 Hi everyone, this is Jason here from Nathaniel. In this lesson, we are going to basically consider a scenario where you're buying a digital piano or have already bought a digital piano or need something for stage performance. You're going to another city and you know you're getting, you want a keyboard, you don't know what to get and basically I'm here to help you out in this lesson. So there are a few technical things to keep in mind and the most important goal for this lesson is maybe the piano you already have is awesome but you don't really know it. So how do you tweak what you already have to make it brilliant and make it something you're really passionate about which you can play for years and years. So in my experience, whenever you purchase a digital piano and first of all by digital, we still call it a piano. At the end of the day, we say we are all pianists but then we use this digital medium which makes things more portable, which makes things more sustainable. You don't have to keep hiring a tuner and do all sorts of renovation work to a piano unless of course you can afford that in which case you could definitely consider an actual grand or an actual upright piano for your work. So assuming we are all in the market for digital pianos, you have I guess three varieties. You have what I call as the home piano or the house piano which is really not portable at all. You're going to just keep it in your house in one corner of the room or whatever and it's like a showpiece thing as well as if you buy it well, it'll also sound really good and really great and if you place it in the right part of your room, it'll be special. You buy these sort of clavinova or like these house pianos for a permanent setup either in your house or in a church or in a school. Places like that are very common where you'll find this sort of looks like a piano. Actually it's not. It's still digital. And there's no big difference from what we call as stage pianos or portable pianos. These are just lightweight like what I have the Kurzweil SP6 is what I'm using. This is lightweight. I can carry it at a gig. I don't need an assistant or any heavy duty help to help me navigate through this instrument. So I bought this primarily so that I can play in the studio, has some great sounds and I can take it on stage as well whenever I want. It's not just stuck in the house permanently. And the other option is to just buy a MIDI controller. So a MIDI controller bypasses the whole sound element. It doesn't care about sounds. It will come with nothing. It will just give you an integration to a computer or a tablet like an iPad. And on that the magic happens. You'll have to find all your sounds from there and then connect it via digital cables like MIDI cables or USB cables as well to your keyboard. And the MIDI controllers can even be powered by computers. They also send information to and for the computer. So you have these three keyboards in the market. Possibly you have one of them. Possibly you're looking to buy one of them, the MIDI controllers, the portable stage piano kind of things and your showpiece pianos which you just keep in the house. Now whether you buy any of these, it doesn't really guarantee you that the feel of it or the sound of it is going to be great just because you buy a showpiece for your house and it costed you a lot of money. You're probably paying that money because of the furniture it comes with or because the nice finish or the wood used, those sort of things. And to be completely honest, I'm sure you'll agree with me that has nothing to do with the actual sound. So I'm here to just bypass all the glamour behind the piano, behind the brands of a piano which you could purchase and just tell you the facts. So let's say you have a piano or looking to buy one, you go to the music store and you're trying to check out the piano. Now you don't want to turn the piano on and off and just play. You know, let's say now this is a really nice sounding grand sample as most Kurzweils are, but that may not be your thing. Maybe you don't like the sound of this piano so you could explore other tones of the keyboard. In this case by hitting the next button, there we go. So this rather I'm getting a lot more highs. It's a bit more warmer compared to a bit more tinny. Just take one lick on that preset versus which one do you like more? Well, I don't want to be the judge of that. You should judge it because you're buying it. And then you go a bit too bright for my liking. It's also called bright jazz. So this is intimate piano seven feet. I quite like that. See how it inspires you. Punchy edge could say more for rock. You should explore these things. Or the keyboard you already have may come with all these presets. This is really like that. And that's the sixth preset. So then you are smooth grand, especially for some thematic stuff. Then you have a solo solo grand. Wow, I really like that. Percussive, very compressed. Looks like an effect has been used. Seems more like an older model of the Kurzweil pianos. Upright. For all the rock and roll bluesy stuff. So indie piano. Very experimental. Some reverb and color. Then and then we get into the artificial stuff. This is a stack. And then you have layers, piano and strings and then it gets it goes forward from there. So I'm going to go back to the first preset. So this is something you may want to do when you're let's say you don't like the sound of what you have you're looking to sell it or you're in a store and you know you judge it. So judge it based on not the first preset, like keep exploring. You also have some EQs you