I have played the piano since I was 7. My own we bought when I was kid, and hundreds and hundreds more that I have played in TV studios, churches, and Nursing Homes. I have 5 keyboards and one actual piano now. Each keyboard has from 2 to 20 pianos. I have an SD2, and a JV1010. Both have LOTS of pianos.

At the end of the day, I defy anyone in the audience who is not a LONG time piano player to say, "Gee that does not sound like a piano."

Heck I have at least a bass guitar or upright bass (I prefer the latter, but not much to give away here). And Drums. At least a trio. USUALLY a quartet. It gets in there, and when you use RealTracks it seems to sound pretty dang good.

In order to get true velocities with midi, it's sometimes going to be hard. If I play the melody, I use more oomph on that, just using whichever finger the melody is going to be best on. Usually my small finger.

So many times I want to order the whaaaambulance. Even I am ok with MOST of the pianos. Back in the FM days with synths sure, I could figure it out. Now, not so much. As Mac said recently, you are hearing midi instruments in almost every movie soundtrack. It gets so close you won't hire a full band to come in so the clarinet sounds ok. Dang clarinets are mostly annoying anyway, unless you have pros and they mix well, and have lots of time to rehearse. Then you get prima donnas who know better and don't like your score so they make it worse. You have no idea. Forget the drunk bass player in your trio, because that's annoying. Maybe PG music should release drunk tracks of each part.

Get on with it. You get nothing accomplished by futzing around with this and that, that's not music it's NIT picking.

Post us your work. If you've used this software, and have any workflow, ways of getting things laid out, this should NOT take longer than 15 to 30 minutes. Even the pieces my wife and I have played as a duo where I used 2 or 3 instruments behind us, have taken less than an hour to make. Usually 10 minutes.

The part of what WE do, requires some showmanship, and pizazz. You can't just deadpan 8 or 10 songs, not smile, engage the audience, and stare off like someone high. That's more important that the dang piano.

That said, if there's no piano in the room, I'd be against putting it in. A bass line when I'm playing the piano means I move up on the keyboard and stay off their notes. A drum is somewhat ubiquitous. But the piano would stand out if it's not there, and I often don't even use it when playing a horn. People will be looking around for the piano, because it's big and obvious. Like sticking in the cathedral pipe organ samples. Those would be used in movie soundtacks, and I bet you can contract some big firm and ask for EP Biggs on the Cantebury Cathedral pipe organ and get some sounds for 20k, and then use them in your upcoming movie.

John posted a whole bunch of pianos. But if we buried them in a backing track, added some a and b parts, changed up the piece and then posted it, you'd be hard pressed to go and say, GEE that's the 2.6 Gig Korean Grand piano played in Car-neggy hall, by Joe Blow, formally a horn player on a Friday night when he's only had one scotch. Sure. Really.

You can spend hundreds of hours, a whack of money, and your MOM won't know the free job from the expensive. And then you have RealTracks, a dog of a different colour.

I will put one caveat that I think is in order. You might notice it's different if I do it, or Mac does it, or Miles
Black does it. But that said, I'm back to the who cares part. I try to make music. I got the Ketron when I went 64 bit, I wanted to replace the VSC Dxi syth I was using with something better.

All in all my Korg now sounds best, because it's easiest on the arthritic fingers. One of them took a left turn and it hurts 24/7. So my big piano in the living room is played, but because it hurts, I play my Korg.

My 2 cents worth, which you probably will toss to join another in the centre of the capital of Italy. I want a Frank Sinatra real track. Either that or I put in my CD...Volare whoo whoo...never mind.

John Conley
Musica est vita