Automation? Feel like I'm taking crazy pills here...

First off I just want to say I love AP - I got it with the Komplete 4 update, wasn't really expecting much but was very pleasantly surprised by the quality & playability- hats off to NI for that!

BUT what is the story with automation? Has no-one noticed this? I came to the forum expecting there to be hysteria, people foaming at the mouth and restraining orders being issued but there hasn't been one post pointing out the fact that Akoustik Piano CANNOT BE AUTOMATED WITHIN A VST HOST!

I use the NI Kore solution and was shocked to find that Kore has no control whatsoever over Akoustik Piano. There's no point in having Kore presets for AP if they open up as blank pages. This is no fault of Kore or the creators of its presets, but it's due to the fact that AP just isn't open to VST control. I know there's midi control, but that's a poor substitute.

NI pleeease bring Akoustik Piano up to date!

 

Yeah, it would be great if we can use our knobs and buttons of the controller device! (Like on the other NI products...)

 

What in the world do you need real time control over (besides maybe reverb)? It's a piano after all...

ew

 

Hmmmm...odd response.
Being that it's really a virtual instrument, one would think that automation controls on just about every other virtual instrument in the world, would be present for AP....but alas, no

Load it into Kontak. You'll get some automation there.

-Scps

 

And I still have to repeat; it's a piano. What can you automate on a real piano?

ew

 

Ew, the title of my thread might divert attention from the issue although the technological implementation is the same. When I say automation, I mean the ability to assign parameters of the instruments to MIDI/VST automatable controls (in my case, read: Kore).

On a real piano, you can manually control pretty much anything you want. Here, we're limited by technology and we have to find ways to make up for those limitations.

The excuse that the presets are or should be 'set and forget' is poppycock - there are plenty of realtime scenarios in which parameters in this instrument could easily need tweaking mid-performance (especially in Live/rehearsal situations):

- Going into Eco mode when experiencing dropouts/CPU strain
- Changing Bass boost amount in order to blend more with other instruments (would've thought this would be a no-brainer)
- Enabling/disabling EQ
- Adjusting pedal resonance (certain presets)
- Adjusting tuning
- Adjusting reverb
- Adjusting volume

On that last note if presets are supposed to be 'static' like you're suggesting, why would the volume control be hard-assigned to cc7? Surely we'd be all be only too delighted to take our hands off the keyboard, open up the laptop screen/turn on the monitor, playfully locate our mouse, locate the mouse pointer on the screen, locate the control on the screen and drag away?

Because we're using a VST instead of a real piano, we're making massive compromises in terms of - mainly feel - but audio quality/reproduction, and manual control & responsivity via keyboards with severely limited expression. There are ways to ease these problems, but forcing us to use the mouse and screen puts several extra hurdles between the musician and the solution - hurdles which are amplified in a live situation.

NI are in the business of making solutions for musicians (and DJs har) - we provide their bread and butter and they provide us ways of expressing ourselves. A bit of extra thought and attention into the human element wouldn't go astray

Also, as an aside: I want to f*ck with the sound and make it do things a piano shouldn't do (like I can do in real life, albeit with different parameters)

 

What I want? Its simple. (Actually it is not really 'automation'...):
Just turning those parameter knobs with my controllers... Not with my mouse. Thats all.

 

Your hands should be way too busy to mess with automation while playing piano! But it does seem like common sense that you should be able to change eq/reverb parameters etc... with controls instead of the mouse

 

I'm completely with rozling. That's what I came to this forum to find out about as I was surprised to read nothing about it in the manual. Akoustik Piano came to me unbidden in a Komplete upgrade but I liked it enough to get a new weighted 88-key controller keyboard to do it justice.

As far as I'm concerned if it can be tweaked on screen it ought to be tweakable from a controller. Preferably not with hard-assigned values as in Elektrik Piano.

 

Huh, I've never tried automation on AP, but I agree, it should work.

For instance: you've set the key noises to a mid to high level, hold down sustain pedal, play a chord, let it sound, and then _very_ slowly release the keys. On a real piano you wouldn't get any key release noises. But with AP - if your keyboard doesn't support "release-velocity" - (and there are not so many that do, BTW: does AP support it?) you'll hear your keys releasing while there should be just pure soundboard.

In this scenario automation is definitely needed to control key noises.

Cheers,
Juergen

 

here's another reason: consistency within a product line
I recently purchased kore and sat down with the manual and sat down and tried it by loading a fairly simple instrument (AP) and reread the manual, and wondered if there was a simpler vsti I could try, no, well, tried Absynth and then it worked.
I am glad to have confirmation that I should not spend any more time trying to get it to work with AP