Guitar Center had a sale a few days ago, and I used it as an excuse to buy Ivory II. After the brutal 2.5 hour long installation, I loaded up the Yamaha C7 and played through some of Little Shop of Horrors. Wow! Regret was the first thing I felt…regret that I didn’t buy it months ago. I actually did buy Pianoteq a few months ago. I hated the included pianos in Apple MainStage, and wanted a virtual piano with a small footprint. Pianoteq takes up 8 MB worth of hard disk space, and it sounds pretty good. Actually, it sounded GREAT before I loaded up Ivory II.
It’s weird… Pianoteq is much more playable and expressive, but it’s lacking something. I say it’s weird because I also want to say Ivory II is more expressive than Pianoteq, but that would contradict my first statement. Hm. Ivory II sounds like an actual piano. Pianoteq feels like playing an actual instrument that sort of resembles a piano, but isn’t. Get it? Good.
I remember being really impressed with the Motif XF8 pianos. They do sound amazing, but for some strange reason…I thought they were…enough. Seriously? What is “enough” when it comes to piano sounds? I was really happy with the Motif XF8 sounds, and produced quite a few tracks with them. I knew about Ivory back then, but I had no interest because I was too busy thinking I had “enough”. Bringing the Motif XF8 to every single gig was a nightmare. The things weighs a ton. I would’ve be surprised if it actually does weight 2000 lbs. I ended up getting a CP33, which has a better action than the Motif XF8 without all the bells and whistles. I liked the piano sound on the CP33 too, and I practiced on it a lot. Playing pop rock with the Mono Piano sound was always fun. Again, I thought it was “enough”.
Well…I ended up playing for ten hours the day I got Ivory II. Moral of the story…you can never have “enough” when it comes to piano sounds. There’s always something better.
