NOTE: If you don't have Pianoteq, PSP Pianoverb is a cool free plugin that will produce similar results to what we get around the 2:13 mark. www.pspaudioware.com/products/psp-pianoverb NOTE 2: Modartt's support team reported the issue I briefly touched on here around 1:34 (VST3 version of the Pianoteq plugin missing sidechain functionality in Studio One) to their development team on 11/14/2023. In the meantime, if you have a Mac, you can use the Pianoteq AU plugin in Studio One and it'll sidechain. NOTE 3: If you're clever with scripting, you probably don't need a plugin like WavesFactory Trackspacer. You need to bypass the sustain pedal in the sample library, and queue the note-off messages until the pedal is released, so it only ever plays damper-down samples and you don't need to worry about resonance buildup. I'm working on figuring this out in Bitwig and will put up another tutorial when I get that working. @olivierw.frappier came up with this super interesting approach, and provided scripts for this that work with Logic and Reaper here: forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=10252
I suggest you to try this with Soothe 2 instead of Trackspacer, as the control over the ducked frequencies is way more precise. Very interesting experiment btw, sounds great although in my opinion there's a little too much difference between the pianoteq generated sounds and keyscape (maybe passing both through the same reverb+compressor might help?). I wish @SpectrasonicsVIDEO could add these resonance features inside Omnisphere/Keyscape...
I keep hearing that about Soothe 2, thanks for the suggestion! It looks like a super useful plugin. Looks like they have a trial going now, I’ll have to give it a shot. I agree with you, the resonance could definitely still use some tweaking. It helps to dial in the mics, reverb, EQ, and resonance-related settings inside Pianoteq to more closely match the original piano, and that’s a great idea to try passing both through the same reverb/compressor. Appreciate the tip!
@@pietrogirardi Soothe 2 was a great suggestion, thank you! I get an extra 42 ms delay with it, which is just enough to throw me off for live playing, but it definitely sounds more surgical than Trackspacer, and makes the end result noticeably more convincing.
@@andy-simmons, I came here to recommend side-chaining Soothe2, as as alternative to Trackspacer. I've been a Trackspacer user for many years, and I feel that Soothe2 sounds better and is more flexible,
This is absolutely brilliant, I dont like the sound of pianoteq by itself, but really respect everything else its capable of, so this is perfect for me!!
Thanks so much! I just checked out your channel by the way, love what I’ve heard of your Final Fantasy arrangements. The FF series has some of my favorite music - just subbed!
Thank you so much for sharing this! Piano is my main instrument and I have Keyscape and am about to take the plunge with Pianoteq too. I will most definitely experiment with your layering techniques. This is a night and day difference. 💖🎹💖
This is so cool! I’ve been using Keyscape since it came out, but this makes me want to pick up Pianoteq just to try this technique. Very cool of you to share!
Hi Andy, thank you for sharing, it’s great hearing the results…and demonstrating what I’ve been missing out on! Also a great example of making our collection of plugins play nicely together (pardon the pun). Nice playing by the way.
Nice! Digital piano manufactures like Yamaha, Casio, Kawai and Dexibell actually use the exact same method, combining sample-playback engine with a dedicated physical modeling engine for resonance for better realism. I always prefer the piano sounds achieved with this hybrid approach. To me it's warmer than the super detailed sound of pure physical modeling. I have no idea Pianoteq can be used this way. Thanks for sharing!
Neat. I prefer to use Pianoteq for writing because it feels like a piano, but this enables its use with big-sounding libraries. Why didn't I think of that!? Thanks. (Pianoverb does some but not all of that).
Yeah, Pianoteq is the most playable library I’ve tried! It sounds great on its own, but this is a pretty handy feature when you’re chasing a specific sound.
Hi! This video was suggested to me from a comment of one of my videos (I recorded a few videos with Pianoteq 8 which I really like but the sound is still a little synthetic). Do you think it's worth investing in Keyscape and using your technique? I really like Pianoteq because it is very lively and playable although the sound is not as good as the best piano sampled libraries. Thanks.
Hi Thierry! I like the variety of keyboards you get with Keyscape, and they have some really nice character. VSL pianos are a bit more responsive and detailed, but significantly larger and more expensive. I don't think I'd spend the money on Keyscape JUST for the C7, but if you want a nice collection of keyboard instruments, Keyscape is a good value.
will have to try it out soon! Another question: I notice on a lot of libraries that when you have the sustain pedal pressed and play different notes, chords, runs, in different registers - you do not hear the kind of cluster sound that a real grand piano would generate in such a situation. How can that best be emulated? I have composed things with a library where it sounds good with pedal down, but much later realized it cannot be played like that on a real piano. Would be good to have already known that while composing
You bet! I believe you have to trick FL Studio into allowing you to sidechain Pianoteq. I haven't done it myself, but someone on VI Control explained the steps here: vi-control.net/community/threads/adding-pianoteq-resonance-to-sampled-pianos.145427/post-5506451
I recommend using a simple side chain ducking of pianoteq audio (resonance) instead of the spacer with dynamic frequency ducking. Even lower volume of that channel would probably sound better than with that spacer plugin (meaning, the master bus compressor will also bring pianoteq audio up when keyscape's volume is low). There are plenty of sample based piano vst's that come with built-in sympathetic resonance. overall idea and creativity here is very useful. most advanced users don't try to do that, so cheers for making this.
Thanks for the tip! I'm more of a piano player trying to figure out the whole audio engineering side of things, so I figured there would be some better approaches here, and really appreciate feedback on that aspect. I had initially tried the simple side chain ducking, but could never get the staccatos (especially bass) to sound quite right to my ear, but it's possible there were other techniques I could have employed to address that. It felt like the upper overtones would either "fade in" too much or I'd get too much resonance buildup, and couldn't find a good sweet spot between the two. There's still some degree of "fading in" (there's probably a better way to describe the sound) of the overtones with TrackSpacer, but it was more subtle that way. And I agree with you -- NI for example does a pretty good job with sympathetic resonance. I haven't found any that are quite as realistic as Pianoteq (e.g. NI pianos don't have repedaling resonance), but I imagine other libraries have done a good job with it. I do agree with you that TrackSpacer doesn't feel like the ideal solution here. Ultimately it would be my preference to just use pedal-up/damper-down samples and layer Pianoteq resonance with maybe some subtle simple side chain ducking if necessary. I'm kicking around some ideas about a possible plugin that could assist with this by bypassing the sustain pedal, queueing note-off messages, etc. but haven't fully thought it through, and while I have some coding experience, I've never written a DAW plugin, so I'll need to figure out a framework for that first. JUCE looks interesting.
@@andy-simmons you can consider adding envelope or transient shaper for fade in and fade out, trigger with midi keys, but overall i don't think that is worth the effort. The intermediate result u showed in the video was very good. I recommend that you check vilabs ravenscroft, it can't replace pianoteq but i believe it is one of the best piano sample lib (and best regarding release notes and sympathetic resonance)
It really is a fantastic idea. I am going to try the PSP verb as soon as I get home from work. I wish Spectrasonics would add something like this to Keyscape, along with a few more acoustic pianos. Thanks for the tip!
For sure! I hope they continue to add more acoustic pianos -- the double-felt grand was a nice surprise earlier this year. Spectrasonics has a knack for finding instruments with a lot of character, and I'd love to see what else they come up with. And I totally agree with you on resonance modeling, it's a standard feature in most digital pianos nowadays.
Oh gosh, I've added saturation, warmers, delays, short reverbs, and all kinds of modeled channel strips to bring life to sampled piano libraries...but this is genius and simple. :)
hello, very useful video. I recently purchased reaper, but I wouldn't be like adding , PSP Pianoverb to the VST that I want to modify (in my case garritan cfx). I saw that you tried the pianos of the vienna symphionic library, do you think it makes sense to use this trick on these pianos?
