Lee Blaske
Senior Member
TL;DR - I'm a classical pianist who mainly plays Bach, and I'm looking for a piano sample library that will respond as close to a real piano as possible for practicing on a digital piano. I want lots of velocity layers (very deep sampling), half-pedaling, and really good velocity response.
Hi! I'm a pianist who practices at home with a Casio CDP-130. Really cheap stuff I know, but it sounds (in headphones) and feels realistic to me, at least compared to my upright.
However, whenever I try to record the MIDI of a performance from the digital piano and sample it through a piano VST, the results always sound awful in terms of the velocities. The velocities sound nothing like how I played. The soft notes are too soft, and the loud notes are too loud. Sometimes, two notes that have similar velocities, like 99 and 102, would sound drastically different because they happen to fall into the end of one velocity layer and the start of another velocity layer, respectively. For example, the the velocity layer "medium soft" could be for notes with 80-99 velocities, and the velocity layer "medium hard" could be for notes with 100-115 velocities. The result is that, although these two notes are played with similar velocities, they sound drastically different.
I have tried altering the velocity curves to all kinds of shapes and it never solve the problem. I have also tried increasing and decreasing all the MIDI notes as a whole to see if there's a sweet spot I could hit, but that didn't help either.
I have had this problem with all the piano libraries I have tried, which include NI Berlin Concert Grand, NI The Giant, Spitfire Concert Grand, and Spitfire Felt Piano. The only piano library that does okay in terms of velocities is the stock Logic Steinway, but it doesn't sound the best in terms of tones, and I do need to put a MIDI compressor to kind of flatten the dynamics of my playing. Here's what it sounds like.
The only thing that I think might help a lot is to actually monitor my performance by listening to the piano VST live, instead of listening to the sound from the digital piano. I have tried that, but I found the way the piano VSTs respond doesn't feel as real as how the digital piano responses.
In case you think I have bad techniques, I really don't think so! I'm classically trained (through private lessons) pianist and I had been playing on my upright piano for 10 years before I moved countries and needed to rely on a digital piano. So I don't think my playing is the culprit here.
Recently, I have been eyeing NI's Noire. I love that it has both a regular mode and a felt mode. It sounds fantastic, but I don't know if it will respond to my playing well.
Thank you in advance!
I haven't read all the responses, so maybe someone might have already mentioned this, but the best piano library in the world will not feel good (i.e. responsive and predictable) under your fingers UNLESS you are playing it with a HIGH QUALITY keyboard controller (e.g. something on the level of a Kawai VPC1).
The problem with less expensive keyboards, even if they *feel* somewhat okay under your fingers as you play is that they are not made with precision. The velocity response will be different from note to note, sometimes varying widely. In other words, if you were to play with the exact same force going from note to note, the velocity numbers will be different, because of poor quality construction. Selecting a different velocity curve will not fix this problem. It's a manufacturing problem, and you get what you pay for.
Some keyboards are worse than others, but the inexpensive ones are usually quite bad when it comes to note-to-note velocity calibration. I've found Fatar actions (found in many keyboard brands) to be really bad. As inexpensive keyboards age, they can also get a lot worse.
So, if you get the feeling that when you play expressively, and you're not hearing what you think you're playing, look first to the quality of the keyboard action. Most likely, if you're using one of the higher quality sample libraries, the problem is not with the sample library. A different library will not fix the problem you're experiencing.