Need advice please

I use my midi keyboard for drums. Since I’m a piano player, I find it easier to trigger drums with a keyboard rather than pads. I find the pads don’t react quick enough for me and the touch sensitivity is not as good. Also my controller only has 8 pads which do not provide me with enough pads to work with.
 
A DAW can happily switch the been the sounds your Yamaha has. IT can take what you play and let you fix wrong notes or poor timing. It can even make your piano play notes your fingers cannot, but it will always sound like the Yamaha it is.

You can improve on the classic Yamaha digital piano sound so much. The electric piano is quite usable, but frankly, it will never convince anyone it is a real piano. As others have said, many of the sounds are pretty grim. Strings being a common complaint. What do you want? If you want realism, a DAW that can run VSTi plug ins is essential. If you are happy with your Yamaha's sounds stick with it and use the computer to fix/improve your playing. That's it! If you want to produce seriously good, quality premium music, then your Yamaha is probably going to have none of it's sounds used at all. Before you spend ANY money on a different master keyboard, I'd suggest you try using the Yamaha and invest in a master keyboard once you find things the Yamaha annoys you doing! I find pads unimportant, but other find them vital! I have a small 25 note keyboard in bought for using with a laptop, away from the studio. Never used it. No good for my way of working. They sell thousands, so many people must love them.

Tell us exactly what you would love to do. What kind of music, what kind of audience, where it will be used and what for. The pads? Are you going to buy some clever drum gizmo, or VSTi drum device? Remember that bashing a pad is as unlike playing drums as bashing piano keys. I can see the benefit in using a drum kit to get MIDI data into a DAW from an electronic source, but without drums sticks, a pad/piano key is always a limitation.
 
A DAW can happily switch the been the sounds your Yamaha has. IT can take what you play and let you fix wrong notes or poor timing. It can even make your piano play notes your fingers cannot, but it will always sound like the Yamaha it is.

You can improve on the classic Yamaha digital piano sound so much. The electric piano is quite usable, but frankly, it will never convince anyone it is a real piano. As others have said, many of the sounds are pretty grim. Strings being a common complaint. What do you want? If you want realism, a DAW that can run VSTi plug ins is essential. If you are happy with your Yamaha's sounds stick with it and use the computer to fix/improve your playing. That's it! If you want to produce seriously good, quality premium music, then your Yamaha is probably going to have none of it's sounds used at all. Before you spend ANY money on a different master keyboard, I'd suggest you try using the Yamaha and invest in a master keyboard once you find things the Yamaha annoys you doing! I find pads unimportant, but other find them vital! I have a small 25 note keyboard in bought for using with a laptop, away from the studio. Never used it. No good for my way of working. They sell thousands, so many people must love them.

Tell us exactly what you would love to do. What kind of music, what kind of audience, where it will be used and what for. The pads? Are you going to buy some clever drum gizmo, or VSTi drum device? Remember that bashing a pad is as unlike playing drums as bashing piano keys. I can see the benefit in using a drum kit to get MIDI data into a DAW from an electronic source, but without drums sticks, a pad/piano key is always a limitation.

Sorry im absolutely new to production, what is a VSTi? And what do i use it for ?
Yes i want realism at least in the piano sound since im a pianist and ofcourse better piano sounds will make me want more reality, so yeah i do, what should i have as plugins and stuff?
Yes i want premium quality thats why i am asking for sound changes, i heard some piano sounds on DAW videos which sounded fantastic, but i have no idea what have been done there.
Also, it is not only that im gonna be producing electronic music as i am also going to have vocals over these productions, so most probably it isn’t just about putting some notes and beats together, thats why i want realism.
Is there a guide or something i can understand what VSTi is and how to improve my music quality and realism?
Thank you!
 
Oh - this is going to be a big deep breath.

Me and my colleague (a concert pianist) produce speciality musical products - music for ballet, and kind of accompanist karaoke for people studying horrendously complicated music for Diploma level stuff. The practice with our tracks before moving to a real person for the exams.

He has C3 Yamaha, and our first product took forever because of re-take after re-take, and as he tired it got worst. Now we produce his piano sound inside the computer - Virtual studio Technology instruments - VSTi which are applications that sit on your computer and if you use Cubase, or one of the other popular DAWs, you connect your Yamaha to the computer, and the MIDI cable (which as I'm sure you know, doesn't actually carry any sound) tells the computer what you play. The VSTi could be a Steinway Grand, or a Bechstein, or Bosen...... or anything. Some people even use VSTis that are very specific historical instruments - carefully sampled and recorded for you to have on your system.

Your Yamaha just sounds like what it is, a freestanding electronic piano trying to sound like a grand. in the room, with it's little speakers it's not too bad at it, but connect it to a recorder and it's VERY unlike a real piano sound then.

The workflow we use is like this - He plays a weighted keyboard at his house on his Cubase system - he uses Cubase Artist. We both have the same set of sounds - and while I have others, we use a VSTi called Pianoteq. Very realistic and they sound right to him. He then sends me the track, and I fix it. I sort out little tiny slips and mistakes. Then he comes to me and we go through it again and make small changes. We also edit out the shorter versions we sometimes need. We then add a location specific reverb. Our recordings get played in very live spaces, so we have quite a dry recording so it sounds right in dance studios. We actually have three we use to test - all with different acoustics.

For you - I assume you do not yet have a DAW. I would recommend you download a trial of Cubase and try it out. It isn't simple, but it's scoring editing is OK - not remotely Sibelius, but editing notes on a stave can be handy. You need some kind of MIDI interface to get the audio in and out, and the MIDI in is dealt with by the interface too. You could of course send the MIDI back to your Yamaha for it's sound system, but once you have played some of the VSTi sounds you will not want to do this - a real backwards step.

You need:
Computer
Interface
Software
VSti for whatever sounds you want.

We have piano, orchestral and other traditional sounds. We rarely need synths, electronic sounds or weird noises. Somebody producing club music won't want a Steinway, or bassoons, a viola section or a classical choir.

Pianoteq is not the most expensive.
Real piano

Pianoteq


I like the Pianoteq better, personally.

Does this help?
 
Hi [MENTION=202068]Naffaa01[/MENTION]

One thread on the topic is enough. People will see it.
I removed the other four.
 
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