[emchammer]

I once had the opportunity to use a genuine Steinway full-length grand piano which had been fitted with a MIDI input and actuators. I connected it to the output of a Kurzweil K2500 I believe it was, and I used the arpeggiator and sequencer on that to trigger the grand piano. The Steinway became a different instrument. It was not obvious! It was easy to make it sound like a mishmash.

[piltdownman]

This is why Synthesisers allow you to control the ADSR Envelope - the decay and sustain on a piano, makes its a bit of beast to sit comfortably in a mix or - as you've noted - fairly dissonant and unmusical when played as a keyboard as opposed to a discrete acoustic instrument with its own preferred range of operation in terms of pitch, timbre and dynamics.

The answer? Tailor the use-case to the instrument, as orchestras have done for thousands of years. A trumpet riff won't sound appropriate or evocative played on a xylophone anymore a Cello aria on a French Horn.

A masterclass on this is Wendy Carlos' Opus 'Switched On Bach', whose entire inspiration was to make "appealing music you could really listen to" using the then-new synthesiser technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched-On_Bach