can play around with that. This could also help. Okay, so that's one very, very important way to check whether it's the piano for you or before you want to sell it off or give it away or get something else. Check out all the tones. Don't forget that. Okay, the other thing which is a little bit technical but a very, very crucial thing at least for me is the touch response of the existing instrument. So you will access that and you should have that. You have to have that on all your keyboards. So the way I access it in most keyboards go to global and you have something here called as velocity map. Anything which is velocity or touch would be where you need to go. So right now my velocity map is set to hard to now by default if I remember right it came with what did it come with? It came with I guess piano touch. I'm not too sure or linear and this is linear really bad. Doesn't work for my playing at all. Especially when you've played for a few years. I don't like the linear preset. Wow, the light light one is horrible for me. May not be for you but I cannot even play this piano. It's it's literally unplayable. So if it came with the light one as the default man, I would never never want to play this thing. You know light two still a bit annoying like three. Not working for me. There we go. Hard one. So hard one seems to showcase all my dynamics a bit more and hard doesn't mean your touch is hard. It means it supports light touch and when you do play hard you can slam the hell out of it. You know hard to requires a bit harder touch to really go for it hard three even harder. So depending on your style, I would say between hard one to hard three which kind of works for me. Then they have something called piano touch which is horrible. I would never want to go for piano touch. There's something called easy touch my word. Please do not use easy touch. Oh man that's bad. It's made a Kurzweil sound really crappy. So I'm going to go back to my preferred touch which is hard too. So you can also do this if you're connecting this MIDI if this is a MIDI controller what you can do is you have the power to either make your key response of the entire keyboard behave a certain way or you can connect it to a virtual instrument like piano tech for example which gives you a very interesting graph to really calibrate how you play, how you generally whack your instrument and it generally gives you a graph which works or you can customize it later for sure. So when you take this to a computer even if you have a keyboard you don't like with the computer's ability to modify your touch make it very personal for you via MIDI you get a really really nice sound. So touch response adjustment even if you're doing this to chill out and play piano and as a hobby at home you still need to think of your touch response. I never want to go light. I never want to try the default preset and assume it is the thing. It is something you have to check and customize. So the other very important thing why you may not like the sound of your digital piano is the speaker quality. Now some keyboards I've observed like most Casio keyboards tend to sound really good with their in-built speakers because they have a lot of ways to kind of color the sound they want you to enjoy it from the speakers but I find that when it's this whole covered up boxed wooden thing I don't like the sound of that much even though it costs so much more it costs almost three times more a simple keyboard which is portable light and the speakers are right in your face you may actually like that sound and it may inspire you way more. Also keyboards like the one I have the sp6 can be connected to a speaker system they don't have their in-built speakers. So what I then have to do is I have to take a cable I have to take a jack cable and connect it to my speakers and only then will I hear it then you're faced with the quality of the speakers how good are your speakers are using an amp where is the amp placed and most importantly are you sending stereo. Now piano needs stereo that means you need two cables from your instrument feeding to the speakers if you send one cable trust me you'll never want to use that piano and you'll always hate it or you'll never know when it how good it could sound stereo so even when you go live for a concert always go with stereo tell your sound engineer sir or madam whoever it may be I want two cables send it to your mixer and some people on the sound console will pan it they won't pan it so when you pan a stereo pair it has to be one the right should be actually panned right and the left should be actually panned left so you want to tell them to do that as well so if it's very technical for you get a keyboard with inbuilt speakers and make sure those speakers are good but then also if ever you want to use that on stage connect them using cables or use your headphone use a high quality headphone and actually see through the headphone does it sound beautiful doesn't sound awesome because I've observed a few keyboards I don't want to talk about the brands but a few really top quality bands a brands which sound brilliant when you play them here but when you take it on stage it's a nightmare the sound engineer says what's wrong with you why are you giving me such a horrific keyboard and these are some of the biggest brands out there because it's over compressed they do whatever it takes to make it sound good in that world around you so speaker quality is important get a good pair of headphones you always want to connect a pair of headphones to the headphone socket and check if that actually sounds good