Yes, for sure! VSL Synchron libraries have excellent samples and playability, but I don't care for the way they handle resonance. Olivier over on the Pianoteq forums has some good demonstrations of how he uses Pianoteq with a few different VSL Synchron libraries, with some clever scripting in Reaper (or Logic) to ever so briefly release the sustain pedal on each key press (to trigger damper-down samples, so you don't need something like Trackspacer). The only drawback to that approach is in passages with lots of notes during a long sustain where the repedaling logic can shorten the decay, but in that case the approach I demonstrated here is probably a good happy medium.
Very clever!! Subscribed :) now, if only some kind of setup like this could be constructed for guitar... I wish I could breathe some sympathetic resonance life into some guitar plugins
Thanks! That’s a super interesting idea - Pianoteq does have a modeled classical guitar with resonance parameters you can dial in, and you can use that as an effect… you might be onto something!
@@andy-simmons I don't have pianoteq 8 yet, but i'll try it out as soon as I do 👀 and also, i'm guessing because the classic guitar would have nylon strings, there wouldn't be nearly enough resonance as with steel string guitars, so it might be more limited in how realistic it can get... but still, a really good concept that i hope at least someone implements if i can't
Do you by a chance have the VSL Steinway D-274? It sounds quite obnoxiously bright out of the box in the mids and treble registers. A similar tutorial on fixing the voicing and adding more overtones via Pianoteq 8 would be great!
Thanks for checking it out! I tried the Steinway D when VSL offered a free trial last summer, but didn’t pick it up because, as you said, it’s aggressively bright! I don’t know if this helps (as it’s just for Logic and Reaper), but with the right DAW and a little scripting you can just use the damper down/pedal up samples in VSL so the Pianoteq resonances don’t clash at all. Olivier Frappier came up with this approach and describes it here: forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=10252 I wish I could help more on fixing the voicing… I’d love to know if you find a good solution, as I’m still in the market for a nice sampled Steinway library. I’m sure the VSL D would be great for cutting through an orchestra but most of my stuff is solo piano and it’s a bit bright for my taste.
Thank you, I will check Frappier’s explanations. This is very helpful! If I find a nice solution, will be happy to share. I find it so strange that the voicing issue wasn’t addressed on that particular Steinway D piano itself and was recorded with such bright tone. It is very unlike the iconic sound of a concert Steinway, which is pretty much the staple of the piano sound for countless musicians… It is a relief though that VSL released Fazioli library and that one is more on the mellow and warm side of things.
For sure! This can be a fun trick when looking for a specific sound, but Pianoteq is more responsive than any sample library I’ve played and is my go-to practice library, The resonance modeling is a neat addition, definitely useful for more than just pianos!
Thanks for watching! Yeah, I was wondering if they were slightly out of tune with each other. Pianoteq Pro lets you individually tune each string... it would be tedious to do it all by hand, but there is an API, so there may be a way to automate looping through all 88 keys in the sample library, trigger each one, send that through a tuner, read the result, and set that using the Pianoteq API (assuming that capability is exposed - I’ve not used the Pteq API myself yet).
Great video❤ To the companies: RECORD OR MODEL THE BODY AND SYMPATHETIC RESONANCE WITH YOUR PIANO LIBRARIES - IT SOUNDS LIKE SH+- WITHOUT THEM That voicing thing on the pianoteq is just fabulous i wish there was a way to do that with sampled libraries as well
Thanks so much! Yeah, the sheer amount of control you get with Pianoteq is wild, and it's REALLY nice that they added this feature for libs that are sorely missing it. I don't have a good feel for how easy it would be to implement that voicing feature (hammer hardness scaling with velocity seems tricky on sample libs compared to physical modeling synths), but that would be pretty cool! Agree with you on resonance -- for all NI's faults, at least they add resonance (not sure if it's modeled or recorded, but it sounds decent to my ear) to all of their pianos and can be toggled and mixed along with things like mechanical noises and even some stuff like bench squeaks. Seems like VI devs generally focus on what will sound good in a mix or on a "clean" recording. Or they'll preserve all the mechanical noises on the "intimate" pianos, but that tends to make missing resonance stand out even more to my ear.
Totally! I'm actually working on some follow-ups to this video with NI/Kontakt and VSL libraries. Many NI libraries have pretty good resonance modeling out of the box (Noire, etc), but Pianoteq handles things like re-triggering resonance and models resonance while pedaling more realistically. NI makes it easy to disable their own resonance modeling on their pianos in the GUI, and I believe with the full version of Kontakt you could theoretically disable pedal down samples for any Kontakt library and not have to worry much about clashing resonance. VSL Synchron pianos also work really well because they have no pedal down samples.
@@andy-simmonsgreat thanks for the quick and elaborate reply. Let me know when the follow up video is out :) and last question: do you need pianoteq standard for this or is the stage version also enough for this trick?
Great Video! As a live engineer i'm right now thinking about how could i recreate the track spacer on a console (say A&H SQ for example) ... so it's kind of (or exactly?) like a side chained multi band compressor but with 31 bands? I think i could recreate it in Metric Halos +DSP ....
Thanks! Honestly that's over my head, ha! I think your summary was probably much better than I did in the video. I'm a keys player still trying to wrap my head around the audio engineering side of things. Anyway, I tried it with a Soothe 2 trial as recommended by a couple of commenters, and it works REALLY well. Better than Trackspacer (more surgical), but there's about a 42 MS delay, which is enough to throw me off a little bit. Oeksound also makes Soothe Live, which looks like it's made to do the same thing, but on a console and low latency. You probably have much better ideas than I'd have here, but I remembered your comment as I stumbled across this, and thought I'd share just in case it's helpful. Cheers! oeksound.com/plugins/soothe-live/
@@andy-simmons No way, your description of the plugin was on point and it sounds great as you set it up. That's why i wrap my head around how this could be realized in hardware. You'd need many band splits, in both the "dry" and the "effect" signal, then sidechain compress each fx band triggered by its equivalent dry band, rejoin all the compressed fx bands to a full spectrum fx channel, then merge with the the dry signal ... in stereo, so you'd need 60 band splits, 62 compressors and 62 channels to rejoin on a stereo bus - great thing you can then merge it with the dry channel that hasn't been split before. That said, to sidechain compress a single full spectrum effect signal triggered by full spectrum dry signal already sounds considerably advanced compared to uncompressed fx. Kind of an acoustic inlay.
Do I need Pianoteq Pro or would the Stage Version also let me do this? Cause I tried PIanoteq as main Piano Software but I liked Keyscape much more and so I would never use all the Pro Version Features.
Hey, thanks for stopping by. You'd need at least Pianoteq Standard for this, or you could give the free PSP Pianoverb a shot. Pianoverb helps a lot with the staccatos.
Thanks! I don't have a Mac, but there's a pretty good discussion going on the Pianoteq forums about this, and someone demonstrates a really clever way to do this with Logic over there. His particular approach exploits a quirk with the VSL pianos where you can trick it into playing pedal-up samples so you don't have to worry about doubling resonance, but I'm not totally sure that works in Keyscape. From what I understand, you'd set up Pianoteq 8 as a track with a preset loaded and velocity curve flattened as shown in this video, sidechained listening to bus 1. Then you'd load whichever sample piano library you'd like on track 2, sending audio to bus 1. I think you'd then add Trackspacer as an insert on the Pianoteq track, and sidechain Trackspacer so it's also listening to bus 1. Bear in mind I have no experience in Logic so I'm just piecing that together from what I see described on the forum, and nobody else has talked about Trackspacer yet, so I'm guessing about the steps there. That said, there are several Logic users on the Pianoteq forums that could probably help you step through the details -- it's a good community! Here's a thread that might be helpful to read and/or comment on: forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=10252
You know being a keyscape advocate such as myself I NEVER USE THE C7 GRAND!! I use for live the Natural or Bright Settings the Most. Even at home i will use those 2 i named the classical or softest BASICALLY NEVER THE FIRST PRESET THE CONCERT GRAND😂
Oh man I totally agree, the other presets sound so good! Even the default with some nice reverb sounds really good. Keyscape’s grand is super clean, sits so well in a mix, and it has a ton of character. I was mostly looking for a dry/clean piano to demonstrate the Pianoteq resonance modeling, not at all a knock on Keyscape! Just one of the drawbacks of sampling is that the strings don’t interact with each other like they do on a piano so it always sounds different to me than a real piano. I like to use physical modeling to try get the best of both worlds.
