new piano VI sound OK?

[oakman]

Well I decided to sell my Casio Privia and bought a new piano VI for my DAW. Here's a recording with just me and my new VI.

The Last Day of School
http://soundcloud.com/oakhilllane/the-l ... -of-school

Curious to know what folks think of the sound of my new VI. It's from Pianoteq and was only $129.

And any other comments are certainly welcome.

Thanks!

Mark

[nick.moxsom]

Mark,

Charming as ever from you, and very 70's Laurel Canyon, to my ears. I'm hearing Carole King chords, Andrew Gold vocal phrasing, and even some British Clifford T Ward thrown in for good measure. There's an enchanting innocence about this that just makes me smile.

The piano sounds fab, but on first impression your vox are too dry in comparison. I wanna hear some 'verb on them. Loving that double-length bridge too, btw.

Thumbs up from me, and money well spent.

Nick

[kclements]

Sounds pretty good to me - But I agree the whole thing is a bit to dry for my liking. I would like to hear some more verb on the whole mix.

Great song - very Carole King/Stephen Bishop.

Cheers
kp

[Robtoons]

Sounds good!
I think I demoed that pianoteq vi once. It sounds pretty convincing,
but is it me or was it panned left a little bit?
Nice tune!
I've been looking at keyboards lately, what did you like/not like about the casio? How did the weighting feel?
cheers -Rob

[oakman]

Nick, kp, and Rob, thanks for the nice comments. The references to the singer/songwriters I grew up with are flattering.

I do love this song, although it hasn't been a favorite with my friends and family. Maybe this latest production will help to warm them up to it. Sure helps to have a great piano sound like the new VI gives me.

I'm new to SoundCloud and didn't realize how much they down-sample the audio until I added this song. The openness of it made the poor quality very apparent. I wish you could hear the 320 kbps file. Really makes the Pianoteq VI shine. I recorded the piano track as midi back almost a year ago, so it was an easy thing to drop in the new VI. The difference was stunning.

I played with some reverb on both the vox and the masterbus, but didn't find anything I liked yet. I'll revisit that. It is a bit dry.

@Rob, why yes, I do have the piano panned just a tad to the left. That seemed to give the vox a little more breathing room. I would say the weighed action on the Casio Privia PX-130 was what I liked most. Just seemed to fit me, but that's such a personal thing. The one thing I didn't like, and I should have researched this up-front, is that it doesn't have 1/4" out, only 1/8". And regarding the sound, it's just not up to what I really wanted, which I now have with the Pianoteq VI. Frankly Rob, I think you would be disappointed. When the time comes I'll be looking at the Yamaha line. I have a Yamaha up in our living room, so I can use that for recording when I need to.

Well thanks again for the feedback. I submitted this to a publisher that represents what appears to be a cast member of Glee. Might be a bit old-school (pun intended) for them, but Glee sure pulls out the old songs on a regular basis.

Mark

[nick.moxsom]

Mark,

I'm surprised at your experience with Soundcloud. Are you uploading an MP3? I always upload an AIF file.

Nick

[oakman]

Oh, didn't know you could upload an AIF. I'll try that right now. I just tweaked a few things. Thanks Nick!

Mark

[oakman]

I don't know Nick. I think it's still down-sampling to 128-bit for streaming, and a quick web search confirms that.

Anyhow, I added some reverb and made a couple of tweaks.

http://soundcloud.com/oakhilllane/the-l ... -of-school

I'm just using the free version of a SoundCloud account, but I don't see anything about the paid versions allowing for a higher streaming bitrate. I would just use my website and link directly to the 320 kbps MP3 file but recently I've had some problems with it just stopping right in the middle of the song. I use GoDaddy for my host. Makes me wonder if they're servers can identify a audio stream and interrupt it so streaming audio doesn't chew up they're bandwidth. Who knows.

Mark

[Len911]

Very nice song, I loved the piano/vocal. The streaming is still 128bit, but there is an option to let people download your song, for example if you uploaded a wav or an aiff file, if the download option was activated for the song, people could download the wav or aiff file and listen.
I don't know how many would,lol, but it's a nice option to have imo. Somedays I can't listen to one song completely through without hearing a dropout somewhere in the song, and at different places each time, so I'm pretty sure it's the streaming.

For the style of song, I think you could stand more reverb on the overall mix, I think reverbing your own voice is probably one of the hardest things in mixing.

[oakman]

Thanks Len. The download option just doesn't seem plausible. Ya know, I just had a thought. Maybe the trouble I've been having with posting my MP3s on my GoDaddy hosting is related to the high bitrate I've been using. I would be happy if I could get them to play at 192 kbps. There's just too many artifacts at 128 kbps. I think I'll give that a try.

And I'll work with the reverb. For some reason some songs I don't have trouble adding reverb to my voice, but this one I am.

Mark