and maybe you enjoy playing with headphones more after a while and maybe you want to consider the fact that if you've connected to speakers they're not really good speakers you want some nice speakers which give you good bass response more clarity and it shouldn't be so sharp to annoy your hearing and stuff like that so output is very important moving on another reason why you don't like the sound of your existing piano could be that it feels brilliant it feels like the best thing ever you know it really feels good but after all that you've done it just sounds really bad now here's what you could consider doing you could consider sending it to a midi generator or you could send it midi to your computer and then invest or you get a lot of free things as well with DAWs they come packaged into things like logic or maybe you already have a DAW which is a recording software or you could get third-party applications like piano tech which I happen to use and the source of all my magic if you want to call it that comes through that so when I connected to a computer with using the application piano tech it sounds like this so for me this is light years better anyone who's played on my keyboard or any of my keyboards and when it runs through this app no one complains about the existing piano they have because you're bypassing the sound see the sound is off on the instrument and that thing on my computer is giving me everything and on piano tech I can change my patches I don't have to just have a grand piano I can have anything I can have a clave net I can have the same features which an actual digital piano gives me now in my scenario it works out really well because I can have both I can send my Kurzweil into my computer through my audio interface because I like my Kurzweil sounds as well but for the most part I prefer my virtual instrument or VST piano tech so if your keyboard feels awesome if you still feel it's inspiring you to play but the sound is crappy for whatever reason just get an app get an app which works on anything this works on windows mac or even linux and you're then connecting it using a midi cable in this case a simple usb cable and you're sending it directly to the computer so yes that's that's the deal with the app the one I use is piano tech but you could use anything if you have a DAW you'll have enough and more grand piano emulations which come with that right now the last reason why I'm telling you don't discard your piano this is more of a room and an acoustics thing sometimes where you place the piano in the room the speakers may be at a very very horrible spot in the room obviously in normal houses you have a bass build up at the corners you may have may not have a bass trap which you may really need in in a normal studio environment there may be all sorts of weird reflections which are cancelling each other out so then what you need to do is move the piano you have to find another spot or you need to insert absorption material certain panels which will help you to kind of absorb the sound you know and maybe a carpet a thick carpet a few books sometimes help yeah absorption material diffusion material where you place it in the room really matters so in conclusion why don't you like the sound of your digital piano maybe because of the tones you have to explore the tones a little bit better you could say you could explore the touch response settings the touch response adjustments either here on board or the keyboard or on the computer if you're using a virtual instrument or an app the speaker quality may be not so good or you're doing the main issue of sending your keyboard out mono always send it out stereo the sound will be always horrible if it's mono the keyboard the piano is designed to be a stereo instrument even when we mic it in the real world we use two mics minimum it's always miked twice because of such a size in an actual piano there is one string assigned to every key so that's one string so you have to fit 88 strings so that makes it huge one mic is not going to pick up the source so you need stereo when you send it out okay or use headphones check it before you discard it completely the other thing is it could feel good but sound really bad maybe you don't like the on-board sounds like for example i'm i've never been a fan of the casio on-board sounds never been a fan too much of the cogs yamaha's sound pro sounds professional but it just sounds very made up or artificial to me doesn't sound real they do something to the presets and i'm not one who'll go and then fool around with the presets anymore so cog yamaha casio not my thing roll beautiful occurs while i definitely would endorse occurs while it sounds really inspiring nods are great i mean everything is great but after a while when you play you have your own preferences so do consider in those cases an app or virtual instrument which will keep growing on you you know they they keep giving you updates and new features which something you purchase will be like a one-time thing that sound is a one-time sound you can't really change it and then we talked about the room the acoustics if you need some acoustic treatment that may be very helpful it'll make your piano sound a lot better right guys hopefully you cling on to the instrument you already have or you have some ideas in which you can purchase a new one and yeah i hope this lesson was helpful do make the right decision ultimately i wanted to make some awesome music along the way and cheers this is jason from netanyl don't forget to subscribe hit the bell icon for regular notifications see you in the next one