@@andy-simmons NO I didn't think you were knocking keyscape at all I was just thinking out loud saying that's why I don't use the first preset🤣🤣 your demonstration was phenomenal!! And your attention to detail and the way you Morph pianoteq is UNREAL!!
Thanks for watching! It’s a new feature in Pianoteq 8, so unfortunately you won’t get overtones in v6. I believe it’s $29 to upgrade any version of Pianoteq to v8, or if that’s too much, they also have a video contest each year where every participant gets a $20 gift card with no expiration date (and higher prizes for winners).
Is there a way for the piano to resonate with real external audio? For example, if you hold down the pedal on a real piano and play a loud brass instrument next to it, it will resonate with the brass sound. Can I route recorded brass into Pianoteq and have that resonate the piano? Also, is there a way to route audio into pianoteq to use the pianoteq reverb? The idea would be to make other recorded instruments sound like they were on the same stage. How cool would it be to route audio to "speakers" on the sound stage that were then picked up by the virtual mics you place on the digital stage?
Those are some cool ideas! I’ve sent a bunch of different instruments into the piano resonance, and a lot of them sound really nice to my ear (guitar, for example). Never tried brass, but it would definitely work. When you route audio into the virtual piano, I don’t know if there’s a way to route it into the Pianoteq reverb in the strict sense (your example of speakers on the stage getting picked up by the mics). The resonance does use the Pianoteq reverb (if enabled), but you could also disable the Pianoteq reverb and send both tracks through another reverb to maybe approximate what you’re after. I agree that would be a really cool feature for them to implement! I’ve heard that’s an old recording studio trick, and it seems like the Pianoteq engine could likely implement that feature.
sounds better dry in my humble opinion particularly for Gospel, jazz or R&b. I do think the highs could Be slightly higher. But the reverb is not essential in the aforementioned genres
Www wait so you're telling me that you can actually *route* any audio input through Pianoteq and process it through its resonators ??? If yes, would be bonkers for Sound Design
Hey! Thanks for watching. This is a new feature with version 8 of Pianoteq (Standard or Pro). You could get some of this functionality with the free PSP Pianoverb plugin, too.
Thanks for watching! This is a new feature in version 8, the older versions don't have a way to resonate external audio. I think the upgrade is $29 (or less if you enter their annual video contest - every entry gets $20 credit in their store, winners get more).
Hey Andy, I'm having trouble setting it up. It's weird because it isn't complicated at all, yet when I pull down the velocity to zero in pianoteq, it won't make any resonating sound at all no matter what I try on my keys. I do hear pedal noise and pushing keys noise but that's it... anything else you have set up that you didn't mention...? I got the latest version of pianoteq 8, yet it doesn't work when I pull the velocity down.
Thanks for stopping by! It sounds like Pianoteq isn’t getting an audio signal from the sample library, and is just responding to MIDI input based on your description of the behavior. Which DAW are you using?
I came back to this video because I recently bought pianoteq 8 pro so I have to say I skipped straight to step 2 (haha..) but I rewatched everything and I did try sending audio through pianoteq aswel now but that didn't seem to work. I'm using FL. Tried it with a plugin called 'Patcher' that lets you create signal chain of either midi, audio or both however you like. I set it up as keyscape first, sending audio to pianoteq and from pianoteq to out. I didn't get sound. Then I tried sending midi to pianoteq aswel but then I just got sound from pianoteq. Is there something in pianoteq I should trigger to have it receive external audio? Or should it be able to receive audio and send it out by default? @@andy-simmons
@@Official_RIDM weird! I haven't had to do anything to it to get it to receive audio in Bitwig or Ableton. I see FL Studio has a free trial, I'll play with it a bit tonight after the kids go to bed and see if I can figure out what's going on there. Edit: I played with it, but I think I need to watch a couple FL 101 videos to even get to the point you’re at, ha. You might also try emailing support@modartt.com to see if they know of a way to do it, or if there are any known issues with this functionality in FL Studio.
@@andy-simmons thanks for the effort! Haha... Yea FL can be a bit confusing in comparison. the easyest way should be using the plugin called patcher. it's basically a blank instrument you can fill in. You can put VST's inside of patcher and visually drag the chain how you want it it be up to the output. I basically just tried it in there. There are other ways but they're more complicated and it shouldn't make any difference. I emailed them. They should know.
Thank you for your answer! Just upgraded to Pianoteq 8 (standard), but still when I set the velocity curve from 0 to 0, the only thing I can hear is the sustained pedal effect, and of course the sound of the hammers... 😐
@@Rafaelsoffer Cool! I believe you just need to sidechain Keyscape into Pianoteq and that should route the audio through Pianoteq’s resonator. If you still run into trouble, you might try asking in the Pianoteq forums (forum.modartt.com). Folks are pretty helpful over there and I know at least a few of them use Cubase.
Thanks for watching! I happen to be using Pro here but I believe it works with all versions. I’m almost positive I’ve seen folks do it with Standard in the Pianoteq forums. I’ll see if I can confirm later tonight.
Thanks for watching! Someone on the Modartt forums mentioned that Pianoteq 8 shows up as an insert effect in Cubase and you can drop it onto audio or MIDI tracks. You may have already figured that out though - I wish I knew more about Cubase to dive into more specifics. I’d love to know if you figure out the steps. You might consider posting in one of these threads: forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=10252 vi-control.net/community/threads/adding-pianoteq-resonance-to-sampled-pianos.145427/ Hopefully someone there can point you in the right direction!
Thanks for stopping by! I don't think it's currently possible in Studio One unless you're on a Mac and you load the AU version of Pianoteq. There's an issue with the VST3 implementation of Pianoteq that prevents sidechaining in Studio One, as far as I understand it.
It doesn’t look like you can add Pianoteq as a regular insert effect in AUM, but I might be missing something as I’m not an expert with AUM. I’d be really curious if anyone else has figured it out. I’ve heard Drambo is a little more flexible and have been thinking of checking that out, too.
It's my understanding that in Cubase Pianoteq will show up as an insert effect, and you can drop it onto MIDI or audio tracks. I'm not sure you'd want to just drop it right on the same track as your sampled piano if you're hoping to do any extra processing to the resonance (ducking, EQ, etc), but I have to imagine someone more familiar with Cubase could point you in the right direction to figure out the correct routing. There are some good discussions on the Pianoteq forums and on VI Control, and I know there are Cubase users on both. I'd love to know if you find any answers! Here are a couple threads you might consider posting in: forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=10252 vi-control.net/community/threads/adding-pianoteq-resonance-to-sampled-pianos.145427/ I've also had really good luck asking questions in the "Your DAW" forum on VI Control: vi-control.net/community/forums/your-daw.47/
Thanks for watching! There's a pretty good discussion going on the Pianoteq forums about this, and someone demonstrates a really clever way to do this with Logic over there. His particular approach exploits a quirk with the VSL pianos where you can trick it into playing pedal-up samples so you don't have to worry about doubling resonance, but I'm not totally sure that works in Keyscape. From what I understand, you'd set up Pianoteq 8 as a track with a preset loaded and velocity curve flattened as shown in this video, sidechained listening to bus 1. Then you'd load whichever sample piano library you'd like on track 2, sending audio to bus 1. I think you'd then add Trackspacer as an insert on the Pianoteq track, and sidechain Trackspacer so it's also listening to bus 1. Bear in mind I have no experience in Logic so I'm just piecing that together from what I see described on the forum, and nobody else has talked about Trackspacer yet, so I'm guessing about the steps there. That said, there are several Logic users on the Pianoteq forums that could probably help you step through the details -- it's a good community! Here's a thread that might be helpful to read and/or comment on: forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=10252
Thanks for watching! I haven't seen anyone describe their configuration in Pro Tools yet, but you might try emailing support@modartt.com to see if they have any guidance.
