BEST PIANOTEQ PRESET FOR RECORDING SOFTWARE

I realized that in some ways, Pianoteq can sound like a piano in a small living room (generally not the sound I’m after), but by adding some reverb to the starting presets, it instantly became more lively and inspiring to play. This may be because a lot of the stock presets are pretty dry. I will say that some of the sounds-especially with their default presets-sounded a tad plasticky to me at first. When writing this review, I made sure to also listen to a concert grand comparison video on YouTube for reference.

BEST PIANOTEQ PRESET FOR RECORDING SOFTWARE

But there’s something refreshing about sample-based piano software and its ability to capture a legendary instrument-sometimes played by a world-renowned musician-in a great sounding room. I’m sure with enough tweaking, one could make a Pianoteq preset that sounds somewhat close to Alicia Keys’ piano. In direct comparison to these libraries, there’s a certain authenticity that is lacking in Pianoteq. Una Corda, which I mentioned earlier, captures Nils Frahm playing each key on a felt piano Hans Zimmer Piano by Spitfire captures the grandeur of a great-sounding Steinway in the world-renowned AIR Studios in London Native Instruments’ Alicia’s Keys features the legendary piano that has been used on many hits.

The standalone version of Pianoteq also comes with a MIDI Archiver, so that if you are playing and come up with a cool idea for a song, but forgot to record it, you can retrieve a retroactive MIDI recording of the performance to import into your DAW of choice. The ability to calibrate keyboard response in Pianoteq is also a very nice touch, and you can even save velocity response presets for each of your keyboards so that they interact naturally with the software. I found that I love adjusting the Unison Width (the detuning of each of the three strings per note) to add a natural chorus/out-of-tune piano sound, which I find is effective in mimicking the player piano sounds used by Ramin Djawadi for the music of Westworld. Further parameters available include Octave Stretching (slightly sharpening the higher octaves and flattening the lower ones), Hammer Hardness, String Length, and Sympathetic Resonance. The effects include Tremolo, Wah, Chorus, Flanger, Phaser, Fuzz, Delay, Amp, Compressor, and a Mini-EQ. Each of these editable sections can give some character to whichever piano you are working with. In the main window of the GUI, you can adjust Tuning, Action, Mallet Bounce, EQ and Effects.

Best pianoteq preset for recording