Searching for the Perfect Stage Piano

I expect this post to have several follow ups, but since writing The Democratization of Piano? I have been digging deep in my search for a an alternative to lugging my ailing Rhodes Mark I to every gig I play. Now that COVID-19 vaccines are widely available and live music is starting to happen again, I have started performing more frequently.

For the time being I have put together a setup that is quite satisfying, but I don’t consider it a long term solution. Instead of using by beloved Rhodes I am using the Arturia Keylab 88 to control a Yamaha Reface CP. The “RdI” setting on the Reface CP sounds remarkably similar to the Rhodes Suitcase 73 that doesn’t leave my studio. The Reface even has a few keys that sound a little different, brighter or quicker to bark, than the others, just like the real instruments usually do.

The effects on the Reface CP are limited in parameters, but you can have five of them on at once and still maintain 128 note polyphony. I’m not going to get into everything that the Reface CP can do, but it is a very capable little instrument with just the right sort of limitations. The Arturia Keylab 88 makes the Reface CP feel much more substantial. The Keylab 88’s fully weighted keybed is quite heavy but not sluggish allowing you to dig into it.

I have expanded the capabilities of the setup with the Blokas Midihub. The Midihub is a fantastic, standalone, programmable, MIDI processor and interface. I have set it up with a flexible arpeggiator, and several LFOs that I have mapped to things like delay time. Using the Midihub I also mapped the aftertouch on the Keylab to the rate of the tremolo on the Reface CP, so that I can speed it up by pressing down on the keybed.

So if it’s so great, why isn’t it long term? Why seek out a stage piano? The main reason is because the setup is complex. Not overly so, but enough so that a bad cable, the wrong setting, or any manner of other issues could delay soundcheck or bring things to a halt. There are other limitations. And I want limitations because I understand too well how too many possibilities can paralyse creativity. However, combining the keybed with the sound engine and having a bit more access under the hood will streamline my setup and allow me to fine tune my sound. In the next article I’ll explain a bit more about my interim setup, discuss some of the instruments I’ve tried and researched to replace it, and explain exactly what I’m after in a stage piano. All the best!

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About John CS Keston

John CS Keston is an award winning transdisciplinary artist reimagining how music, video art, and computer science intersect. His work both questions and embraces his backgrounds in music technology, software development, and improvisation leading him toward unconventional compositions that convey a spirit of discovery and exploration through the use of graphic scores, chance and generative techniques, analog and digital synthesis, experimental sound design, signal processing, and acoustic piano. Performers are empowered to use their phonomnesis, or sonic imaginations, while contributing to his collaborative work. Originally from the United Kingdom, John currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he is a professor of Digital Media Arts at the University of St Thomas. He founded the sound design resource, AudioCookbook.org, where you will find articles and documentation about his projects and research. John has spoken, performed, or exhibited original work at New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2022), the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2022), the International Digital Media Arts Conference (iDMAa 2022), International Sound in Science Technology and the Arts (ISSTA 2017-2019), Northern Spark (2011-2017), the Weisman Art Museum, the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Walker Art Center, the Minnesota Institute of Art, the Eyeo Festival, INST-INT, Echofluxx (Prague), and Moogfest. He produced and performed in the piece Instant Cinema: Teleportation Platform X, a featured project at Northern Spark 2013. He composed and performed the music for In Habit: Life in Patterns (2012) and Words to Dead Lips (2011) in collaboration with the dance company Aniccha Arts. In 2017 he was commissioned by the Walker Art Center to compose music for former Merce Cunningham dancers during the Common Time performance series. His music appears in The Jeffrey Dahmer Files (2012) and he composed the music for the short Familiar Pavement (2015). He has appeared on more than a dozen albums including two solo albums on UnearthedMusic.com.

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