@@andy-simmonsthere’s a sidechain button in the interface you have to activate. But there’s also a Delta monitor, so you can hear exactly how much signal is being removed, which makes it easier to dial in the amount of carving you want. You can also shape the response in detail more than TrackSpacer… but mostly you can narrow the resonant peaks to not cut so much. TrackSpacer acts more like a wide-range ducker, which can be really good in certain circumstances. But I think Soothe will yield better results. Now to actually try it… I have both Pianoteq 8 and Keyscapes. BTW, I’ve played that exact piano… it’s one of Jim Wilson’s collection and it is in his living room. And, no, it doesn’t chop off on key release like the library. 😊
@@aeiplanner yeah, for sure! I ended up picking it up on Black Friday, but it gives me about 42ms latency, enough to throw me off for live playing. It does sound much more surgical though, and would be great for post processing.
Pianoteq is my favorite library personally, but the timbre can be a little polarizing. I love it because it’s more playable than anything else I’ve tried, and while the v8 revoicings helped a lot, it still sounds synthesized (to my ear). Sometimes I want the character of a specific piano, and I haven’t figured out how to dial that into a physical model if it’s possible. This C7 is one of my favorite pianos, as are a couple CFX libraries I have, and I haven’t been able to get those sounds from Pianoteq. But if I had to pick just one library, it’d definitely be Pianoteq!
Of course it sounds more alive, because you have the Keyscape sound totally dry no reverb, lol. Still sounds better just keyscape with room reverb imho.
Yeah, from the description: “Of course, you can always add some reverb to make it sound better than the dry samples, but this tutorial is specifically for folks looking to make the strings ring out like an acoustic piano.”
@@andy-simmons The pianoteq provides a bit of extra resonance, but at the expense of it also having phasing issues between the two sounds on held notes that you can clearly hear. I'm not really sure that the benefit outweighs the costs on this one. Plus I've played a grand piano in a large space before and it can sound pretty clean withouth those extra metallic style resonances on top. I'd still choose just Keyscape + room reverb in this instance :)
@@1wibble230 Yeah that's fair! I'm just a piano enthusiast still trying to figure out the audio engineering side of things, so appreciate you putting a name to something like phasing issues. There's a pulsating/beating sound that sticks out in the sustains and I'm wondering if that's what you're talking about? I also totally agree with you Keyscape sounds great with a little reverb, but it seems (at least from the player perspective) like all the little quirks you'd hear on an acoustic are missing. There are some sample libraries like the VSL CFX where every note repetition feels distinct, like it has its own personality, and I don't really get that with Keyscape. I was playing around with this as a way to give it some more life, but this is totally just an experiment/starting point. And certainly not a knock on Keyscape, I would sell it if I didn't like it, but I do think other libraries are better acoustic piano simulators. Appreciate the feedback!
Ha, yeah, it's overkill for a lot of people. It's often better to have clean fundamentals with no resonance, especially when playing in a mix. I even think most solo stock Keyscape C7 recordings sound fine, it's more about the pianist than anything. That said, I could easily pick Keyscape's C7 out from a real acoustic grand in any relatively dry solo track, especially so with accomplished performers. It just sounds like a sample library to my ear... missing the liveliness of a real grand piano. The biggest things that stick out to me are stacattos sound like someone threw carpet on the soundboard, sustain pedal is either up or down with no in-between, sustain repedaling doesn't work, una corda doesn't change timbre (or less noticeably, level), and sostenuto doesn't even sustain the fundamental, let alone overtones. Pianoteq doesn't fix all the issues (the only pedal improvements are decent repedaling and it'll add sost. resonance w/ overtones), but it shores up the resonance gaps really nicely to my ear, and it's cheaper and easier than recording an acoustic grand. Pianoteq doesn't have any playability issues AFAIK. It works great out of the box and feels remarkably close to playing a real acoustic piano even with the most advanced techniques, but it also has that modeled timbre that seems to bother some folks.
NOTE: If you don't have Pianoteq, PSP Pianoverb is a cool free plugin that will produce similar results to what we get around the 2:13 mark.
www.pspaudioware.com/products/psp-pianoverb
NOTE 2: Modartt's support team reported the issue I briefly touched on here around 1:34 (VST3 version of the Pianoteq plugin missing sidechain functionality in Studio One) to their development team on 11/14/2023. In the meantime, if you have a Mac, you can use the Pianoteq AU plugin in Studio One and it'll sidechain.
NOTE 3: If you're clever with scripting, you probably don't need a plugin like WavesFactory Trackspacer. You need to bypass the sustain pedal in the sample library, and queue the note-off messages until the pedal is released, so it only ever plays damper-down samples and you don't need to worry about resonance buildup. I'm working on figuring this out in Bitwig and will put up another tutorial when I get that working. @olivierw.frappier came up with this super interesting approach, and provided scripts for this that work with Logic and Reaper here: forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=10252
I suggest you to try this with Soothe 2 instead of Trackspacer, as the control over the ducked frequencies is way more precise.
Very interesting experiment btw, sounds great although in my opinion there's a little too much difference between the pianoteq generated sounds and keyscape (maybe passing both through the same reverb+compressor might help?).
I wish @SpectrasonicsVIDEO could add these resonance features inside Omnisphere/Keyscape...
I keep hearing that about Soothe 2, thanks for the suggestion! It looks like a super useful plugin. Looks like they have a trial going now, I’ll have to give it a shot.
I agree with you, the resonance could definitely still use some tweaking. It helps to dial in the mics, reverb, EQ, and resonance-related settings inside Pianoteq to more closely match the original piano, and that’s a great idea to try passing both through the same reverb/compressor. Appreciate the tip!
@@pietrogirardi Soothe 2 was a great suggestion, thank you! I get an extra 42 ms delay with it, which is just enough to throw me off for live playing, but it definitely sounds more surgical than Trackspacer, and makes the end result noticeably more convincing.
What are the Soothe 2 settings you use?@@andy-simmons
@@andy-simmons, I came here to recommend side-chaining Soothe2, as as alternative to Trackspacer. I've been a Trackspacer user for many years, and I feel that Soothe2 sounds better and is more flexible,
This is the type of information you rarely find on UA-cam. Thank you
That is absolutely a considerable improvement. I did it and it really works wonders. Thank you for sharing that.
Of course, glad it was helpful! Yeah, it's such a neat feature. Thanks for stopping by!
!... (rare) Musical approach & result!! Thank you.
Thank you so much!
This is absolutely brilliant, I dont like the sound of pianoteq by itself, but really respect everything else its capable of, so this is perfect for me!!
Thanks so much! I just checked out your channel by the way, love what I’ve heard of your Final Fantasy arrangements. The FF series has some of my favorite music - just subbed!
Thank you so much for sharing this! Piano is my main instrument and I have Keyscape and am about to take the plunge with Pianoteq too.
I will most definitely experiment with your layering techniques. This is a night and day difference.
