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Spectrasonics....in 7 days...

MA-Simon said:
I may be getting this, eventually. But I will need a decent controller first, and some saving up. Not shure which one though. I went looking a few month ago and even the expensive ones they had in the stores had horrible clicking plastic keys. And the ones which played great had hillariously loose/bad modwheel controllers, ore none at all. I am not a fan of touch strips, lights ore lots of buttons.
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I hear the Roland A88 is pretty nice. That's what most of the guys were playing on in the video
 
dcoscina said:
I hear the Roland A88 is pretty nice. That's what most of the guys were playing on in the video
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Although the A88 is $999 which is the same price as the Native Instruments S88 which has way more features and (some say) a high quality keyboard. The A88 also has the outdated "mod lever" instead of a wheel.

I assume Eric has a deal with Roland which is why only Roland boards appear in his videos. But I don't own either board so I can't really say which is better than the other.
 
Controllers are a personal thing.....I use what some may consider a 'very old' Roland A-90..Took me years to find a controller I loved...short on features on perfect on feel for me.....You couldn't make me trade it with anything else, much less anything modern....Maybe Eric just likes the feel of the Roland Keyboards that he has gotten accustomed to?
rsp
 
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Nothing new?!
I hear plenty of things that are new in that video.
Those are great players, no doubt, but what can be achieved interacting with the instruments in terms of grit and soul seems pretty impressive to me.
 
I think that most people waited for a new car, but instead got a better horse. Which is surely mindblowing to those equestrians with impressing knowledge of horses.
 
jmvideo said:
Although the A88 is $999 which is the same price as the Native Instruments S88 which has way more features and (some say) a high quality keyboard. The A88 also has the outdated "mod lever" instead of a wheel.

I assume Eric has a deal with Roland which is why only Roland boards appear in his videos. But I don't own either board so I can't really say which is better than the other.
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Modwheel solution sucks, but the keybed is miles ahead of S88. I have the RD-64 (used as a portable piano), which has the same keybed. Note, that I'm a piano player so YMVV.
 
One more thought: Despite the existence of breath controllers etc., the vast majority of sampled virtual instruments are designed to be played on a keyboard. With non-percussive tonal instruments such as violins or saxophones, trying to recreate their complex array of blown, plucked or bowed expressive articulations, attack, release, decay points and such for keyboard interpretation is terribly difficult (and IMO inherently impossible to ever achieve with 100% fidelity, for the simple reason that one thing is never something else). It's like trying to fit the proverbial square peg into a round hole. But with keyboard samples, it's more like putting a round peg into a round hole, because the physical action of hammering on a keyboard already meshes pretty much perfectly with the dynamics one expects to elicit from a keyboard sample. And while some keyboard libraries are clearly much better than others, as long as they're well recorded and mapped and have a sufficient number of velocity layers etc. they're probably going to be "okay". So the difference between a good and a great piano library probably isn't as significant as the difference between a good and a great solo stringed instrument. This is no doubt why you so often read on forums that piano library preferences are subjective. On all of the high quality ones at least, the dynamical expression is already there, so it's more a question of what tones appeal to you.

A comparison might be liquor. Since vodka is essentially nothing but water and ethyl alcohol, the difference between cheap and top-shelf vodka (though it exists) is not nearly as profound as the difference between cheap and expensive scotch, where the recipes are much more complex and variable...

Keyscape, from what I've heard, sounds amazing. And the price isn't expensive at all for that you get. But all that you get, for me, is overwhelmingly too much. If I were wealthy I might pick it up, but it's not something I perceive a need for. Were a manageable subset of the sounds I heard on the video packaged as $35 or $59 Omnisphere patches (like Skippy did with the MegaMagic Guitars, which I bought), I'd likely be more interested.
 
NYC Composer said:
I hear (and this is the first I've mentioned it) something slightly odd in the piano release. It's subtle, but it's there. Listen closely.
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You'd have to point me to the part in the video Larry. I got as far as Tony Belaveau and cracked up again when he said 'killer' and looked and sounded totally off his box. Hahaha! What a player!

Cory Henry wears those weighted beads on his right wrist to stop his hand from flying off the keyboard. They act a lot like the rear spoiler on a Porsche.

I like the playing of the guy with the big beard. He looks like he's just returned from an Antartica expedition and has that 1000 yard snow-blind pensive vibe going on.
 
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I was initially disappointed but the video changed my mind, it seems to sound amazing and to be super playable.
Regarding controllers, I haven't tried the A-88 but would like to.
I have tried the NI S88 though and found it absolutely horrible, rubbery, unrealistic and slow action.
I have a PX-5S which is overall great but maybe a tiny bit bouncy, I have a hard time controlling dynamics on it sometimes but probably because I don't play it enough.
 
Cory can play a little. Sheesh. Greg's no slouch either. None of 'em.

When I get time I'll try to isolate those moments. Long video.
 
The focus on this library seems to be EPs with just that Yamaha grand included. But even with that in mind, in 2016 I would probably not buy a virtual piano without support of a continuous sustain pedal for half pedaling emulation. The classical pieces sounded pretty much drowning in pedal to me, so I suppose it is not a feature. Couldn't find any information on that at the spectrasonics website. Does anybody know with certainty?
 
Well, the Chopin etude, with all respect to the wonderful concert Lady, was played very sloppy! I know the piece, and exactly where you are not supposed to stumble but be super precise, she stumbled heavily, but managed to trick her way out. :) Been there, done that, have the T-shirt!
 
G.R. Baumann said:
Well, the Chopin etude, with all respect to the wonderful concert Lady, was played very sloppy! I know the piece, and exactly where you are not supposed to stumble but be super precise, she stumbled heavily, but managed to trick her way out. :) Been there, done that, have the T-shirt!
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We all know it is not supposed to be an "ideal classical virtual piano"
 
I noticed, the revolutionary etude by Chopin was pretty bad. But when playing classical piano pieces on a virtual piano, I am struggling myself quite a lot on VIs, so I know it is not necessarily the player only, but also his discomfort with what he or she can do with that VI vs the real thing. Missing the possibility to control the sustain via pedal being one of those things, especially with most Chopin pieces ...
 
JeffP06 said:
We all know it is not supposed to be an "ideal classical virtual piano"
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I would have liked to see Lang Lang in that video! I guess his facial expression would have made up for a lot of the instruments classical unsufficiancies! ;)
 
Slightly funny side note: 2 things seem to be in for a sales bump after this video: Roland A88 controllers and that crazy-looking Gibraltar keyboard stand. My first thought was "yeah, sounds great, but what is THAT?!?" ;)
 
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