Fantom Condos White Rock
Siiri
I play in a jazz combo and have been struggling to get a satisfying sound live. I have a Nord Piano 4 played through a Motion Sound 408s. The issue I have is that the piano sounds "tinny" thin and too bright and I can't get the warmth of a real piano. I know there are always better amplification systems but here I am looking for recommendations on different piano patches or effects or eq. I should use.
I use the White Grand since that sounds great through headphones but perhaps there are better choices for playing jazz live. I am interested in hearing the experience of others. There are so many pianos available I need to narrow it down to one or two.
Once you get comfortable with those controls, you'll find that you can get a very wide range of useful tones from any one of the samples. I start with brighter ones and filter accordingly: White Grand, Black Upright and so on. I usually will use 3-4 piano samples for an acoustic night of music, sticking with L size.
3. Low-treble. I made up that term just now. Most mixers will have a treble shelf that starts at 10kHz. This is way too high for piano overtones. A treble shelf like your Nord is, I think at 4kHz, which is good. Plan on making changes to this depending on the song, the band instrumentation and the room.
Make these EQ settings your servants. Yes, your piano may sound perfect through good headphones, but your sound through your amp with your band playing your song choices at your gig needs to be crafted by you.
I've found the two Yamaha Grand samples work well. I've tried to use the white and velvet on amplified gigs, but have never been pleased because there's not enough harmonic content to work with once you play wtih other instruments. Like most stereo pianos, they do sound great in ears/headphones. The XL version of the Bright Yamaha works well because you can be subtractive and pull the top end down to taste. The other more mellow Yamaha grand works pretty well for solo. I would also strongly reccomend using the Mono button.
I still use my Nord every Sunday for church, but have transitioned to a Studiologic Numa 73 for gigs. They don't offer a mono button, so I've made specific patches that are mono-friendly, and catered towards the (single) Bose I use for solo-duo-trio stuff.
I liked the Nord 'Italian Grand' sample for a modern urban Jazz acoustic piano sound, it isn't to heavy and transparent enough for jazz.... it has a bit of a sheen to it when played with the right material.. when I say urban I mean 'all acoustic' but I found it had sort of that old 'Charlie Rose Show' music intro vibe in it...depends how and what you play as always with this stuff.... I've recorded with it successfully a number of times in a jazz context ... may want to give that one a download and a try. I have a lot of Yamaha piano samples in various axes but have to play them and think about it for a while before I give an answer...but on the quick I like the YC - C7 patch for jazz and the 'Live Grand' patch (forgot the name exactly), that one is very playable. ... sticking with my Nord Piano Italian Grand on the Nord side.....
Great advice in this thread, particularly on the "piano" end. If the difference is reliably between headphones and the sound from the amp, it's pretty likely you'll need to take some time and dial in a good EQ setting for that 408S, too, to use as a starting point. (You'll still need to adjust for different rooms/environments.) Make sure the "Expand" setting is very narrow to off; you won't really need it for piano. If you have some reverb on your piano sound, you can give it a little bit of "expand" to goose that along, but every nudge up on the expander weakens and unfocuses the piano sound a bit more, so this could be contributing to your thin sound.
Great advice from PianoMan51 on EQing piano for live performance, and a good tip from Chuck on the "preset" EQ's. I use these basically song to song if I want to hear something different from a piano patch whose sample you like. Something else I'd mention is that Nord does a nice job summing to mono, and the MS does a nice job creating a stereo field. So another option is to using a nice piano, let Nord sum it to mono, put a little reverb on it, and let the MS408S "Expand" that. It won't weaken the piano sound that way.
Nord's Black Upright is a really nice sounding piano, and same deal--with the "soft" preset EQ on the piano, and a hint of reverb, you can make a very workable gigging piano sound that sounds "real" but remains focused.
But the first place I would start, particularly if you're happy with the sounds you are getting from the NP through the ears, is dedicating some time to playing with EQ on the MS480S.
I find the same thing with my NS3 that the headphones sound great. I have my NS3 running into a audio interface and the recorded sound is same as the headphone really great. But I have studio monitors connected and it can be hit and miss how good they sound even with the same samples and same EQ and reverb settings. What I've discovered with the NS3 is the levels on the panel and the master have a lot of effect on the sound the gets to the speakers. If I have the panel level all the way up it does start to thin out I drop the panel level some and it fattens up. Master volume not as much, but some difference. Then the gain on the audio interface plays into the equation also. So a lot of this is about gain being setting by panel, master, and audio interface or if I used and amp the preamp stage. So tweaking those setting can change the Nord sound. Also I have install some of the Nord Artist packages and found sounds I like, then I study the settings they have like compression, piano timbre, bright switch on reverb, etc. So try experimenting with the gain, then there is a lot of muck with to dial in a sound you like.
I played jazz gigs with my Nord Stage 2 HA88 but was never satisfied. This went on for over three years. It was a frustrating experience because it recorded so well but something about it was uncomfortable -- even distracting -- when playing live. Unfortunately, I can't explain it in technical terms but I reached a point where I had to give up and look elsewhere. Next I bought a CP4; it plays beautifully and sounds very good on jazz gigs (and all gigs). I still have it.
There's something finicky about the Nord and amplification whereas the CP4 can be plugged into just about anything and sound good. Even going through a pair of RCF TT08As the Nord didn't sound very good. Of course this is just my opinion.
I did an electric blues / classic rock gig this past Friday night with my YC73 and thought the acoustic piano sounded very good. I expect I would be happy doing a jazz gig with the YC73 but have not (yet). A few days ago I posted a short video of gig excerpts to show how the B3 and acoustic piano sounds. I'm playing through a pair of RCF TT08As on short folding stools behind me (and not going through the PA). The piano is a bit brighter than I like (i.e., I had the Hi EQ knob turned too high thinking it was necessary to cut though the mix), but the basic sound is to my liking and I'm confident a simple tweak is all that's needed. The B3 solo is first so start at 1:07 to only hear the piano solo.
From reading a lot of post from Nord users seems many instead of using the regular outputs on the Nord they get an adapter and use the headphone jack. It is a strange issue, glad you're enjoying your YC73.
Interesting. Is the adaptor to control for the amped signal, or is it just an L/R splitter?
@Al Quinn, every day I get to hear you play is a good day. I've actually never heard anyone take a piano solo in Little Wing. Lovely. And I appreciated the band coming down for you on it, too.
Have you done a gig with the SKPro over the YC yet? Or are you satisfied enough with the organ on the YC that it will work as a one-board solution for you?