Nord User Forum

Hey guys,

New owner to Electro 6d and am abit of a newb when it comes with sampling and synth settings.

My question is to ask if anyone has any advice/ sample settings they use for a great natural sounding Piano and Rhodes?

I have played around with the White Grand and a few others but can't get a great sound.

Any advice would be great!

Tom

Hi Tom. I'm sure there are a lot of different opinions out there. My personal preferences:

Piano: White Grand for playing in a band and Royal Grand for playing solo.

Rhodes: Sparkletop for playing rock music in a band, Amped Tines for playing dance music in a band, and Nefertiti for playing softly or solo. (Amped Tines does not sound natural to me, but I find that it works great when playing modern pop music.)

Just one man's preferences.

Hi Tom,

welcome to the forum

I think asking for a great sound is very subjective and also depends a lot on the speakers or headphones you use. Different kind of speakers/headphones produce different kind of sounds, the same program sounds really good on one and just about average on another. It would help to understand which kind of speakers you use. It’s also a good idea to play with the EQ settings to tweak the sound the way you like it, either using the pre-set piano EQs like soft, mid or bright or using the separate EQ section which will give you even more control over the sound.

tomjoharding wrote:Hey guys,

New owner to Electro 6d and am abit of a newb when it comes with sampling and synth settings.

My question is to ask if anyone has any advice/ sample settings they use for a great natural sounding Piano and Rhodes?

I have played around with the White Grand and a few others but can't get a great sound.

Any advice would be great!

Tom

What amplification are you using?

I don't see it mentioned too often here, but for Rhodes I always come back to the Mk V (Full name is Mk V ClosIdeal). For me the sound and feel hits the sweet spot, it accepts any of the effects gracefully, and I never had to touch any of those EQ dials. Maybe its name's just not as sexy as Nefertiti - I could never bring the Nef to life.

CountFosco wrote:I don't see it mentioned too often here, but for Rhodes I always come back to the Mk V (Full name is Mk V ClosIdeal). For me the sound and feel hits the sweet spot, it accepts any of the effects gracefully, and I never had to touch any of those EQ dials. Maybe its name's just not as sexy as Nefertiti - I could never bring the Nef to life.

Same with me. Nefertiti doesn‘t speak to me. I play Mark V in the new enhanced version and occasionally Sparkletop and Bright Tines.

I go back and forth with a lot of these. For my proggy jazz band stuff, the shallow EP3 is perfect (especially the enhanced version with those amped up key off sounds). With everything else, I use Nefertiti alot but I recently gave the ideal timbre EP2 a try and now that's my favorite.

Yes, sometimes i use EP2 and the Shallow too, but this has something „plasticky“ for me, so i don‘t use it very offen. I must say that the Nefertiti sounds very good with the phaser on it!

A few ideas for Epianos.
1) Unsure if that works for your board, but for the stage 3 there are additional patches for EPs. I like some of them a lot. https://www.nordkeyboards.com/sound-lib ... nature-eps
2) For rhodes, I like to: A) Add Pan effect (or tremollo), a bit of overdrive, and increase mids and highs (very similar effect to bright piano filter)

Cheers,

Regis

For Rhodes I used to use the EP1 a lot with the mid/high boosted and some reverb.
Since the EP8 Nefertiti was released the EP1 hasnt sounded as punchy or pleasant so the EP8 is my goto now, usually with a small about of phaser 2.0-3.0 and a mid level of stage reverb. The new EP filters can help instead of EQ'ing too.. i will dial in the Bright setting over messing with EQ lately. Lazy but it works well
My Rhodes mainly has to pass the 'Billy Joel - Just the Way You Are' test If it works for that song, im happy as I usually do it solo with the singer - being the sole accompaniment it has to be right.

For AP's
Still working with the White Grand, tweaking EQ's. I find what sounds nice to me one day, grates me the next, havent found my happy balance yet.
Hard to discount some of the other great samples still. Love the Bose, the Silver and the Lady D and both of the Studio Grands

Its a lot easier to pick out samples i Dont like, most of them to me are fabulous, and different in their own way. Its almost like trying to pick a favourite supercar... most of them you would take any

K