Nord User Forum

[Mr_-G-]

When you play in the middle of a stereo Nord piano sample, you get the keys sounding centre more prominently (coming from both channels, recorded from different position). So there is never the "empty middle". There would emptiness if there were two completely independent samples (like in the Beatles White Album, where you get a bass sounding exclusively in one channel {is it in Dear Prudence?} very odd to listen with headphones).

Remember Quadraphonic records? OK we are going off-topic.

[danrv]

I never get to hear my piano out front on full band gigs but it sounds nice and clear on vid audio.
for stereo FOH.

I was able to have a good listen out front at the weekend as someone did a few songs (pno/vocal) on their own
at the gig.
It sounded very good in stereo through the RCF HD12’s & one 905as sub. Monitor sound on stage good too through two DXR10’s,

Played a jazz gig the night before using the Yamaha's and the piano sound wasn’t as enjoyable although it was the same piano sound.
Maybe room acoustics having an effect.

[23skidoo]

Played a jazz gig the night before using the Yamaha's and the piano sound wasn’t as enjoyable although it was the same piano sound.
Maybe room acoustics having an effect.

This is quite common - not only room acoustics (which play a huge role) but also FOH eq settings, monitor and PA placement (can cause standing waves / comb filtering / frequency cancellation), and even the inherent EQ built into the PA system can all have drastic effects on how any individual element cuts through the mix.

Usually during sound check you'll want the sound engineer to EQ your keyboard submix to have the timbre you want - if you're holding down the bass obviously you'll want more of that, if you've got an acoustic bass player you don't want to step on you'll roll that back a bit, etc. The overall point is for everybody to be heard - and in some venues that's the best you'll ever get to - having crystal clear highs AND un-muddled mids might not be possible in a venue with a lot of mid-frequency resonances or a PA system with non-time-aligned speakers.

That's one of the reasons it's so great that the Nord stock sounds have little to no EQ, little to no reverb or room sound, they're very dry and that's a good thing because it lets you customize your mix for the room you're in. Very bright, live room? Touch almost nothing or you'll be piercingly present. Dim, dull, dead room? Crank up the highs, add a touch of reverb and maybe a little bit of low-feedback delay, and it'll transform the space.

Also, the number and placement of people in the room will change the acoustics drastically. A room full of people will sound completely different from a room that's half full, or a room with lots of tables, etc.

So yeah, get used to EQing (and adjusting effects) to taste before a show, but realize as the place fills up that that will change and both you and the sound guy need to adjust for that (working together, of course, not against each other!) to get the sound you're looking for. The raw keyboard samples are only a starting point for that, and definitely won't sound the same from one gig to another, sometimes even in the same venue.

[ajstan]

My recommendation would be 180 degrees different:

Get a reasonably accurate pair of monitors to program your sounds at home and send them as-is to FOH. It’s the sound tech’s job to EQ the FOH system to the room and manage it throughout the gig. This also means that you shouldn’t adjust EQ based upon what you’re hearing from your stage monitors since you are not hearing an accurate representation of what’s coming out FOH.

If your stage monitors also double as FOH, then use the built-in EQ on the stage monitors, or better yet, get a mixer with EQ that you can adjust to feed them.

[23skidoo]

Yes, that's good too, but that really depends on if the FOH engineer has the chops / time to do that. Many (most?) smaller venues don't have that ability. It's often up to the band to do this, but yes, if you're playing in really great venues, then of course it goes without saying that you should play the exact sound you want (from your own reference) and expect the FOH to do the rest of the work to translate that to the venue.

[ajstan]

I understand the challenge you’re trying to address, but how do you know what’s coming out of FOH? Sounds like you’ll be chasing your tail every gig. I suppose if you only use a small number of programs each night you can have an EQ’d program for each venue, but that’s assuming that what you consider an incompetent sound tech will be able to have the board set up the same every time you’re there.

In any case, if you must EQ the sounds after they come out of your keyboard(s), then a personal mixer with EQ controls would be better then modifying every program each gig.

[danrv]

but how do you know what’s coming out of FOH?

As we don’t often have a soundman, a band member checks the sound before the gig.
The piano is quite compatible with the RCF HD12s so FOH isn’t a problem.
We do use a soundman for larger gigs/balls though.

The Silver Grand sounds very good in our PA in general and doesn’t need much tweaking.
It also sounds good at fairly low levels when I use my DXR10’s for stereo monitoring ( I run them from a stereo
mix out on the A&H QU16).

The issue seems to be when I use the Yamahas for small jazz type gigs. The Nord pianos, although stereo
seem to be very sensitive to room/venue acoustics.
Last jazz gig one or two notes had a bad resonance whenever I played them. Not nice to play and ended up
using the Rhodes more. The room’s quite large and fairly live with a wooden floor.
Next night though at the function gig there was no such problem. Different venue with the Yammies as monitors.

