Sorry for the monumental delay. At first all I wanted was a simple piano, I was thinking grand, or baby grand, and electronic sounding things was all I located at first. I didn't know what I was doing in DropZone and clicking the wrong instrument select aria. I was clicking the "dragon breath.wav" instead of the field above the "Element 1/2" buttons with the text "default [1.6 MB]". clicking the "default [1.6 MB]" brings up an easily navigable instrument select menu.
There is a basic not-as-electronic sounding piano in DropZone, it's called "Dimension Mini Piano.prog" under the "03 - Piano" sub menu. Now the dimension part of the name had me thinking this was another electronic sounding thing not even close to a regular Piano. It's basically a facsimile of an upright piano, close enough for my needs. Using two of these with the spread set to 75% left/right, and using two separate midi channels with the velocity controlling the volume of each note to mimic the stereo spread, the instrument sounded close enough for my beginner work.
Perhaps a smidgen of echo and adjusting DropZone's many settings may bring out the grand sound, I haven't tried that yet. Also using the second element, and clicking the lower "Empty" instrument field to layer a dull piano or the bright piano on top of the "Dimension Mini Piano.prog" seams to work as well.
Now there is an expansion pack for the Dimension Synth, the grand piano pack. I haven't tried that yet.
"O" and I am using some "Flux STTool" to adjust the stereo pan/spread of individual tracks. I found that the spread of allot of instruments are allot better in a mix, if there just slightly narrowed in there stereo spread. This tool also allows me to pipe the left channel to the right, and right to the left just before a reverb on an extra bus "Bus 3" to enhance the big chamber sound on the persuade effects channel. then I just add a "Sends" to bus 3 and adjust the send "lev" accordingly for each instrument.
P.S.
Thank you for the great suggestions, I'll have to look into those after I figure out the basics of X1 Essential.
post edited by zarcondeegrissom - 2011/07/08 00:10:00