Here we go Spectrasonics.

[Guy Rowland]

No promo emails here...

BTW, several retailers are selling Keyscape at a discount. JRR shop has it at $340 in basket. The caveat is all these are physical versions, so overseas buyers will do better buying locally. In the UK, Time & Space have it for £278. It's a strange world where it's much cheaper to buy a physical copy with USB install rather than a download, but there we go.

[Guy Rowland]

This is a pretty impressive video, Eric responding to some comments from the gospel community on the MKS-20 patch:



I do hear a difference in the final chorus effect - the Keyscape one feels faster and a bit richer - but the vanilla version sounds identical to me.

[Scoredog]

not a pianist but so many cool sounds to draw inspiration from....totally digging it.

[retroreel]

I've had Keyscape for just under the week now. I find it inspirational to play. It is the playability IMO that makes it stand out from the many other sampled acoustic and electric piano's out there (and I have tried a quite lot of them).

The attention to detail in the sampling is quite phenomenal. What you have is a detailed close up perspective (no multi mics here), but you are able to fine tune each keyboard to meet your track needs. The keyboards I have tracked so far sit well in mixes, another key aspect of the library IMO.

Highlights for me are the Rhodes LA Custom (by far the best sampled piano I have ever played), C7 (not quite as playable as the Yamaha in Pianoteq, but significantly better sounding) and the Wulitzer 140 (a real surprise for me). Also love the Duo patches that immediately conjure up some inspirational ideas.

IMO it is great value for money (I was also able to get a 10% discount pre-order deal with musicmatter) and for me the Rhodes LA Custom is worth the entry price alone.

Just my 2 penny's worth.

[Guy Rowland]

I'd just submitted a post when it told me to look at yours, retroreel. That's all fantastic to hear, and I greatly appreciate the feedback.

I can sense an increasing inevitability about me buying this. Despite my occasional loud misgivings on a few of their specifics, Spectrasonics are pretty much my most used and most beloved VI dev. They've earned the right in my book to be given the benefit of the doubt. The doubt in this case is, of course, I really don't need it. I'm a lousy keyboard player with a lousy keyboard, I have half a dozen good pianos, Scarbee's Vintage Keys and UVI Toy museum, which should cover a good 90% of this. But the near-uniform orgasmic reviews not just from the pros but also literally anyone who's bought it and commented online, plus Omni integration, plus videos like the above that show the detail that has gone into what should be a very utilitarian and perfunctory patch, plus that in the UK Time & Space have an amazingly good deal on it, makes me think I'll be caving within days.

[J Rod]

I noticed there are dozens and dozens of Keyscapes demos in the Spectrasonics Keyscape TAB "Audio".

Keyscapes audio demos

[tack]

Guy, do get on with losing your resolve, wouldn't you? I'm rather interested to hear your thoughts.

Piet did you end up buying it? I'm particularly interested to get your opinion on its playability.

[Piet De Ridder]

One of these days, Jason. I'm still wondering whether to order the box at the local music store, or whether to go for the 70 gig download ...

_

[Piet De Ridder]

Went with the download. Much, much easier and quicker than I had anticipated: 3 hours and 27 minutes to shift a little under 80 gigabytes of data from the Spectrasonics servers to my HD. What an age we live in.

It's installing while I type this, so I think I'll able to say something in a few hours.

_

[PhJ]

Ah, it will be nice to have your impressions.
I'm very curious about that C7.

[Piet De Ridder]

Three hours into Keyscape, and I’ve only been playing the first preset: the default C7. First report: mixed feelings.

I hesitate however to draw (and share) too many conclusions just yet, because I’m playing Keyscape from a V-Piano and it sounds and feels to me as if both aren’t very well matched. Meaning, I don’t get the dynamic response from Keyscape that I would like at all. I have to play MUCH harder than I’m used to to make the C7 ‘open up’, and when I play as soft as I’m used to, rather a lot of what I’m playing can hardly be heard.
So: definitely need to do some velocity curve adjusting, either in Keyscape or in the V-Piano. (Or maybe use a Transformer in Logic.)
(Having said that: the 'open up' timbre of this C7 seems to be tucked away very high up the velocity scale — values 123 and upwards —, which means that, no matter the velocity curve, you'll always have to play pretty forcefully before the instrument replies with that timbre.)

