Spitfire Mrs mills

maxman65

maxman65

Member
Does anyone have this . Not altogether crazy about the brightness but figured it might be quite a versatile one for songs and have presence in a mix. Also is there anything on the gu itself to darken the eq for writing something more piano centric . Pros and cons ? Is it reasonably responsive dynamically I understand it only has 3 velocity layers .Looking to get this many thanks
 
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It's a great piano for bashing out tunes. Mrs mills was never subtle - the piano is really typical of the average pub piano in the 50s and 60s - never quiet, melodic, warm and cosy.
EDIT
I did an old Gilbert O'Sullivan song - here is the isolated piano I used, followed by the Mrs Mills piano - which I thought would be perfect for this song, but it was just a bit brash and pub-ish
 

Attachments

  • alone .mp3
    2.4 MB
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Many thanks .the other thing is I'm struggling to get dynamics into things . I was also looking at addictive keys studio grand .might this be a step up on velocity layers and give more life . Yes I remember that song as a kid he had a natural gift for melody. Yes I agree it does sound rather jangley and brittle almost as it's a reverberation of itself without any reverb
 
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Yep, the sample I did was just taking the original track, and plonking (pun intended) it straight onto the mrs mills empty track.
I have a nice Yamaha grand, it costs me £40 every four months or so to tune it, and my favourite virtual sample based instrument is the noire piano vsti. My fallback is always the pianoteq synthesised piano. This has the same dynamics as the real one. That said, the sample based ones, as a non-proper pianist, tapping from gentle to heavy seem perfectly fine and none I have sound wrong when I play?
 
Ok but would you expect a significant improvement in control and variation of dynamics going from a spitfire originals to the addictive keys grand . I did start out with spitfire labs piano and have to say thought it was pretty dreadful . I'm using a yamaha modx which granted is basic in its action but presumably would respond to more sample layers?
 
I played the Yamaha once and thought the keyboard quite good. They thing with all pianos (that are digital and good) is that the changes in sample timbre should be transparent, and thought the layering was pretty good. I suppose if it's obvious, the maybe your keyboard is compressing the dynamics maybe? A good test would be a sequence of repeated notes and adjust the velocity of each one gradually upwards in an editor and evenly - then see at what velocity you get the jump you don't like? I've certainly not tagged the Mrs mills as compromised in the sample switching, so maybe there's something else going on. I think I have probably 7 or 8 different pianos now - and none of them cause any obvious grief in this area? Using a weighted or unweighted keyboard seems OK?
 
Ok many thanks .I think what I'm driving at is I understand the Mrs mills from the originals seems to be 3 velocity levels from what I can glean from the internet . The addictive keys grand may be up to 12 velocity layers . Being triggered from the laptop into the modx this I might expect to allow for more nuance I'm hoping . Any thoughts ?
 
To be honest, it's not really a nuance type sound is it? I've listened to the demos and it's, well, nice. Mrs Mills is just different. What do you want? A real sounding grand, or a beat up, upright. The only thing that makes me even think about how it works is when it doesn't do something. Both of the instruments we're talking about are cheap - if you want the jangly sound, it's Mrs Mills, if you want a nice grand, it's the other. I wouldn't buy the addictive keys because I have others that sound nice to me. I'd go for the demos, and pick whatever works best for you. If you are a really good pianist, I'm sure you'd have a preference based on playability, for me - it's just if the sound does what my fingers expect!
 
Ok I think part of the problem is I'm pretty new to vst. There's some nice string textures in intimate strings but so far pianos don't seem to have any body . Bougnt intimate grand piano today . The attack is a bit wishy washy which I inproved by minimising tightness and changing laptop settings but still theres really no substance in the decay. Disappointing for a 4gb file . I ended up layering and blending with a modx preset to at least get a bit of realism /texture to the attack and then some sustain thereafter . It's better . But still at a standalone piano it's not a particularly credible vst in responsiveness and body. I'm loathe to spend money in case there's something else inherent about the rest of my kit I'm missing
 
I've just done an experiment and it didn't quite work as I expected. Before, I just copied the track to a different piano sound, but your comments on the layering made me think.

I picked a tune that I could try to play on 5 of the pianos I have on the system here and discovered they all react differently to how I play. At the quiet end, some notes were so quiet, they failed to play, and the loudest sound was not always MIDI 127. They all scaled very differently and playing really quietly was quite unpredictable. The music I played from almost silence to as loud as it would go, and all inbetween, but each one is played by how I heard it - keeping within that range.
1. Mrs Mills
2. Noire
3. Grandeur
4. Pianoteq 8 (K2)
5. Gentleman
Each as the VSTi opened - no tweaking.

very interesting results.
 

Attachments

  • pianos 2023.mp3
    11.4 MB
Many thanks . I'm not really sure where to go with it all . I think the layered thing I tried may be something i can write with provided I dial back the heavy reverb /delay a bit but as a standalone piano ballad which features a detailed pinao sound I may have to avoid it . Somehow my set up just doesn't have enough responsiveness to a piano to feel right . Basically having a pinao more as a kind of ambient effect with enough realism in the attack to lend a pulse and chordal information.
 
The spitfire Una corda is really nice. It even has the weird mechanical noises these make when all the felt moves around. I think that the nearest piano ’sound’ has to be the pianoteq in terms of how it mimics the mechanics of a real piano. It’s really accurate, but I find exactly the same as real pianos, some actually are not that nice to listen to, or don’t do the job. I remember years ago, Jules Holland playing some boogie-Woogie on a hugely expensive posh grand. I think from memory it was a Bechstein, and it sounded terrible. The left hand rhythms just sounded a mess.
 
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