DM,

I'm a keyboard player. John and Matt's advice above is excellent.

As John points out, with MIDI it's necessary to tell your computer how to do everything. Unfortunately, it doesn't interpret a person's thinking.

If you use notation software to generate your scores, that will help contribute to the overall sound coming across as 'mechanical' and not 'human'.

  • Scoring programs will notate each note with equal velocity and percentage duration and, in addition, each note is exactly placed on the correct beat or part of a beat. When a person plays piano, the above is varied greatly... not every note is 100% accurately placed nor played identically - velocities vary greatly depending on what finger played what note and how phrases are shaped; length of notes also vary. The starting place to getting the best piano sound is to electronically record a MIDI performance. All the nuances of human playing are then recorded as MIDI information. (Playing technique contributes greatly to realism. Notation software does not have that skill.)

If you want to see what I mean, generate a MIDI Supertrack in BIAB and then have a look at the piano roll for that track. These tracks are created from live performances of top musicians and recorded as MIDI.

I haven't used MIDI piano a great deal over the years. Recently, though, I wrote a song that used a MIDI Supertrack piano as the primary backing instrument. Here's a link to that song.

https://soundcloud.com/noel-adams/this-road

I used two inexpensive softsynths playing the same piano part. Details about that setup can be found at the below link.

This Road ... BIAB setup

I don't know if the piano sound I created fits your idea of a 'good' piano sound but I think it sounds reasonable.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Noel

MY SONGS...
Audiophile BIAB 2024