And I might be wrong, but it sounds to me as if this piano simulates its dynamic range a bit too much by volume and a bit too little by timbre differentiation. The advantage being that the instruments sounds very coherent across its dynamic range — beautifully so —, but the downside is that it lacks colour shading. (Again though: maybe I come out too soon with all of this.)

And then there’s that thing that Larry spotted: the choked releases. It didn’t grab my ears as much as it did Larry’s when listening to the video, but now I definitely have to agree with him: there’s something odd about those releases (in a way that reminds me very much about the Ravenscroft, as a matter of fact, which has near identical ‘dead’ releases).
I’ve never played a real C7, so I’m asking those who have: does a real one sound like that? Does Yamaha have an ultra-powerful damping mechanism that makes the notes almost instantly dead when the keys are released?
Whether it is an accurate representation of the real thing or not, I can imagine it might bother some people. (It certainly will start to bother me, I know.)

Other eyebrow-raisers: no half-pedalling and no sympathetic resonances (well, none that I noticed). I can live without the first (though reluctantly), the second however is going to be sorely missed in music that needs it. (Which is just about any piano music, no?)

But I did say ‘mixed feelings’ at the start, did I not? Which means there should be something to be very enthusiastic about as well. And there is. The sound (I don’t mean the timbre, but the sound) is superb. The piano’s timbre is a matter of preference of course, but give this piano the right kind of music and I’m totally convinced it’ll sound just fantastic: blues, funk, rock, soul, pop, certain types of jazz, ... the perfect food to bring out the best in this instrument.

Here’s one of those person-with-identity-crisis-improvises-on-a-piano ramblings I like to do when getting to know new instruments. Everything I mentioned above (apart from that physical ‘not connecting with the instrument’ feeling I have) can be heard here, I believe. (Default preset 1 "LA Custom C7 Grand Piano", with only minor velocity adjustments, but no other edits or processing.)

To sum up: a good start, but I hope it’ll get better.

_

[Guy Rowland]

I'm 100% sure you will notice loads that I won't Piet (Me = "HEY! IT SOUNDS JUST LIKE A PIANO!!!"). The only thing I really notice is what I did on the video when I first heard it - the stereo is * * v e r y w i i i d d e * * . Fine for pop I guess, but how is on getting a stage sound? I think that there's a preset for that? If you still have the midi for your lovely improv, just 15 seconds of it on a concert stage type setting / patch would be interesting to me, thanks.

[tack]

Other eyebrow raisers: no half-pedalling and no sympathetic resonances (well, none that I noticed). I can live without the first (though reluctantly), the second however is going to be sorely missed in music that needs it. (Which is just about any piano music, no?)

Typically no half-pedalling also means no repedalling. Although at least to the extent that a VI does support repedalling, it is greatly enhanced by supporting full pedal to half pedal transitions. This is the kind of nuance I miss immediately in playability. And of course sympathetic resonance would be greatly missed sonically.

Thanks for your first thoughts here Piet. My enthusiasm is heavily dialed down.

[Ashermusic]

My guess is that people are more interested in this for the electric keyboards than yet another C7 anyway.

[Lawrence]

Our boy Chimuelo says it beats the NeoSoul, but it's all about live for him.

[Ashermusic]

How much closer could it be to real than this?

[Lawrence]

In all honesty, I didn't listen because I own neither, so I would be no judge.

[Piet De Ridder]

Guy, I stepped through a few more presets and they’re all equally wide. The good news is though that the Keyscape C7 scores fairly high on mono-compatibility (which isn’t a given with sampled or modeled pianos), which means that the width is up to how the user prefers it really. Keyscape doesn’t appear to have a control for width however (which is another unfortunate omission), so either you have to load the instrument in Omni and insert a stereo-processor there (that would be Omnisphere's 'Imager'), or insert one after Keyscape in your channel-strip.

There is indeed a ‘Stage’ preset but that’s called ‘stage’, I guess, because it’s got a very hard, cutting-through-everything sound.

In between this post and the previous one, I can’t say my enthusiasm for the C7 is on the up. Despite velocity-curve adjusting, I still have problems with the dynamic response, I also found out that the pedal-down samples are just a fraction too loud compared to the pedal-up samples (it’s difficult to explain why that’s annoying, but it is) and combined with some of the earlier mentioned misgivings, I find I’m sitting I front of a piano that I have great difficulty connecting with.

Its big redeeming feature — the sound — remains standing strong though. It happens quite frequently that, as you’re playing and you strike some chord or other, you say: wow, that sounds really good.

