"Bright Grand" added to Nord Piano Library!

Clavia gave us again a nice surprise. They have released a freely downloadable brand new piano sound for Nord Piano, Nord Stage and Electro 3 owners: "Bright Grand" which is obviously sampled Yamaha S4 grand piano. New Grand comes in four sizes from small (44MB) to XL (196MB). I already ran a test with XL-version with my Nord Piano and I must say I am quite impressed. This piano sound is a very nice addition to Clavias new (5.3) high quality piano library which already had Steinway ("Lady D") and Bosendorfer ("Grand Imperial").


To sum it, "Bright Grand" is what it is supposed to be: a modern piano with very bright sound. Now Nord owners have three different options. Softest and perhaps most classical is the Lady D (Steinway). The most punchy and brightest one is obviously this new Bright Grand (Yamaha). Somewhere between those two is the Grand Imperial (Bosendorfer) which is also very bright.

If I had to say something critical about new Bright Grand, maybe it's about the sound you get with lowest velocities. I don't know about the original instrument, but in my opinion sound might be softer with low velocities. This tone color is the most problematic if you try to play soft chords. In other words piano is lacking some expressive power which you have with Lady D or with Grand Imperial. This is probably not that noticeable to rock piano players whose playing is mostly from mf to fff.

It would be nice to know more about the process how Clavia has made these instruments: how did they record different velocities and how much post processing is involved in final sound? Compared to Roland and Yamaha in my opinion Clavia has maybe the most natural (less processed) sound which makes it quite nice for recording purposes for example. Also, you might describe Clavia's sound as punchy, sharp, crisp and bright, which makes it easy to mix on stage and cut through mix. This is true about their E-pianos and organs as well.

Finaly I tried new grand with a MIDI track: check a new version of Tango Untitled (My Music). In fact new piano sound was so bright and "perfect" that I had to put some Logic effects (EQ, piano reflection reverb etc.) to to it to make it less perfect. In general it's very difficult to render MIDI piano tracks made with one piano with another piano and make it sound natural. Tango's piano track was originally made with Roland RD-700GX and I had difficulties to make it sound natural with my Nord Piano. Now it seems to me that Bright Grand can maybe catch the original feeling better than Lady D or Grand Imperial.