I would love to learn to speak and write in french, and I intent to, but at the moment I still need to use translators.

Some jokes are not ironies itself, but funny ways to express how we believe in the quality and potential of modeling technology and how we appreciate it.
It's our way to express thanks to the good work Modartt did. So it's not a negative thing.

Le problème avec ce post c'est qu'il est assez rapidement parti sur le ton de l'ironie alors que la question de départ, à savoir l'évolution du son sur une échelle temporelle de quelques mois, a le mérite d'avoir été posée et ce de manière sérieuse.

Yes, this thread has an overdose of smiley emoticons. But if you read carefully there are some interesting and serious contributions to be found this thread also.

- Imperfections are part of authenticity, but when do they become undesirable?
- Modelling can be used to mimic imperfections
- Modelling can also be used to repair imperfections caused by aging (The Kremsegg collection, KIViR project)
- User tweakable parameters can give the user freedom of choice between perfection and imperfection.

And it should be remembered Muses wings flapping sounds around you, when you create a masterpiece.

Merci pour cette analyse aprofondie de la question.

Le problème avec ce post c'est qu'il est assez rapidement parti sur le ton de l'ironie alors que la question de départ, à savoir l'évolution du son sur une échelle temporelle de quelques mois, a le mérite d'avoir été posée et ce de manière sérieuse.
Maintenant, est-ce intéressant, pertinent, souhaitable, faisable? ça c'est une autre question qui peut faire l'objet d'un échange constructif. Ce n'est pas parce que cela parait farfelu pour les uns que ça l'est pour les autres. En ce qui me concerne, jouer du piano dans un environnement Taj Mahal, ou avec des cordes de 15 mètres de long, ça ne m'intéresse absolument pas, mais cette possibilité a le mérite d'exister.
Mais l'ironie gratuite ne sert à rien.

Ce sera donc ma dernière intervention à ce sujet.

Cordialement,

SK

;-)

As a professional piano tuner, I used to "age" my own presets of Pianoteq PRO (then Version 4.0 and 4.5) by slightly increasing and randomizing the three levels of hammer hardness in the middle three octaves, and similarly raising and randomizing the unison width, corresponding to those areas of the keyboard that would receive the most play.  In addition, I used to create an audible "break" that corresponded to the changes in keyboard scaling from uni- to bi- to tri-chords (strings per note).  To this day, my personal presets have slightly randomized key strike positions, and I tend to increase the damper decay time for the lowest notes, whose heavily wound strings contain the most vibrating momentum by way of their increased masses.

I would like to mention another real-life aspect of aging grand pianos (not upright ones).
The effectivity of the leftpedal (softpedal, una corda pedal) isn't mentioned yet. When a grand piano is aging the difference between normal sound and una corda sound increases drastically. This is caused by the fact that the una corda pedal effect is not used frequently. The place on the hammer where it touches the strings is different when una corda is used. The hammer hardness is lower in the una corda position because that part of the hammer has suffered less and is used less. On top of that when we do use the una corda pedal we usually don't play fortissimo but more often between pianissimo and mezzopiano. All this ads to the fact that the una-corda part of the hammer is aging slower than the more frequently (mis-)used normal part of the hammer. Compare a new and/or properly serviced grand piano and an aged one and you will hear what I mean.

Whether we want this unwanted (?) side-effect as part of the Pianoteq piano modelling is another question :-)

How much is the randomness of the condition slider, I wonder...

Supose you adjust the condition slider to 10%, and them to 20%, and them to 30% and finally 40%...  And return gradually again in these same 4 steps.  Are the hammers adjustments reversed back to same as 30%, 20% and 10% again, or the agorithm change and make new random selection of intensity and sellect other hammers to other intensities distribution (keeping average to the sellect slider intensity).
If the slider keep no randomness, the effect would be always to the same "pattern" (variation of intensity per key/string)

I presume the condition slider do not emulate some agging aspects, like agging of soundboard (or few cracks on it) and rust of the metal components.

