Topic: Nord Stage, as old as Modartt
It took my teacher, Phil Best, two years to convince me to get Pianoteq. I was resisting the idea of my keyboard being tied to my computer. And I wasn't dissatisfied with the sound of the 'studio grand' piano the previous owner had left on the Nord. Finally as he broached the topic of sonority in my last lesson, using the word 'delicious' after playing a little extract of classical music, I realized this was how I could increase my pleasure in doing his simple-but-not-easy fluency training and maybe feed back into my slow-but-steady rate of progress.
The menus and buttons on the Nord are a nightmare. I wasn't sure I'd be safe routing the audio cable from my new Scarlett 4i4 into the expensive Nord piano monitors, which go out to a subwoofer. I didn't know whether the small solid state HD on my Mac Mini would be overloaded by Pianoteq. I didn't know whether I could have audio go out to the Scarlett and still have the computer's preference remain my stereo at the same time. Yes. When I finally got the midi configured right I was pleased to see the list of aspects (parameters?) of the Nord in the window where Pianoteq was busy mapping itself to them. Not the least of which was Aftertouch, possibly the secret sauce in what Phil raves about as Pianoteq's responsiveness to expressive playing.
And now I'm in heaven.
