Poor keyboard sound

[hautbois16]

I suggest that you turn off any reverb on the Casio as a starting point. Since you say that the Casio sounds OK when you play it through its speakers, I would probably turn off its reverb and add a bit of reverb in your recording/mixing system so that you can control the reverb that you get. If I were working on your project, I would for a test turn off all of the reverb to see what I have using the keyboard and your equipment. Once you have what I call the "pure" or "straight" sound, you can then judge what you might want to add from your equipment. Since I am not familiar with your keyboard, I don't know the quality of that instruments nor its effects.

 

[mjbphotos]

I suggest that you turn off any reverb on the Casio as a starting point. Since you say that the Casio sounds OK when you play it through its speakers, I would probably turn off its reverb and add a bit of reverb in your recording/mixing system so that you can control the reverb that you get. If I were working on your project, I would for a test turn off all of the reverb to see what I have using the keyboard and your equipment. Once you have what I call the "pure" or "straight" sound, you can then judge what you might want to add from your equipment. Since I am not familiar with your keyboard, I don't know the quality of that instruments nor its effects.

Cheaper Casios usually don't have the option for reverb on/off, the sound is part of the 'sample' used.

 

[LazerBeakShiek]

Put it through a preamp.

Casio? If it has no midi out, or no reverb off, I might make a suggestion. A midi controller. The retailers online have them in the 20 dollar range. Then download Dexed. Dexed is a Yamaha DX-7 VST for free.

 

[rob aylestone]

DX-7 piano is er, fixed in the 80s, and being honest, a terrible piano sound, that just caught on.

 

[JamEZmusic]

use usb midi. download some nice free piano sample library's, load into kontakt (it's free) work on a template for a bit, add your nice cathedral verb and some stereo delay perhaps. then save it. Whenever you feel like playing just load it up and hit record. done.

An example of something I done last week, the tone is not as good as I'd have liked but most people don't care.

Silent Hill - Room Of Angel Piano on Vimeo

If you have no sustain pedal, then automate in the sustain pedal using midi, put CC64 to the ON position. And automate is after you have finished recording to taste.

I understand this is a lot to learn, but do try. you only have to set it up once, and it will probably get you great results, if you settle for buying more cables etc it's still going to sound naff IMO. (and possibly take you longer)

 

[Zoomone]

Thanks for all your tips. I have the cable now and a combination of that and using the EQ in Audacity to back off some the higher frequencies a little the sound is better to my ears anyway. The Casio I have does have reverb on/off and at ten levels, but I have found the Virtual Hall feature is good and it is one button instead of pressing the function button 9 times and then dialing the reverb up another 8 or 9 presses.

I did try recording the keyboard with no effects switched on and using the Audacity reverb but I think the Casio one sounds slightly better.

I think a sustain pedal (The keyboard has the input) or DAW to create it would help but my original intention was simply to see if I could get from never playing keyboard to playing a tune I liked in a few weeks and a decent recoding of the result. Now I have reasonable sound I just need to learn to play a bit more evenly. I am going to play along with the original quite a few times and see if that helps.

Thanks again to everyone who took the trouble to answer.

 

[rob aylestone]

Synth sound rarely need a sustain pedal, but any sound trying to mimic an instrument that MUST have one rarely works - and putting one in afterwards is a non-starter. You'd spend more time doing that than going to the sustain pedal shop in a distant city!