Nord User Forum

For those of you playing Faithfully, which piano/ and effects are you using on your Nord Stage 3? TIA

I don’t play that ballad so much lately, but its tone is decidedly bright and had a lot of its midrange cut in the studio version, so as to not compete with the vocalist, and eventually the lead guitar later in the song. I don’t hear a lot of FX applied, aside from the 80s-era echo applied to nearly everything from that time.

The tone of the piano, and even the playing style, owes a LOT to Elton John’s original version of Rocket Man. Whatever works for one will work for the other.

I use White Grand layered with Digi Grand 1. Both with subtle chorus, a bit of delay (different rates), and some reverb. I use this for all my piano needs, including this song.

I have this setting to play different Journey songs with:

Piano sample White Grand XL
Long Rel. On
String Res. Off
Kbd Touch 2
EQ
Bass + 4.0
Mid Freq 7.5 kHz, + 7.1
Treble + 11.2

Eff 2 Chorus 1, Deep, 0.7Hz
Delay 1, 2.8
Rev Stage Soft, 5.0
Gain 10.0

There are PAs that sound better without the Chorus or setting the piano to Mono, I notice that during soundcheck. An interview of Jonathan Cain where he talked about his piano sound made me set it up this way.

Hope it gives you some ideas.

Cheers from Germany

Tasten-Bert wrote:I have this setting to play different Journey songs with:

Piano sample White Grand XL
Long Rel. On
String Res. Off
Kbd Touch 2
EQ
Bass + 4.0
Mid Freq 7.5 kHz, + 7.1
Treble + 11.2

Eff 2 Chorus 1, Deep, 0.7Hz
Delay 1, 2.8
Rev Stage Soft, 5.0
Gain 10.0

There are PAs that sound better without the Chorus or setting the piano to Mono, I notice that during soundcheck. An interview of Jonathan Cain where he talked about his piano sound made me set it up this way.

Hope it gives you some ideas.

Cheers from Germany

Thank you very much for these, gonna try them out sometime soon.
Do you play a lot of Journey Songs in your band?
And would you mind sharing the Interview with du? I‘d be really interested in the whole thing ☺️

Hi Avantasian,
other Journey songs we play that have Piano as the main keyboard are „Don‘t stop believin’“ and „Wheel in the sky“ (where the piano is not that dominant). Others which we also have in the setlist are „Seperate Ways“ with a pressing synthy and „Any way you want it“ where I play an organ sound similar to the one I use in „Davy‘s on the road again“.

The much I like Gregg Rolie, especially for what he did with Santana, the more I like Journey with Jonathan Cain. But unfortunately I can‘t find the interview anymore. The link I had saved goes to keyboardmag/artists but they seem to have withdrawn this category. As soon as I find it back I‘ll post it here.

Cheers from the middle of Germany