Ableton Forum

Hello all, I'm fairly new to Live.
I hooked it up to my Keystation pro 88 and I'm having a hard time finding a nice piano sound for live same for strings etc... (instruments).
I'm sure this question has been asked millions of times and i apologize,
could any one point me in the right direction ( where i can get them from)
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!!

Sam

I remember this piano sound being good, but i haven't heard it in ages, since it's on my mac, and I now run live on a pc. Oh yeah there are two piano's on there. I think one is good and one is crap. Still, even if they're both crap, the company has some other good effects and stuff. and it's all free too so that's always a good thing.
http://mda.smartelectronix.com/synths.htm

This may be overkill, however...

Art Vista Grand

I don't know what system you're using, but GarageBand on Mac has a very nice piano. You could try lifting the samples from the Library and using them in Simpler. Or make your own with another app.

Its a shame you can't rewire GarageBand...

4Front also do a passable Piano VST (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/597.html) Mac and windows...

check out sampletank2 free also.. they have a downloadable piano and i think some strings... and the good news is its free..

On mac: load up the AU "DSLmusicdevice"
Has 128 banks that cover all the sounds a standard synth has.
It also works with program changes.

the art vista virtual grand that notron fan posted is probably the best sounding sampled grand piano i've heard so far.

it's cheap too (about 100 euros i think) and the artvista guy hans seems to be a really friendly and helpful guy worth supporting. but the set does require quite a powerful computer to run - i think the whole thing is about 6 gigs in size and the single patches will probably be quite big also.

zion15, does it work well with Live5?

hoffman2k wrote:On mac: load up the AU "DSLmusicdevice"
Has 128 banks that cover all the sounds a standard synth has.
It also works with program changes.

How are you doing this? When I try it the drop down menu is not slectable and there are no patches available...

red_wedge wrote:

hoffman2k wrote:On mac: load up the AU "DSLmusicdevice"
Has 128 banks that cover all the sounds a standard synth has.
It also works with program changes.

How are you doing this? When I try it the drop down menu is not slectable and there are no patches available...

Yes, I second that.

Please do elaborate. I have tried to use that thing before to no avail. From what I understand it is also possible to load sound fonts into it.

Synthogy's Ivory.

VERY disk intensive though, so this should run from a separate firewire drive. Great sound

smutek wrote:

red_wedge wrote:

hoffman2k wrote:On mac: load up the AU "DSLmusicdevice"
Has 128 banks that cover all the sounds a standard synth has.
It also works with program changes.

How are you doing this? When I try it the drop down menu is not slectable and there are no patches available...

Yes, I second that.

Please do elaborate. I have tried to use that thing before to no avail. From what I understand it is also possible to load sound fonts into it.

With the program change boxes. just give a different number to a clip.

here's an example

http://users.telenet.be/Vayner/program%20changes.als

There are some really good soundfonts at this url

http://www.hum.aau.dk/~bovbjerg/piano4.html

The steinway is particularly good. I just use SFZ (by RGC audio) to play the soundfont as a vsti in live.

raapie,

i don't have the art vista virtual grand myself, just heard some demos and comments... i won't probably be getting it until i can afford a new laptop sometime next year since it probably won't run that well on this one.

but it uses kontakt player / kompakt engine / whatever tech from NI so i guess it should work okay.

smutek wrote: Yes, I second that.

Please do elaborate. I have tried to use that thing before to no avail. From what I understand it is also possible to load sound fonts into it.

Well this is good.... here's how it works for numbskulls lke me:

Download the steinway souund font which Martyn found from:
http://www.hum.aau.dk/~bovbjerg/piano4.html

And the decompressor utility from Melody Machine:
http://www.melodymachine.com/sfark.htm

Install the decompressed sound font in ~/Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks

Add the DLSMusicDevice to a LIve MIDI track and hey presto, you can now select the Steinway from the DLS settings window.

And program changes work perfectly from the Notes section of the Clip View for the QT synth (thanks Hoffman!)

It's the little things like this that make my day!

red