most types of playing you never get to hear those note decays.