The Nord Piano wishlist

[maurus]

I'd be interested in hearing of your wishes for an allround update to the Nord Piano, both hard- and software.

Here are a few of mine:

a. for the piano:

1. an even better keyboard with full repetition possibilities (of course)
2. alternative tunings (including at least one user temperament)
3. even more RAM (of course)

b. for the samples:

1. XL samples, fully mapped, with dynamic range > 40 dB
2. larger e-piano samples
3. larger cembalo samples

Add yours...

Edit: This thread began as a wishlist for the (then unknown) Nord Piano 2. As it happens, several of the wishes mentioned in the thread remain unfulfilled in the NP2 so the thread can - for the time being - be seen as a generic wishlist for whatever incarnation of the Nord Piano.

[Cee]

Love the NP as it is right now!

But if I had to:

1) heavier keyboard
2) XL e-piano samples

That's pretty much it.

[Ecaroh]

This "heavier keyboard issue" has two sides to think about

On the other hand, it would be great to have heavier keyboard for acoustic grands. Especially my left hand has sometimes problems with this NP's lighter touch (with heavier touch I feel that I have more control over it). Also, playing a lot with NP and then suddenly change to real grand can be a nightmare. This happened to me few weeks ago with real Yamaha Grand. Real grand has completely different velocity curve and it demands more power from your fingers or at least quite different technique. And as been said in other threads, with NP you'll get highest velocities too easily. This is a fact, if you compare it to real Yammy for example. (TO CLAVIA: Think about these negative velocity curves again!!!)


But on the other hand, NP's lighter touch has its advantages: you can play quite fast with it with not so perfect technique (like mine). And in fact NP keyboard is quite fast (at least faster than some Rolands that I used to have. With those I allways had problems with repetitions for example). Also IMO this is very nice keyboard to play Rhodes or those other e-pianos. I don't say that it close or far from real Rhodes touch (there's too much time since I played it) but to my fingers it just feels nice. (Again with my Roland E-pianos felt "cold" or unnatural with their PHA-II ivory feel)

[Johannes]

I 100% agree with what you said JacksonP. The NP action is great to me and would be my preferred DP action. Its action is definitively lighter than e.g., the Roland PHAII and also the wooden keys Kawai MP8/10s or Yamahas CP-1/5.
When coming from a medium range, medium taken care of Upright, the latter are more similar (heavier keys) while I personally feel that a Yamaha C-7 or Steinway has a lighter touch than the average Upright. In that sense, the NP is a bit more similar to those actions but even lighter.
After all, its a matter of taste, and I agree a "negative" velocity curve (probably, just exchanging it for the first "dynamics" settings would be great!

[Cee]

I get where you guys are coming from, but from my perspective, I can really feel the difference when switching from a grand. And I play on a grand piano most of the times.
I would love to have the same heavy feel on the NP so there would be no difference between the two anymore.

The only difference between the NP and the grand then would be the portability - an awesome thing!

[maurus]

About the touch: I can understand both points of view. There are good arguments for keeping a lighter touch, as there are good arguments for a more piano-like, heavier approach. Actually in my initial post I tried to avoid the word 'heavier' - improvements in the keyboard can be made in more than one way, most important (to me) would be the possibilities of nuanced playing (this of course depends both on the keys and on the samples) and repetition. Add to that reliability and longevity but so far I think the Nord is actually not too bad on that account.

[Cee]

Well, since this is the Nord Piano they could make the keyboard heavier so it's more like a piano.

If people are not comfortable with heavier touches they can always look at the synths Nord makes, which are also great and would still have the piano bank.

[maurus]

@ Cee: Good point, I'm with you there.

[Ecaroh]

@Cee and Maurus:

Basically IMO it's about choosing between a or b:
a) having heavier and more realistic grand touch and same time compromise to have not that realistic, "vintage" e-piano touch
b) (what we have now:) lighter piano touch which works quite well with both.

If I could choose, I'd take a, because like Cee said NP is supposed to be above all PIANO. Personally I am lucky to have NS2 as my all-a-round-gig-keyboard and NP is mostly at my home as my night-time-piano, so I for sure I would welcome a more realistic NP action. Anyway my point was that because of the b, situation is not that black and white. If I was to use NP on my gigs, I'd probably use e-pianos 50% of the time or even more.

But, as said many times now, just giving us more options for adjusting velocity to our preference would be a great help. Although there has been a doubt, that is it possible to give us change to adjust the highest velocities, which you may get too easily. Hopefully Clavia proves this wrong and perhaps they will give us an update. Keyboard touch with just 4 different curves, light and others even more lighter, is too rough. Problem is that on the panel you have just these fours options. How about this: maybe you could make and adjust on system-level those four curves. Probably four user-adjustable curves would be enough for most of us. Or if Clavia would like preserve to itself this first (off) curve, then users would have 3 different curves to make.

[lvercaut]

I want delay...elay...lay...ay...