💖🎹💖
This is a gamechanger
This is so cool! I’ve been using Keyscape since it came out, but this makes me want to pick up Pianoteq just to try this technique. Very cool of you to share!
Hi Andy, thank you for sharing, it’s great hearing the results…and demonstrating what I’ve been missing out on! Also a great example of making our collection of plugins play nicely together (pardon the pun). Nice playing by the way.
Thank you so much!
Awesome Andy! That leads to the idea to create a sampled piano plus physical modelling for the resonances etc.
WOW! Would have never thought of this! And just came across your channel...you just got a new subscriber! Thanks and nice to meet you Andy!!!
Thanks, Averil! Nice to meet you, too!
Wow thank you so so much for this incredibly valuable tutorial :o
Of course! Glad it was helpful!
Brilliant! Ty. As a user of Pianoteq 8 Pro, Keyscape, Garritan, etc ;) .. I have to share that the new Modern D piano from UVI is NEXT LEVEL.
@@musiccreation1198 Yes, Modern D is crazy impressive. I really like their Modern U, also. Definitely looking forward to more stuff from VI Labs!
This is a super good tip. Thank you.
Awesome, glad it was helpful!
Nice! Digital piano manufactures like Yamaha, Casio, Kawai and Dexibell actually use the exact same method, combining sample-playback engine with a dedicated physical modeling engine for resonance for better realism. I always prefer the piano sounds achieved with this hybrid approach. To me it's warmer than the super detailed sound of pure physical modeling. I have no idea Pianoteq can be used this way. Thanks for sharing!
Cool video Andy! I wanna start working with Pianoteq Standard in the future for my videos as well. I will definitely come back to your video!
This is a really clever idea.
Thanks, Mark! Yeah, this is such a neat feature they added to Pianoteq.
Neat. I prefer to use Pianoteq for writing because it feels like a piano, but this enables its use with big-sounding libraries. Why didn't I think of that!? Thanks. (Pianoverb does some but not all of that).
Yeah, Pianoteq is the most playable library I’ve tried! It sounds great on its own, but this is a pretty handy feature when you’re chasing a specific sound.
very interesting! I took your advice and test Pianoverb and I think I like it more than the effect that adds Pianoteq
Awesome! Yeah Pianoverb is a really neat plugin, especially for free.
Bloody Genius!!!
This is tremendous. Thank you!
Glad it helped! Thanks for stopping by!
Hi! This video was suggested to me from a comment of one of my videos (I recorded a few videos with Pianoteq 8 which I really like but the sound is still a little synthetic). Do you think it's worth investing in Keyscape and using your technique? I really like Pianoteq because it is very lively and playable although the sound is not as good as the best piano sampled libraries. Thanks.
Hi Thierry! I like the variety of keyboards you get with Keyscape, and they have some really nice character. VSL pianos are a bit more responsive and detailed, but significantly larger and more expensive. I don't think I'd spend the money on Keyscape JUST for the C7, but if you want a nice collection of keyboard instruments, Keyscape is a good value.
will have to try it out soon! Another question: I notice on a lot of libraries that when you have the sustain pedal pressed and play different notes, chords, runs, in different registers - you do not hear the kind of cluster sound that a real grand piano would generate in such a situation. How can that best be emulated? I have composed things with a library where it sounds good with pedal down, but much later realized it cannot be played like that on a real piano. Would be good to have already known that while composing
Thank you Andy!!
You bet! Thanks for watching!
I do the same Thinks with VSL D-274 Synchron and LOGIC midi script : great soluce
Great tutoruial!
Thanks Paul! It’s fun to experiment with, there are still some kinks to work out but it’s cool to see progress being made on resonance modeling!
Thank you! It worked! Very cool! Is it possible to do in FL Studio?
You bet! I believe you have to trick FL Studio into allowing you to sidechain Pianoteq. I haven't done it myself, but someone on VI Control explained the steps here: vi-control.net/community/threads/adding-pianoteq-resonance-to-sampled-pianos.145427/post-5506451
I recommend using a simple side chain ducking of pianoteq audio (resonance) instead of the spacer with dynamic frequency ducking. Even lower volume of that channel would probably sound better than with that spacer plugin (meaning, the master bus compressor will also bring pianoteq audio up when keyscape's volume is low). There are plenty of sample based piano vst's that come with built-in sympathetic resonance. overall idea and creativity here is very useful. most advanced users don't try to do that, so cheers for making this.
Thanks for the tip! I'm more of a piano player trying to figure out the whole audio engineering side of things, so I figured there would be some better approaches here, and really appreciate feedback on that aspect. I had initially tried the simple side chain ducking, but could never get the staccatos (especially bass) to sound quite right to my ear, but it's possible there were other techniques I could have employed to address that. It felt like the upper overtones would either "fade in" too much or I'd get too much resonance buildup, and couldn't find a good sweet spot between the two.
There's still some degree of "fading in" (there's probably a better way to describe the sound) of the overtones with TrackSpacer, but it was more subtle that way. And I agree with you -- NI for example does a pretty good job with sympathetic resonance. I haven't found any that are quite as realistic as Pianoteq (e.g. NI pianos don't have repedaling resonance), but I imagine other libraries have done a good job with it.
I do agree with you that TrackSpacer doesn't feel like the ideal solution here. Ultimately it would be my preference to just use pedal-up/damper-down samples and layer Pianoteq resonance with maybe some subtle simple side chain ducking if necessary. I'm kicking around some ideas about a possible plugin that could assist with this by bypassing the sustain pedal, queueing note-off messages, etc. but haven't fully thought it through, and while I have some coding experience, I've never written a DAW plugin, so I'll need to figure out a framework for that first. JUCE looks interesting.
@@andy-simmons you can consider adding envelope or transient shaper for fade in and fade out, trigger with midi keys, but overall i don't think that is worth the effort. The intermediate result u showed in the video was very good. I recommend that you check vilabs ravenscroft, it can't replace pianoteq but i believe it is one of the best piano sample lib (and best regarding release notes and sympathetic resonance)
It really is a fantastic idea. I am going to try the PSP verb as soon as I get home from work. I wish Spectrasonics would add something like this to Keyscape, along with a few more acoustic pianos. Thanks for the tip!
For sure! I hope they continue to add more acoustic pianos -- the double-felt grand was a nice surprise earlier this year. Spectrasonics has a knack for finding instruments with a lot of character, and I'd love to see what else they come up with. And I totally agree with you on resonance modeling, it's a standard feature in most digital pianos nowadays.
Wow, thank you so much!
You bet! Thanks for stopping by!
Hi, is PianoVerb also can do the trick? Is there a tutorial?
Hey! Yeah, Pianoverb works pretty well if you send any dry piano through it. Here’s a quick overview: ua-cam.com/video/q8JEiCM8_To/v-deo.html
Oh gosh, I've added saturation, warmers, delays, short reverbs, and all kinds of modeled channel strips to bring life to sampled piano libraries...but this is genius and simple. :)
Glad it was helpful, thanks for stopping by!
WHOA. Thank you
Fantastic tip! Much appreciated.
You bet! Glad it was helpful.
hello, very useful video. I recently purchased reaper, but I wouldn't be like adding , PSP Pianoverb to the VST that I want to modify (in my case garritan cfx).
I saw that you tried the pianos of the vienna symphionic library, do you think it makes sense to use this trick on these pianos?
Yes, for sure! VSL Synchron libraries have excellent samples and playability, but I don't care for the way they handle resonance. Olivier over on the Pianoteq forums has some good demonstrations of how he uses Pianoteq with a few different VSL Synchron libraries, with some clever scripting in Reaper (or Logic) to ever so briefly release the sustain pedal on each key press (to trigger damper-down samples, so you don't need something like Trackspacer). The only drawback to that approach is in passages with lots of notes during a long sustain where the repedaling logic can shorten the decay, but in that case the approach I demonstrated here is probably a good happy medium.
