Exploring Pianoteq: From Demo to Stress Test 

I must comment that I'm actually surprised how many of these big VSTs and plugins are actually supported on Linux, and even in this case a Raspberry Pi. For someone that uses the penguin for his music production and noodling is awesome, because there's a lot of tricks we deal to make VSTs work and think they are on a Windows machine... and they don't always work. By the way, I could watch an entire video of you playing with Pianoteq.

O M G...that overdriven electric piano was giving me chills. That software is amazing that all that can be done with zero sampling. All of those different models to play with! Thanks for showcasing how you ran it through its paces, and giving an end user an idea of what you need to be able to get good results.

The fashion and dance show at the start was the gift I didn't know I wanted :)

(Brocelande or Brocéliande as we say in France, is a real and mythical forest related to middle age stories. You know, Merlin, Arthur, that kind of stories…)

absolutely lovely video, i really enjoyed this. thank you!

I really love Pianoteq's Ant Petrof and Rhodes Mk2, to the point I kinda realized I just wanted to play ambient jazz arrangements more than the beepboops I was hung up on. Really incredible software, and I do love how I can have multiple sequenced instances going and kinda built up my own Gigi Masin ambient groove. Now I just need a really good trumpet and saxophone!

Back in the day, I could get Pianoteq Play 3 (what was renamed Stage with v4), on a 2010 Sony Vaio 1st gen i5, under Linux (not Windows) with a 64 sample buffer. Windows 7 would struggle to get a 256 sample buffer on the same laptop. This played a critical role when it came to practice and learning the piano, as Pianoteq with a 64 sample buffer connected to a good weighted keyboard just feels like a real piano far more than anything else.

Awesome concept for a video!

It sounds incredible

it's wild that this thing takes up like 50MB???

Pianoteq is great, not just because of the sounds but because of how much you can adjust the model in real time - being able to do things like adjust the detuning of the instrument via automation (like an lfo) is just great and really sets it apart from multi-sampled instruments. (also custom tuning is cool, you can adjust the sound board to really change the sound.) Also, beyond the scope/function of this video, something I've not seen talked about is that you can use it as an effect in a DAW; wanna know what you synth would sound like if you had it played at a piano and then recorded how the strings reacted? You can do that! Maybe niche but, combined with the above automation stuff, really does give some potential for some fun sound design.

I mean, he seems pretty chill now, but I heard he straight up iced MOOG a few months back.

Lovely playing

Great stuff, Jeremy - thanks for sharing! I can see the little MeLE PC running prebuilt VCV Rack patches and sitting in a hardware modular or something ...

I too grew up with an old upright in the living room that I always noodled for hours on. Holding the sustain pedal and listening to the resonances and beats between different intervals was just so inspiring. There was an old Casio there too but (this was early 80's so not so old at the time) but it didn't have the depth. A few years back I put a Nord Grand in the living room to give me that feeling again, in hardware it's the only digital piano I've found that recreates that effect where I can almost randomly press a few keys and instantly get transported back and start to compose something different to what I normally play. I've always loved the Nord sounds and many uprights in particular for their character but have hated their keyboard action. The Nord Grand has a Kawai action with triple sensors, so it's way better. Can play speedy passages very softly reliably, or loudly. I now prefer that action to the old upright, which I still have. Anyway Pianoteq looks really great. This is the first video of it that has really made me want to try it out. Thanks for the effort putting it together :)

Nice demo, Jeremy! I know people have mixed feelings/preferences on the Pianoteq sound, but it’s far and away the most playable library I’ve used. Velocity based modulation is super fun with some params (e.g. inverse map velocity to the Celeste pedal, so low velocities are a felt piano, high velocity is clean, and everything in between blends smoothly), polyphonic aftertouch and pinch harmonic pedaling helps the guitar playability immensely, and the bonkers amount of control you can get over the sound with as many foot controllers as you can manage (I usually run 4) is like nothing else I’ve tried. Such a cool little synth.

One of the most important upgrades for Pianoteq for me was a continuous sustain pedal. Never want to go back to not having one. Unfortunately there aren't many solutions on the market to add one when your Keyboard doesn't support it. (that I know of)

This seems like the perfect solution for "upgrading" my old Yamaha digital piano that's showing (and sounding) its age.

Those are some sweet sounding pianos

I'm honestly more fascinated by the fact that they make a marimba midi controller :) Seems so niché I'm surprised something like that exists :)

Hi, Jeremy. Plus 1 on 'noodlin' when I was a kid. I also used to sneak into practice rooms in the music department and do the same when I needed to rest my brain at university. Small room, bare walls..killer ambience. Push on the left pedal, bang out a 'power chord', and then experiment with the right hand. Great times. I've used pianoteq for years..need to add harp and guitar packs. Anyway, spot on review of what it can do. Also loved your VCV videos. Thanks

Pianoteq is awesome

For anyone curious it’s free to demo with most features and you can play every instrument. It’s extremely generous. And an amazing plugin. I bought it earlier this year and I love it.

I also put together a standalone Pianoteq station recently! I'm really happy I did so! I tried two different machines: - A raspi 4 with a hifiberry dac - A refurbished Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q (which was around ~$180 when I bought it). I didn't bother with an audio interface - USB midi and the built in headphone jack will probably do *just fine* for a lot of people. Both can be velcroed to the bottom of a midi controller without too much issue. I don't have it set up with a screen most of the time - you can set up Pianoteq to cycle through presets from whatever MIDI CC you want, and the computers just start the standalone Pianoteq app on boot. Honestly, they both worked good enough to be the little noodling station I wanted, and I think most people would be happy with either, but obviously setup was easier on the Windows machine. There's a bunch of other cheap refurbished thin clients that would work just as well.

I'm planning to do the same with a digital EP station in the living room, but I wanna go screen-less. The current plan is getting a Yamaha Reface EP as the sound engine (it has quite good Rhodes & Wurli sounds), take it apart and use it as a rack module. Then get a StudioLogic SL73, take it apart as well and build a wooden house for the two.. Plus I wanna have active mid-tier monitor built-in (like E-MU PM5 or so). This way it would actually work like a Wurli: sit down, turn it on and boom. Already checked other already built EP clones, like the Viscount, Crumar, but none of them would match my taste for that amount of money. But your video made me think of rather using Keyscape or Pianoteq on an iPad instead :D We'll see

Going to give this a play with some generative apps in AUM this week

I really want a good mallet controller. I need to check that one out.

Hey dude thanks for being cool

Might be good to know that the pro & all instruments version on display here is a ~1000 bucks bundle. Excellent demo version though! Also note that you can click the massive "instrument" image and get more advanced tweaking controls, really fun to randomize and mess around with.

Pretty incredible VST. So much playable, the timbres are still a bit plastic to my ears. Hopefully version 9 will be better in it.

Nice ❤ Also used to play piano when I was a kid, started again lessons courses and absolutely digging this plugin. Looking for a new midi keyboard, aiming Kawai VPC1. What do you think? What do you have ?

Someone should put this in a Eurorack module…

Dog approved! Also, iOS i dunno something. Stealing this. Here's vibing to those childhood days you enjoyed.

the only true gripe i have about pianoteq is that it's the vst that has the largest space allocated to it :(

They have this on the iPad too which would be easy to just pair with something like my SP404mk2 and some headphones. Newer iPads with USB-C you need a lot less dongle. If it runs on Linux I guess it could be done on a Steam Deck? hah.

Lmao at calling all this a lazy review. Great stuff!

Suprb 💗💢👍

So you're a furry right ? I'm one too, hewwo