New to keyboardforums.com

[rbONkeys]

Hello, folks. I'm new to the forum, although I've been playing kb and guitar for many, many years. I've live in the Mississippi (USA) about 100 miles southeast of Memphis, TN where – as I'm sure know – music has always been a big part of our cultural life. Of course, that's probably true everywhere, but certainly no less here.

At any rate, my interest in electronic keyboards is largely for live playing. Here's my quandary. At this point my main keyboard is the simple Yamaha P105, a light weight digital piano with a small handful of decent sounds. I thought I could easily expand my sound pallet by purchasing MainStage and using the Logic X sounds on my Mac. The Korg Nano Controller 2 give me allows much versatility and it all works well. Here's my problem: To my surprise, theLogic sounds just don't translate well to live playing, in my opinion … lack of dynamics, liveliness and responsiveness … just flat and dead sounding. Case in point, my P105 grand sound is much better than any of the Logic pianos.

I'm wondering why. Are hardware synths/stage pianos just that much better for live play? Or would investing in third party instruments help the situation?

Anyone else have the same opinion. Thanks for your input.

 

[Biggles]

Welcome.

Can Insuggest that you download the trial and samples of the Native Instruments Komplete 12 pack.

Download Free Software and Demo Versions

Download free products and our most popular demo versions - get free synths, effects, and sample-based instruments.

www.native-instruments.com

These are probably the best VST pack available and if the sound quality is not as you want then do report back.

That said the software starts at $200 and the full software is not cheap and you may be better served by a synth/workstation like one from the Roland Juno DS range which starts at $730.

 

[rbONkeys]

Biggles, thanks for both suggestions. I will check them both out. Just today saw ad for the 88 key Juno and was wondering about it … I thought: That's got to be a different kind of thing than the old Juno.

 

[CowboyNQ]

Hello, folks. I'm new to the forum,

Welcome!

 

[Rayblewit]

Welcome to the forums rb

 

[SeaGtGruff]

Are you using the Korg Nano controller (nanoKEY2?) or the P-105 to play the MainStage instruments? If you're using the Korg controller, try using the P-105 instead. Even the best samples and virtual instruments will sound flat if you're using a controller that isn't designed for expressive playing, and piano samples normally require a keyboard controller that has reasonably decent weighted action. The nanoKEY2 (if that's which Nano controller you were talking about?) looks like it has "chiclet" keys, and even though they're velocity sensitive they are most certainly not weighted piano-action keys.

 

[rbONkeys]

SeaGTGruff, I am using the P-105 to play MainStage instruments. The Nano Controller I use is not the one with the chiclet keys. It has 8 sliders, knobs and buttons. Fairly common controller for MainStage. The P105 does have decent weighted action, but I have wondered if there is something about it that doesn't work well with virtual instruments. On its own, using its internal sounds (which aren't bad) it's a fairly expressive instrument considering the cost.

 

[SeaGtGruff]

Yeah, the P-105 doesn’t have much in the way of controls, so I can see why you’d want to use some sort of other controller in conjunction with it.

 

[musicalinstu]

first of all welcome here, type of instrument you're talking about are nice and good to see your knowledge keep up ..

 

[happyrat1]

Speaking as the owner of a Juno DS88 I can recommend it highly.

It's marketed as a performance synth and features over 1400 tones, plus free expansion tones downloadable from Roland's Axial Website.

Control layout is very logical and easy to navigate.

Weighted keyboard has a very nice feel and is very playable.

Also features a programmable step sequencer for accompaniment and sample capability and built in vocoder.

One of the best bangs for the buck on the market today.

Gary

 

[musicalinstu]

rolands are good with navigation and i find it more good at practicing