Very clever!! Subscribed :) now, if only some kind of setup like this could be constructed for guitar... I wish I could breathe some sympathetic resonance life into some guitar plugins
Thanks! That’s a super interesting idea - Pianoteq does have a modeled classical guitar with resonance parameters you can dial in, and you can use that as an effect… you might be onto something!
@@andy-simmons I don't have pianoteq 8 yet, but i'll try it out as soon as I do 👀 and also, i'm guessing because the classic guitar would have nylon strings, there wouldn't be nearly enough resonance as with steel string guitars, so it might be more limited in how realistic it can get... but still, a really good concept that i hope at least someone implements if i can't
Do you by a chance have the VSL Steinway D-274? It sounds quite obnoxiously bright out of the box in the mids and treble registers. A similar tutorial on fixing the voicing and adding more overtones via Pianoteq 8 would be great!
Thanks for checking it out! I tried the Steinway D when VSL offered a free trial last summer, but didn’t pick it up because, as you said, it’s aggressively bright! I don’t know if this helps (as it’s just for Logic and Reaper), but with the right DAW and a little scripting you can just use the damper down/pedal up samples in VSL so the Pianoteq resonances don’t clash at all. Olivier Frappier came up with this approach and describes it here: forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=10252
I wish I could help more on fixing the voicing… I’d love to know if you find a good solution, as I’m still in the market for a nice sampled Steinway library. I’m sure the VSL D would be great for cutting through an orchestra but most of my stuff is solo piano and it’s a bit bright for my taste.
Thank you, I will check Frappier’s explanations. This is very helpful!
If I find a nice solution, will be happy to share. I find it so strange that the voicing issue wasn’t addressed on that particular Steinway D piano itself and was recorded with such bright tone. It is very unlike the iconic sound of a concert Steinway, which is pretty much the staple of the piano sound for countless musicians…
It is a relief though that VSL released Fazioli library and that one is more on the mellow and warm side of things.
Very cool. Personally, I'd just use Pianoteq :) but I imagine this effect could be very cool on other instruments like picked guitar, harps etc!
For sure! This can be a fun trick when looking for a specific sound, but Pianoteq is more responsive than any sample library I’ve played and is my go-to practice library, The resonance modeling is a neat addition, definitely useful for more than just pianos!
Brilliant!
Thanks so much!
Really cool concept. Is it just me or is the tuning on pianoteq slightly off from Keyscape?
Thanks for watching! Yeah, I was wondering if they were slightly out of tune with each other. Pianoteq Pro lets you individually tune each string... it would be tedious to do it all by hand, but there is an API, so there may be a way to automate looping through all 88 keys in the sample library, trigger each one, send that through a tuner, read the result, and set that using the Pianoteq API (assuming that capability is exposed - I’ve not used the Pteq API myself yet).
Great video❤
To the companies: RECORD OR MODEL THE BODY AND SYMPATHETIC RESONANCE WITH YOUR PIANO LIBRARIES - IT SOUNDS LIKE SH+- WITHOUT THEM
That voicing thing on the pianoteq is just fabulous i wish there was a way to do that with sampled libraries as well
Thanks so much! Yeah, the sheer amount of control you get with Pianoteq is wild, and it's REALLY nice that they added this feature for libs that are sorely missing it. I don't have a good feel for how easy it would be to implement that voicing feature (hammer hardness scaling with velocity seems tricky on sample libs compared to physical modeling synths), but that would be pretty cool!
Agree with you on resonance -- for all NI's faults, at least they add resonance (not sure if it's modeled or recorded, but it sounds decent to my ear) to all of their pianos and can be toggled and mixed along with things like mechanical noises and even some stuff like bench squeaks. Seems like VI devs generally focus on what will sound good in a mix or on a "clean" recording. Or they'll preserve all the mechanical noises on the "intimate" pianos, but that tends to make missing resonance stand out even more to my ear.
nice! does this work with any sample library? like the ones from NI too? (i mean applying pianoteq resonance to it)
Totally! I'm actually working on some follow-ups to this video with NI/Kontakt and VSL libraries. Many NI libraries have pretty good resonance modeling out of the box (Noire, etc), but Pianoteq handles things like re-triggering resonance and models resonance while pedaling more realistically. NI makes it easy to disable their own resonance modeling on their pianos in the GUI, and I believe with the full version of Kontakt you could theoretically disable pedal down samples for any Kontakt library and not have to worry much about clashing resonance. VSL Synchron pianos also work really well because they have no pedal down samples.
@@andy-simmonsgreat thanks for the quick and elaborate reply. Let me know when the follow up video is out :) and last question: do you need pianoteq standard for this or is the stage version also enough for this trick?
@@tendingtropic7778 you bet! You need Standard or Pro for this.
Nice Strat!😉
Yes it is! Thanks, Dad! :)
Great Video! As a live engineer i'm right now thinking about how could i recreate the track spacer on a console (say A&H SQ for example) ... so it's kind of (or exactly?) like a side chained multi band compressor but with 31 bands? I think i could recreate it in Metric Halos +DSP ....
Thanks! Honestly that's over my head, ha! I think your summary was probably much better than I did in the video. I'm a keys player still trying to wrap my head around the audio engineering side of things. Anyway, I tried it with a Soothe 2 trial as recommended by a couple of commenters, and it works REALLY well. Better than Trackspacer (more surgical), but there's about a 42 MS delay, which is enough to throw me off a little bit. Oeksound also makes Soothe Live, which looks like it's made to do the same thing, but on a console and low latency. You probably have much better ideas than I'd have here, but I remembered your comment as I stumbled across this, and thought I'd share just in case it's helpful. Cheers! oeksound.com/plugins/soothe-live/
@@andy-simmons No way, your description of the plugin was on point and it sounds great as you set it up. That's why i wrap my head around how this could be realized in hardware. You'd need many band splits, in both the "dry" and the "effect" signal, then sidechain compress each fx band triggered by its equivalent dry band, rejoin all the compressed fx bands to a full spectrum fx channel, then merge with the the dry signal ... in stereo, so you'd need 60 band splits, 62 compressors and 62 channels to rejoin on a stereo bus - great thing you can then merge it with the dry channel that hasn't been split before. That said, to sidechain compress a single full spectrum effect signal triggered by full spectrum dry signal already sounds considerably advanced compared to uncompressed fx. Kind of an acoustic inlay.
Do I need Pianoteq Pro or would the Stage Version also let me do this?
Cause I tried PIanoteq as main Piano Software but I liked Keyscape much more and so I would never use all the Pro Version Features.
Hey, thanks for stopping by. You'd need at least Pianoteq Standard for this, or you could give the free PSP Pianoverb a shot. Pianoverb helps a lot with the staccatos.
Really great tip!! I'm trying to duplicate in Logic Pro X. Can you please explain?
Thanks! I don't have a Mac, but there's a pretty good discussion going on the Pianoteq forums about this, and someone demonstrates a really clever way to do this with Logic over there. His particular approach exploits a quirk with the VSL pianos where you can trick it into playing pedal-up samples so you don't have to worry about doubling resonance, but I'm not totally sure that works in Keyscape.
From what I understand, you'd set up Pianoteq 8 as a track with a preset loaded and velocity curve flattened as shown in this video, sidechained listening to bus 1. Then you'd load whichever sample piano library you'd like on track 2, sending audio to bus 1. I think you'd then add Trackspacer as an insert on the Pianoteq track, and sidechain Trackspacer so it's also listening to bus 1. Bear in mind I have no experience in Logic so I'm just piecing that together from what I see described on the forum, and nobody else has talked about Trackspacer yet, so I'm guessing about the steps there.