I bought the DXR10’s as they’re powerful, compact and have a useful stereo mixing ability so no need for a mixer on minimal setup gigs.
Looks like I may need to use one though for certain gigs.
It’s only the piano sounds that are the problem. Everything else on the Stage 2 is absolutely fine.

[23skidoo]

I understand the challenge you’re trying to address, but how do you know what’s coming out of FOH? Sounds like you’ll be chasing your tail every gig. I suppose if you only use a small number of programs each night you can have an EQ’d program for each venue, but that’s assuming that what you consider an incompetent sound tech will be able to have the board set up the same every time you’re there.

In any case, if you must EQ the sounds after they come out of your keyboard(s), then a personal mixer with EQ controls would be better then modifying every program each gig.

Yeah, I wasn't saying to change your programs (unless the effects themselves are needed), just that changing your sound is part of the deal when you're a gigger, if you're particular about how you sound and go from venue to venue. How you do it really doesn't matter, but there seem to be a lot of folks on this forum (not speaking to anyone in this thread, just a general observation) who expect all sounds to be perfect in all situations. I was speaking mostly to that mentality. I think we totally agree that, somewhere along the signal path, the sound is usually edited to suit the environment so that the result is what the player and band expect it to be in the end, to the best of the venue's ability to translate that into reality. And my main point was that a lot of times, knowing HOW to do that *is* the responsibility of the keyboardist, because a lot of times (at least in my experience) the FOH engineer either sucks, is incompetent, or is also the bouncer, barback, and part time bartender/bathroom cleaner. But then, I'm not a high-end jazz musician.

And yes, @danrv, it seems like you ran into some of those issues at a few venues - can almost guarantee you that it has nothing to do with the actual samples in the Nord, just a situation where those samples had harmonics that hit room resonances (this can happen with phasing between the speakers - if those are reinforcing each other at a frequency that's also resonant in the room, you get some extreme peaks sometimes - sometimes phase inverting one channel will fix that, but not all mixers can do that). Either way, you gotta adapt and sometimes choosing a different patch is the fastest way to roll with it, if you have that option.

Cheers all, I've said enough here, no need to beat the proverbial dead horse!

[danrv]

Here's a pic of the band area in the venue and my DXR10 positioning.
One on tripod and the other on the floor at bottom R of pic.

[danrv]

I understand the challenge you’re trying to address, but how do you know what’s coming out of FOH? Sounds like you’ll be chasing your tail every gig. I suppose if you only use a small number of programs each night you can have an EQ’d program for each venue, but that’s assuming that what you consider an incompetent sound tech will be able to have the board set up the same every time you’re there.

In any case, if you must EQ the sounds after they come out of your keyboard(s), then a personal mixer with EQ controls would be better then modifying every program each gig.

Yeah, I wasn't saying to change your programs (unless the effects themselves are needed), just that changing your sound is part of the deal when you're a gigger, if you're particular about how you sound and go from venue to venue. How you do it really doesn't matter, but there seem to be a lot of folks on this forum (not speaking to anyone in this thread, just a general observation) who expect all sounds to be perfect in all situations. I was speaking mostly to that mentality. I think we totally agree that, somewhere along the signal path, the sound is usually edited to suit the environment so that the result is what the player and band expect it to be in the end, to the best of the venue's ability to translate that into reality. And my main point was that a lot of times, knowing HOW to do that *is* the responsibility of the keyboardist, because a lot of times (at least in my experience) the FOH engineer either sucks, is incompetent, or is also the bouncer, barback, and part time bartender/bathroom cleaner. But then, I'm not a high-end jazz musician.

And yes, @danrv, it seems like you ran into some of those issues at a few venues - can almost guarantee you that it has nothing to do with the actual samples in the Nord, just a situation where those samples had harmonics that hit room resonances (this can happen with phasing between the speakers - if those are reinforcing each other at a frequency that's also resonant in the room, you get some extreme peaks sometimes - sometimes phase inverting one channel will fix that, but not all mixers can do that). Either way, you gotta adapt and sometimes choosing a different patch is the fastest way to roll with it, if you have that option.

Yes, all this makes sense. It really comes down to the Nord piano samples being raw and unprocessed.
This doesn’t suit my gigs and band work as I don’t really want to be EQing at each venue and we don’t use a soundman
for most gigs.
76 weighted keys and compact size are more important though than the piano sounds so will stick with the Nord I think.
The DXR’s are very good speakers and useful at gigs as they’re so versatile. Don’t see the point in trading in for speakers better suited to Nord Pianos.

I read a post here of someone using a Roland XV5050 for a good piano sound in a band environment. Worth considering.
Then I still can use the Nord pianos for quieter, low key gigs where the piano is featured more.