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Notion 3 + Pianoteq 4

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Notion 3 + Pianoteq 4

Postby ottomc » Wed May 02, 2012 8:10 am

Hi all,
I recently upgraded to the new version of Pianoteq (v4), which I am sure many of you Notion users are acquainted with. I am generally very satisfied with the bundled Notion sounds, but the Notion piano is not the best part of the package, IMHO. I have uploaded a short piano piece that I made in order to try out how Pianoteq 4 works in Notion. You can listen to and read a bit more about the piece over at YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3R8bOdgVIU

I have occasionally used the EWQL Pianos Gold, but Pianoteq 4 plays back the piece in a more convincing way than both Pianos Gold and the Notion piano, at least to my ears. With more tweaking one might get another outcome, but Pianoteq is very easy to work with "out of the box", with lots of presets, but it also includes many techniques to tweak all important parameters (Standard and Pro versions). May be you dedicated piano guys have other experiences. In that case, please don't hesitate to share your opinions in the forum!

Best, Otto
Otto Martin Christensen
www.faidros.no
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Re: Notion 3 + Pianoteq 4

Postby elerouxx » Wed May 02, 2012 9:11 am

Sounds great!!

I totally agree with you about Notion's piano. While most notion's sounds are rather brilliant, the piano is a little dark and dull. Maybe Notion could include a brighter, more edgy piano option in the future. (maybe a piano 2, as to avoid messing with the existing darker samples some users may like).

Both GPO4 and Miroslav, that I believe are the most popular mid range libraries, have steinway pianos that sound great. I even think that GPO4's price is worth spending for the piano alone. But if you are really serious about piano, i think Pianoteq is the way. Do you know if the 'PLAY' version is enough for use with Notion, and how big is the library in disk size?

I don't have any of the orchestral libraries installed in my old notebook. It's an old tablet PC that works like a charm for composing on the road, but I have to stick with notion's piano because it has a small HDD. It's ok for reference, but still lacks the edge.

By the way, I think your composition is very beautiful and colorful. I wish it was longer, It left me with a taste for more.
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Re: Notion 3 + Pianoteq 4

Postby ottomc » Wed May 02, 2012 6:02 pm

Thanks a lot for your comment! I wrote the piece mainly in order to test the new version of Pianoteq, but I will probably use some of the ideas in an expanded piano composition.

Anyway, the testing has taught me that Pianoteq 4 is a very attractive piano package, with many high quality pianos and other keyboards (with the new D4 as a very impressive instrument indeed). The two most expensive versions of Pianoteq (Standard and Pro) have loads of tweaking possibilities (the Pro version even allows you to edit the parameters note-by-note). But the Play version is fully functional as a Notion VST-plug-in, albeit with less tweaking possibilities from within the Pianoteq plug-in itself.

Pianoteq is not a sample based library, but based on physical modeling. Thus it occupies only 20MB of your hard disk space, is very memory efficient and loads (with all instruments instantly ready to play) in a couple of seconds. But since it uses real time sound generation, Pianoteq probably needs a CPU with dual cores or more.

If anyone is interested, I could make several versions of the piano piece using other piano plug-ins (GPO, Miroslav and EWQL Pianos Gold, in addition to the Notion piano) and upload the sound files to this forum. A comparison like this would of course be rather superficial, since there are so many ways to tweak the sound of virtual pianos, but it would probably not be completely worthless. Please tell me if you are interested.

Best, Otto
Otto Martin Christensen
www.faidros.no
ottomc
 
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Re: Notion 3 + Pianoteq 4

Postby ulrik » Thu May 03, 2012 3:20 am

ottomc wrote:If anyone is interested, I could make several versions of the piano piece using other piano plug-ins (GPO, Miroslav and EWQL Pianos Gold, in addition to the Notion piano) and upload the sound files to this forum. A comparison like this would of course be rather superficial, since there are so many ways to tweak the sound of virtual pianos, but it would probably not be completely worthless. Please tell me if you are interested.