That said, there are several Logic users on the Pianoteq forums that could probably help you step through the details -- it's a good community! Here's a thread that might be helpful to read and/or comment on: forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=10252
Thanks so much for the info! Much appreciated. @@andy-simmons
very very interesting! just a little thing, the loudness difference between your voice and the first piano sound was "waking me up" quite a bit @2:03
Oh man, I'm sorry about that! Hope your ears are okay -- appreciate the feedback. Loved your recent Bitwig video BTW!
@@andy-simmons haha no worries! Glad you liked the video, soon (next weeks) there will drop a new one :)
@@sternenherz awesome! Looking forward to it!
Does Pianoteq require a piano sound to work with? or can I use any other sound as audio input? thanks!
Any sound source works! Strings will sort of resonate like there’s a piano in the room with the other sound source.
You know being a keyscape advocate such as myself I NEVER USE THE C7 GRAND!! I use for live the Natural or Bright Settings the Most. Even at home i will use those 2 i named the classical or softest BASICALLY NEVER THE FIRST PRESET THE CONCERT GRAND😂
Oh man I totally agree, the other presets sound so good! Even the default with some nice reverb sounds really good. Keyscape’s grand is super clean, sits so well in a mix, and it has a ton of character. I was mostly looking for a dry/clean piano to demonstrate the Pianoteq resonance modeling, not at all a knock on Keyscape! Just one of the drawbacks of sampling is that the strings don’t interact with each other like they do on a piano so it always sounds different to me than a real piano. I like to use physical modeling to try get the best of both worlds.
@@andy-simmons NO I didn't think you were knocking keyscape at all I was just thinking out loud saying that's why I don't use the first preset🤣🤣 your demonstration was phenomenal!! And your attention to detail and the way you Morph pianoteq is UNREAL!!
Does this work on pianoteq6? I made sure both arm recording is enabled and just got the key release noises and not the overtones 😢 using ableton btw
Thanks for watching! It’s a new feature in Pianoteq 8, so unfortunately you won’t get overtones in v6. I believe it’s $29 to upgrade any version of Pianoteq to v8, or if that’s too much, they also have a video contest each year where every participant gets a $20 gift card with no expiration date (and higher prizes for winners).
@@andy-simmons ah that's why. I will upgrade soon. Appreciate your reply 🙏
Is there a way for the piano to resonate with real external audio? For example, if you hold down the pedal on a real piano and play a loud brass instrument next to it, it will resonate with the brass sound. Can I route recorded brass into Pianoteq and have that resonate the piano?
Also, is there a way to route audio into pianoteq to use the pianoteq reverb? The idea would be to make other recorded instruments sound like they were on the same stage.
How cool would it be to route audio to "speakers" on the sound stage that were then picked up by the virtual mics you place on the digital stage?
Those are some cool ideas! I’ve sent a bunch of different instruments into the piano resonance, and a lot of them sound really nice to my ear (guitar, for example). Never tried brass, but it would definitely work.
When you route audio into the virtual piano, I don’t know if there’s a way to route it into the Pianoteq reverb in the strict sense (your example of speakers on the stage getting picked up by the mics). The resonance does use the Pianoteq reverb (if enabled), but you could also disable the Pianoteq reverb and send both tracks through another reverb to maybe approximate what you’re after. I agree that would be a really cool feature for them to implement! I’ve heard that’s an old recording studio trick, and it seems like the Pianoteq engine could likely implement that feature.
sounds better dry in my humble opinion particularly for Gospel, jazz or R&b. I do think the highs could Be slightly higher. But the reverb is not essential in the aforementioned genres
For sure, sometimes you want a clean sound and Keyscape is excellent for that right out of the box. Thanks for watching!
Www wait so you're telling me that you can actually *route* any audio input through Pianoteq and process it through its resonators ??? If yes, would be bonkers for Sound Design
Yep! This is just one example of something you can do (and just a starting point at that), but yeah, it can be used in some really interesting ways.
does this setup work with pianoteq 6 basic version and garritan cfx piano vst? Thank you so much!!
Hey! Thanks for watching. This is a new feature with version 8 of Pianoteq (Standard or Pro). You could get some of this functionality with the free PSP Pianoverb plugin, too.
IS there the way to do something similar with pianoteq 6 pro?
Thanks for watching! This is a new feature in version 8, the older versions don't have a way to resonate external audio. I think the upgrade is $29 (or less if you enter their annual video contest - every entry gets $20 credit in their store, winners get more).
Hey Andy, I'm having trouble setting it up. It's weird because it isn't complicated at all, yet when I pull down the velocity to zero in pianoteq, it won't make any resonating sound at all no matter what I try on my keys. I do hear pedal noise and pushing keys noise but that's it... anything else you have set up that you didn't mention...? I got the latest version of pianoteq 8, yet it doesn't work when I pull the velocity down.
Thanks for stopping by! It sounds like Pianoteq isn’t getting an audio signal from the sample library, and is just responding to MIDI input based on your description of the behavior. Which DAW are you using?
I came back to this video because I recently bought pianoteq 8 pro so I have to say I skipped straight to step 2 (haha..) but I rewatched everything and I did try sending audio through pianoteq aswel now but that didn't seem to work. I'm using FL. Tried it with a plugin called 'Patcher' that lets you create signal chain of either midi, audio or both however you like. I set it up as keyscape first, sending audio to pianoteq and from pianoteq to out. I didn't get sound. Then I tried sending midi to pianoteq aswel but then I just got sound from pianoteq. Is there something in pianoteq I should trigger to have it receive external audio? Or should it be able to receive audio and send it out by default? @@andy-simmons
@@Official_RIDM weird! I haven't had to do anything to it to get it to receive audio in Bitwig or Ableton. I see FL Studio has a free trial, I'll play with it a bit tonight after the kids go to bed and see if I can figure out what's going on there.
Edit: I played with it, but I think I need to watch a couple FL 101 videos to even get to the point you’re at, ha. You might also try emailing support@modartt.com to see if they know of a way to do it, or if there are any known issues with this functionality in FL Studio.
@@andy-simmons thanks for the effort! Haha... Yea FL can be a bit confusing in comparison. the easyest way should be using the plugin called patcher. it's basically a blank instrument you can fill in. You can put VST's inside of patcher and visually drag the chain how you want it it be up to the output. I basically just tried it in there. There are other ways but they're more complicated and it shouldn't make any difference. I emailed them. They should know.
when I set the velocity curve from 0 to 0 on Pianoteq 7, the only sound I can hear is the sustain pedal.
Any idea how to resolve it?
Hi Rafael -- this was a new feature added in Pianoteq 8 (specifically in the Standard and Pro editions).
Thank you for your answer!
Just upgraded to Pianoteq 8 (standard), but still when I set the velocity curve from 0 to 0, the only thing I can hear is the sustained pedal effect, and of course the sound of the hammers... 😐
@@Rafaelsoffer oh weird! Which DAW are you using? You have the audio from your other piano side-chained into Pianoteq?
Cubase 13, oopps! I will try to side-chain the it into the the Keyscape….
@@Rafaelsoffer Cool! I believe you just need to sidechain Keyscape into Pianoteq and that should route the audio through Pianoteq’s resonator. If you still run into trouble, you might try asking in the Pianoteq forums (forum.modartt.com). Folks are pretty helpful over there and I know at least a few of them use Cubase.
Anybody know how to do this in Ableton? It sounds cool!
Is this only possible with the PRO version?
Thanks for watching! I happen to be using Pro here but I believe it works with all versions. I’m almost positive I’ve seen folks do it with Standard in the Pianoteq forums. I’ll see if I can confirm later tonight.
how to do this in cubase 12?
