But Erard contributed a lot--the invention of the double-escapement allowing rapidly repeated strikes, and according to some sources, the earliest pedals (developed from harp pedals). The founder also created two piano-organ combinations for Maire Antoinette. Had to flee to England when the Revolution broke out.

What I'd never understood, although it's obvious, was that the piano developed from the harp--the intermediary, the harpsichord, was a way of hitting chords on a harp, like an autoharp. A harpchord.

I was wondering what your impression of his rendition was - he stayed pretty close to the original - at least didn't stray nearly as far from the original harmonies as his other interpretations of pop tunes.

When I want to relax, I often put the Path on and just drift away with it.  The jazz rendition works well too in this respect (for me).

Glenn

I'm listening to Beethoven's Pathetique (cantabile movement).  Very interesting hearing this does by a jazz pianist after hearing it so often in the classical style.

Glenn

PS - I'm really awaiting to see what Joe Felice would say if and when he tries this piece out (he's a classical pianist by training).  It seems to me that Doug McKenzie is too.

You rang????

I have not yet heard the aforementioned Pathetique file, but rather than trying to copy it, here is a slightly different submittal for your approval.

Please have a listen to my version of Gershwin's "A Foggy Day in London Town" at the following URL:

http://www.mediafire.com/?nitczhtfaii

This particular mp3 exceeds Pianoteq's 10MB limit, so it is made available to you via Mediafire.com.  As with my Variations on Jingle Bells file, this Gershwin piece was arranged and performed (this time in multitrack midi) by Yours Truly more than decade before Pianoteq became available.

I started working on this in an (unsuccessful) attempt to become a Roland performing artist, back in 1995.  At the time, I had acquired a JV-1080 sound module that had a whopping 64MB (not GB) worth of ROM (read-only memory) sounds, and a total polyphony of an equally whopping 64 simultaneous voices.

This particular arrangement took me perhaps 3 or 4 months to work up.  It was designed to put the JV-1080 through its paces in a 16-track performance.  Since there are far more voices than are allowed by 16 simultaneous tracks, I made very, very extensive use of program changes.  Everything you hear in the mp3 was done via midi sequence in real time through the 1080, including panning, pitch bends and reverb -- there is no audio rendering and no third-party processing going on here.

Many of the sounds you hear, especially the soaring solo trumpet line at approximately 4:00 were from "static" sounds.  I made great use of pitchbend, volume and expression edits to enable the instruments to sound plausible.

Surely, the sound is dated, but we are talking about sounds from fifteen years ago.  Thinking back, this was done on my Macintosh computer of only 4MB of RAM, an 80 meg hard drive and an ancient 25 Megahertz (1MHz = one thousandth of 1GHz) Motorola 68030 series microprocesser.  The sounds were purely from this Roland hardware sound module.  I used MOTU "Performer", the MIDI-only software precursor to "Digital Performer".

A bit of explanation of my arrangement is in order:
Because of the title, "A Foggy Day in London Town", the piece begins with the ringing of Big Ben -- from a custom patch by playing chimes that were pitch bent some three octaves (36 half steps) low, and making use of multi-tap delays and multi panning in the JV-1080.

The idea is that the listener is walking around London, and by chance walks into a pub wherein a lone pianist is plunking out the Gershwin tune one note at a time.  Please note the intentional clash between the pianist's rhythm who is totally oblivious to Big Ben's chiming of 10PM.

As the pianist is going along (the JV-1080's piano was absolutely horrible sounding by today's standards), in comes a double bass player who takes up the melody.  The pianist assumes the accompanist position to the bass line.

Then, out of nowhere, the curtain goes up, and behind the pianist and bassist is a complete jazz band, with saxes and woodwinds panned left, and brasses panned right.

Between full bigband reprises of the chorus and bridge come a series of solo excursions that include clarinet, trombone, trumpet, piano and vibes, and duets between various soloists, all interspersed with some key changes.  By the way, all of the percussion drum sounds were from single notes flown in one-at-a-time -- no loops, here.  In fact, if you listen closely, I kept changing the rhythm patterns to keep them from sounding too mechanical or boring in nature.

The hardest part for me in arranging this piece was how to end the darned thing.  Finally, in an act of sheer desparation, I suddenly switched to the ending of Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" theme song, in order to bring about a suitable close to this arrangement.

As you listen to this piece, please again be aware this was done some fifteen years ago on a hardware sound module that had only 64 total voices of polyphony and several hundred sounds crammed into 64MB of ROM.  I hope you enjoy.

This was not submitted before now, because -- with due consideration to Niclas and Guillaume -- this IS the Pianoteq forum, not the Joe Felice forum.  I was rising to the challenge of "... what might Felice do with a jazz setting?" 

TO: Niclas and Guillaume, I recently acquired some good-sounding Big Band Jazz sampling software, and sincerely intend to redo this arrangement with Pianoteq prominently featured in the solo piano part.  This particular thread came up before I had a chance to do it in Pianoteq.  You will be very proud of your modeling software when this re-recorded arrangement gets posted here.

Cheers to all,

Joe

I find that most files that have piano, bass, drums, etc, usually have the piano on channel 1, so I can eliminate the other sounds in Pianoteq in the MIDI setting.  In fact I have a number of my own "creations" with a bass line, and if I forget to select channel one, I find out very dramatically.

I'm going to post Pathetique as interpreted by DM.  I think it's OK because he said no commercial use.  If Modartt judges this to be commercial use, then it should be removed.

But I'm really doing it to show how nice this Erard is (imo).

Glenn

(At first I thought he was he hitting a few off-notes in the midi file, in the bass near the late middle. It's a bass track that doesn't work when it's mixed into the piano track. Sounds good in the video, though.)

Did you know that the Erard company originally made harps? My impression (haven't fully researched this) is that their entry into making pianos is what led to the modern steel "harp" in pianos, and thus the greater tension and higher pitches on modern pianos--they just set a harp on its side and put it in a piano, from what I can tell!

I'm listening to Beethoven's Pathetique (cantabile movement).  Very interesting hearing this does by a jazz pianist after hearing it so often in the classical style.

Glenn

PS - I'm really awaiting to see what Joe Felice would say if and when he tries this piece out (he's a classical pianist by training).  It seems to me that Doug McKenzie is too.

I'm listening to it with the Erard Recording (mic position modified for a more intimate sound).

http://www.dougmckenzie.nl/

ON AT LEAST ONE OF THESE, MIDI CC CHANGES ARE MADE DURING PAUSES IN THE PERFORMANCE. If you have cc's assigned to parameters in PTeq, these changes will be reflected in your PTeq settings. Not good. Sweet Embraceable You has this occur around 2.30.

He also has videos, with some annotations about the harmony and playing at:

http://www.bushgrafts.com/jazz/home.htm

Many are on YouTube, with scrolling transcriptions and a midi keyboard thing reflecting the notes. Some are full tutorials:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=jaz...LuInHjrLmU

A very generous site. He has a dvd for sale that collects all of the videos and adds more. (No affiliation, here, with the site, etc...) And no pitchbends!

BUT SOME OF THESE HAVE THE DREADED INITIAL PROGRAM CHANGE AT THE START. So you have to click a  little late in the midi file to avoid having it change to another instrument.