So, feelings still very much mixed and I’m increasingly convinced it’ll stay that way.
(All of this only pertaining to the C7 of course. I still haven’t tried any of the other keyboards.)

_

[FriFlo]

Three hours into Keyscape, and I’ve only been playing the first preset: the default C7. First report: mixed feelings.
(...)
Other eyebrow-raisers: no half-pedalling and no sympathetic resonances (well, none that I noticed). I can live without the first (though reluctantly), the second however is going to be sorely missed in music that needs it. (Which is just about any piano music, no?)
_

Well, quite early as the teaser was out, I was asking the half pedaling question both here and on VI-Control. I received no response on this, although I would have expected many people to chime in, but hardly anybody seemed to care about it. So, I wrote to Spectrasonics and got a reply about a week later, which I also posted, but hardly anyone seemed to take notice or comment.
I suppose, most film music composers still have their doepfer (or similar) keyboard without the option of a continuous sustain pedal, that is why they do not care so much.
However, many people seem to understand this as a 'players' library, which I agree with! Those players all have their high quality stage pianos and most of them surely have the continuous pedals, which is why I do not get how they could leave out something as obvious as this. Omnisphere supports polyphonic aftertouch, so, it can't be that they are to lazy to implement feature not everybody will use. Spectrasonics reply on my request was even more of an eyebrow-raiser:
"Keyscape does not support half-pedaling, but we assure you that the design of the Grand Piano is meant for the best sound possible.

We didn’t find that using a half-damper would improve the sound or playability, but we will keep this in mind for the future."
Hmmm ... What of these two? Either half pedaling does not improve playability (which I disagree with) or they will look into it in a future update? Sounds pretty contradictory, doesn't it?
And on top of that I now hear, that there is not even a sympathetic resonance modeled.
All this turned me away from this product, which I would have really appreciated, if the grand would have been done properly (there certainly is a sound there, but I expect more from this company). I find the collection of electric pianos and all the other attic founds rather attractive, but I am just not letting them go away with leaving out already proven technologies that exist for quite some time now. We live in an age where so much technology is available and possible, but all to often, we only get slimmed down versions of what is possible.

[Piet De Ridder]

Fri,

My guess is that, at one point during Keyscape's development, the Spectrasonics team sat round the table and made up a list of essentials, things of secondary importance, and a third category of things that were simply not worth their while — the omissions we're deploring obviously falling in the latter category.

Knowing what I know now, I think that Spectrasonics never set out to give us the final word in acoustic piano sampling. What they came up with instead is a versatile, very good sounding sampled Yamaha that should prove extremely useful (and satisfying) in the day-to-day reality of any self-respecting gigging professional. Give a good player a good keyboard controller and Keyscape, and he/she can be assured not having to feel embarrassed wherever he/she shows up, be in on a stage or in a studio. And I think that's the whole idea behind Keyscape. A realistic and pragmatic compromise between good sound, versatility, convenience and reliability.

What the C7 in Keyscape definitely isn't — and never was designed to be, I now think —, is the ultimate sampled piano that can withstand the scrutiny of discerning, ultra-critical pianists who know that a piano is incomplete if it can't do half-pedalling or sympathetic resonances. In other words: Keyscape clearly wasn't made for some pianist to record, say, the piano sonatas of Schubert with. I doubt if something like that was ever high on Spectrasonics' list of hopes for Keyscape.

Also: I don't really know to which extent the STEAM engine is actually capable of the pretty complex number-crunching which is required for convincing sympathetic resonances and, to a lesser extent, half-pedalling. Thus far, there's nothing in Omnisphere that requires this type of intricate simulation, is there?

_

[Lawrence]

....and a lot cheaper than a Nord-but if you start with the "gigging musician" theory, the absence of organs is a little confusing.

[Guy Rowland]

....and a lot cheaper than a Nord-but if you start with the "gigging musician" theory, the absence of organs is a little confusing.

Keyscape II should unconfuse you....

[Lawrence]

Keyscape II is in the works?

[Guy Rowland]

Keyscape II is in the works?

Well, who knows? But nothing would surprise me less, among various other projects they have. Keyscape isn't a broad keyboard library, still less a full Nord replacement which has organs, synths, you name it - this is just pianos of many types.

[Lawrence]

I suppose if Piet's theory is true it could happen, but it certainly doesn't seem imminent.

Again, why no organs if they planned a gigging machine? Who knows.