Best, Otto

I am interested! I have just bought pianoteq 4 and so far I am very pleased with it but it would be nice to hear the same piece of music on different libraries to compare.
(I don't find pianoteq 4 so cpu demanding as I thought it would be)

Regards Ulrik
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Re: Notion 3 + Pianoteq 4

Postby ottomc » Thu May 03, 2012 7:29 am

Links to my little test piece played by six different virtual pianos:

http://soundcloud.com/ottomc/pianoteq-4-d4-classical-ba

http://soundcloud.com/ottomc/ewql-pianos-gold-steinway-d

http://soundcloud.com/ottomc/truepianos-1-9-atlantis

http://soundcloud.com/ottomc/miroslav

http://soundcloud.com/ottomc/notion-3-piano

http://soundcloud.com/ottomc/gpo

Please note that both Pianoteq and Truepianos (which I have used in demo mode, fully functional), both are based on physical modeling and real time sound generation, and that both these applications come with numerous instruments with different presets and tweaking possibilities. So they may have sounded very different with other settings. The same applies to some extent to EWQL Pianos Gold, which comes with four different instruments and a player which lets you control lots of important parameters. And you may of course use different kinds of effect plug-ins to manipulate the sound of all the instruments. Still, you will probably get a basic idea of the characteristics of the different virtual pianos.

Best, Otto
ottomc
 
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Re: Notion 3 + Pianoteq 4

Postby ulrik » Sun May 06, 2012 5:40 am

Thanks Otto for the demonstration, I must say the pianoteq 4 is the best sounding piano for this piece of music in my taste, it has both the brilliance and the warm round sound that I like and, as you say, it is also possible to tweak the sound if you have the standard or pro version, and also a lot of presets to chose from. The GPO and Notion piano is quite good pianos as well but doesn't reach up to the pianoteq sound.
Another thing about the pianoteq plugin is that the velocity curves are super, it is very near a real grand piano in feel when playing it.

Thanks again :) /Ulrik
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Re: Notion 3 + Pianoteq 4

Postby ottomc » Sun May 06, 2012 6:04 pm

Thanks for listening, Ulrik. I totally agree that Pianoteq gives the most convincing result in this particular test. And in fact the Notion 3 piano generally compares well to the rest of the instruments, as you mention :)

Otto
Otto Martin Christensen
www.faidros.no
ottomc
 
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Re: Notion 3 + Pianoteq 4

Postby rwhadley » Wed Jun 06, 2012 1:09 pm

Having heard your posting on Youtube and in this forum thread, I am thinking of using Pianoteq4 for my Notion3 piano in composing ( I have the groundwork laid for a piano concerto, and was looking for a totally inspirational, and convincing piano)...I too, post original piano works on youtube composed on Notion3 under 'CompozinCarolina'
My question is: Where did you get, or how did you interface Notion3 with Pianoteq4. I talked with Niclas Fogwall @ Pianoteq support and he said that it could be 'configured within Notion3 and saved as a preset'...I talked with Brian in Notion3 tech support and he says to get hold of you here in the forum.

Any help with making this a workable deal would be appreciated...I'm not a programming guru! haha
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Re: Notion 3 + Pianoteq 4

Postby ottomc » Thu Jun 07, 2012 6:48 pm

Thanks for listening and for your comments. I have been listening with pleasure to your piano compositions on YouTube -- thanks for sharing!

Pianoteq 4 comes with lots of different keyboard instruments, each with different presets, where reverb and dozens of other parameters are set to specific values. You can tweak these parameters yourself and save your settings as a new preset. You can do this from within Notion, and when you save a Notion file with Pianoteq activated, the Pianoteq preset that you use will be saved with the file. But please note that these are Pianoteq-specific presets, which is something else than the presets that are made for different sample libraries in Notion, and that make the samples respond adequately to nearly all kinds of notated effects and articulations. Still, Pianoteq responds nicely to dynamics and basic articulations notated in Notion, in the same way as other VST plug-ins. So you simply make Pianoteq interface with Notion by enabling the Pianoteq VST plugin in the VST manager and choose Pianoteq from the VST tab when you want to create a new piano score. You do not get the same level of integration in Notion as you do with libraries with dedicated Notion presets (like VSL, EWQL SO, GPO, Miroslav) -- but normally piano writing does not require the same amount of special effects and articulations as orchestral writing (with its plethora of string, wind and percussion techniques).

Best,
Otto
Otto Martin Christensen
www.faidros.no
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Re: Notion 3 + Pianoteq 4

Postby rwhadley » Thu Jun 07, 2012 11:25 pm

Thanks again Otto,
I will be getting back with you from time to time on this fine product Pianoteq has built. Thanks for the visit on YouTube...I will be following you as well...as I already have. May we both add new beauty to the palate of our music!!
Bob
P.S. I added another comment to your YouTube channel...I do think I will be adding Pianoteq4 standard package to my workstation.
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