Thanks for watching! Someone on the Modartt forums mentioned that Pianoteq 8 shows up as an insert effect in Cubase and you can drop it onto audio or MIDI tracks. You may have already figured that out though - I wish I knew more about Cubase to dive into more specifics. I’d love to know if you figure out the steps. You might consider posting in one of these threads:
forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=10252
vi-control.net/community/threads/adding-pianoteq-resonance-to-sampled-pianos.145427/
Hopefully someone there can point you in the right direction!
how to do this method in Studio One 5 ?
Thanks for stopping by! I don't think it's currently possible in Studio One unless you're on a Mac and you load the AU version of Pianoteq. There's an issue with the VST3 implementation of Pianoteq that prevents sidechaining in Studio One, as far as I understand it.
Can you do this on the iOS version on Pianoteq?
I believe so, but I’ll test it tonight in AUM.
It doesn’t look like you can add Pianoteq as a regular insert effect in AUM, but I might be missing something as I’m not an expert with AUM. I’d be really curious if anyone else has figured it out. I’ve heard Drambo is a little more flexible and have been thinking of checking that out, too.
Would be great if anyone could explain how to do this in cubase? Pianoteq doesn’t show a sidechain input, so it is a mystery to me! Thanks.
It's my understanding that in Cubase Pianoteq will show up as an insert effect, and you can drop it onto MIDI or audio tracks. I'm not sure you'd want to just drop it right on the same track as your sampled piano if you're hoping to do any extra processing to the resonance (ducking, EQ, etc), but I have to imagine someone more familiar with Cubase could point you in the right direction to figure out the correct routing. There are some good discussions on the Pianoteq forums and on VI Control, and I know there are Cubase users on both. I'd love to know if you find any answers! Here are a couple threads you might consider posting in:
forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=10252
vi-control.net/community/threads/adding-pianoteq-resonance-to-sampled-pianos.145427/
I've also had really good luck asking questions in the "Your DAW" forum on VI Control: vi-control.net/community/forums/your-daw.47/
what keyboard do you use?
Hi, it's a Yamaha CP88.
@@andy-simmons thank you. also, great video!
nice bit of wizardry..
Thanks, Paul!
Anyone know how to set this up in Logic?
Thanks for watching! There's a pretty good discussion going on the Pianoteq forums about this, and someone demonstrates a really clever way to do this with Logic over there. His particular approach exploits a quirk with the VSL pianos where you can trick it into playing pedal-up samples so you don't have to worry about doubling resonance, but I'm not totally sure that works in Keyscape.
From what I understand, you'd set up Pianoteq 8 as a track with a preset loaded and velocity curve flattened as shown in this video, sidechained listening to bus 1. Then you'd load whichever sample piano library you'd like on track 2, sending audio to bus 1. I think you'd then add Trackspacer as an insert on the Pianoteq track, and sidechain Trackspacer so it's also listening to bus 1. Bear in mind I have no experience in Logic so I'm just piecing that together from what I see described on the forum, and nobody else has talked about Trackspacer yet, so I'm guessing about the steps there.
That said, there are several Logic users on the Pianoteq forums that could probably help you step through the details -- it's a good community! Here's a thread that might be helpful to read and/or comment on: forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=10252
I'm using pro tools, anyone please help me on how to setup this...
Thanks for watching! I haven't seen anyone describe their configuration in Pro Tools yet, but you might try emailing support@modartt.com to see if they have any guidance.
Soothe might work better than TrackSpacer, as it's more detailed and less of a sledgehammer.
That’s a great suggestion, thank you! I might check it out for Black Friday.
@@andy-simmonsthere’s a sidechain button in the interface you have to activate. But there’s also a Delta monitor, so you can hear exactly how much signal is being removed, which makes it easier to dial in the amount of carving you want. You can also shape the response in detail more than TrackSpacer… but mostly you can narrow the resonant peaks to not cut so much.
TrackSpacer acts more like a wide-range ducker, which can be really good in certain circumstances. But I think Soothe will yield better results.
Now to actually try it… I have both Pianoteq 8 and Keyscapes.
BTW, I’ve played that exact piano… it’s one of Jim Wilson’s collection and it is in his living room. And, no, it doesn’t chop off on key release like the library. 😊
Thanks so much for the tips! That’s awesome you got to play the actual piano. What a cool story!
Soothe adds substantial latency.
@@aeiplanner yeah, for sure! I ended up picking it up on Black Friday, but it gives me about 42ms latency, enough to throw me off for live playing. It does sound much more surgical though, and would be great for post processing.
Yah bitwig!
Love Bitwig!
@@andy-simmons absolutely ☺️
Why don't you just use pianoteq? You can adjust a lot of parameters to get it to sound like this without keys keyscape.
Pianoteq is my favorite library personally, but the timbre can be a little polarizing. I love it because it’s more playable than anything else I’ve tried, and while the v8 revoicings helped a lot, it still sounds synthesized (to my ear). Sometimes I want the character of a specific piano, and I haven’t figured out how to dial that into a physical model if it’s possible. This C7 is one of my favorite pianos, as are a couple CFX libraries I have, and I haven’t been able to get those sounds from Pianoteq. But if I had to pick just one library, it’d definitely be Pianoteq!
How?
Of course it sounds more alive, because you have the Keyscape sound totally dry no reverb, lol. Still sounds better just keyscape with room reverb imho.
Yeah, from the description: “Of course, you can always add some reverb to make it sound better than the dry samples, but this tutorial is specifically for folks looking to make the strings ring out like an acoustic piano.”
@@andy-simmons The pianoteq provides a bit of extra resonance, but at the expense of it also having phasing issues between the two sounds on held notes that you can clearly hear. I'm not really sure that the benefit outweighs the costs on this one. Plus I've played a grand piano in a large space before and it can sound pretty clean withouth those extra metallic style resonances on top. I'd still choose just Keyscape + room reverb in this instance :)
@@1wibble230 Yeah that's fair! I'm just a piano enthusiast still trying to figure out the audio engineering side of things, so appreciate you putting a name to something like phasing issues.
There's a pulsating/beating sound that sticks out in the sustains and I'm wondering if that's what you're talking about? I also totally agree with you Keyscape sounds great with a little reverb, but it seems (at least from the player perspective) like all the little quirks you'd hear on an acoustic are missing. There are some sample libraries like the VSL CFX where every note repetition feels distinct, like it has its own personality, and I don't really get that with Keyscape. I was playing around with this as a way to give it some more life, but this is totally just an experiment/starting point. And certainly not a knock on Keyscape, I would sell it if I didn't like it, but I do think other libraries are better acoustic piano simulators.
Appreciate the feedback!
This is overkill.
Ha, yeah, it's overkill for a lot of people. It's often better to have clean fundamentals with no resonance, especially when playing in a mix. I even think most solo stock Keyscape C7 recordings sound fine, it's more about the pianist than anything. That said, I could easily pick Keyscape's C7 out from a real acoustic grand in any relatively dry solo track, especially so with accomplished performers. It just sounds like a sample library to my ear... missing the liveliness of a real grand piano.
The biggest things that stick out to me are stacattos sound like someone threw carpet on the soundboard, sustain pedal is either up or down with no in-between, sustain repedaling doesn't work, una corda doesn't change timbre (or less noticeably, level), and sostenuto doesn't even sustain the fundamental, let alone overtones. Pianoteq doesn't fix all the issues (the only pedal improvements are decent repedaling and it'll add sost. resonance w/ overtones), but it shores up the resonance gaps really nicely to my ear, and it's cheaper and easier than recording an acoustic grand.
Pianoteq doesn't have any playability issues AFAIK. It works great out of the box and feels remarkably close to playing a real acoustic piano even with the most advanced techniques, but it also has that modeled timbre that seems to bother some folks.