Since you are a piano tuner... What do you think abou the idea of a Pianoteq Pro Masters version?  A new Pro version to allow to adjust the shape of hammers (and needling) and the weight of the hammers)?

I hope Modartt don't take me seriously, cause we are exagerating and we don't want do dirve them crasy.   
:-)

The "natural evolution" of a piano becoming detuned is generally corrected by a technician.

I agree, but in the real world your piano is in tune only after a technician has tune it.
90% of the time, we play on pianos that have been little detuned by the time or by our playing. That's not good but that's how things are.

I don't want to play on a detuned piano. I just think that I could live with a very subtle change day after day if that makes me feel I am playing on an alive thing.

But, to be clear, I have no complaint about Pianoteq, I love this softawre and particularly the V5. It is just an opinion on a thread

Beto-Music wrote:

. . .

But the detuning it's also related to more aspects, like the most used keys, the Keys striked [sic] with more energy.

And would be very fun to have a virtual tuning tool, to be placed on each string pin, rotating to get the tone manually string by string.

. . .

Hello Beto-Music,

As a professional piano tuner, I used to "age" my own presets of Pianoteq PRO (then Version 4.0 and 4.5) by slightly increasing and randomizing the three levels of hammer hardness in the middle three octaves, and similarly raising and randomizing the unison width, corresponding to those areas of the keyboard that would receive the most play.  In addition, I used to create an audible "break" that corresponded to the changes in keyboard scaling from uni- to bi- to tri-chords (strings per note).  To this day, my personal presets have slightly randomized key strike positions, and I tend to increase the damper decay time for the lowest notes, whose heavily wound strings contain the most vibrating momentum by way of their increased masses.

Actually, by setting the "condition" slider to a moderate amount (no more than 25% of full scale) accomplishes much of what I've set out to do.  The main difference is that I tend to age my own presets to represent those middle octaves of the keyboard that receive the most use and abuse.

Hopefully you find this information to be helpful.

Cheers,

Joe

P.S.  For your information, the demos I have provided to Modartt do NOT use these aged presets.

It is interesting, but then again, the sound is static in that aspect. A very subtle "auto detune" function would make the thing dynamic.

stamkorg wrote:

Hello,

It is just for the fun, but I was thinking that it would be cool to have an option that detunes the piano a little every day, like a real one, in a future update.
When activated, the sound could lose a minimal amount of its normal tuning every day. And after 6 or 8 months the result woud be a really bad tuned piano. Then you could retune it to a normal tuning with a click on a button. I know it is a little crazy and it is just for fun but I said that because the regularity and precision of the sound is somewhere a boring factor on DP and software pianos.

Ok, it is just an idea...

Thanks to all the Pianoteq team for the last release

So, I'm wondering; does it only detune when it's used every day?  What if you don't use it for a month - a real piano would still suffer some detuning without being used.  How does the model account for this?

One of the better features of PT is that is doesn't go out of tune.

The idea is to be able to reproduce the natural evolution of the piano after the last tuning. So yes if you don't play it for 1 month, you should hear a little variation in the tuning.

. . .

But the detuning it's also related to more aspects, like the most used keys, the Keys striked [sic] with more energy.

And would be very fun to have a virtual tuning tool, to be placed on each string pin, rotating to get the tone manually string by string.

. . .

Hello Beto-Music,

As a professional piano tuner, I used to "age" my own presets of Pianoteq PRO (then Version 4.0 and 4.5) by slightly increasing and randomizing the three levels of hammer hardness in the middle three octaves, and similarly raising and randomizing the unison width, corresponding to those areas of the keyboard that would receive the most play.  In addition, I used to create an audible "break" that corresponded to the changes in keyboard scaling from uni- to bi- to tri-chords (strings per note).  To this day, my personal presets have slightly randomized key strike positions, and I tend to increase the damper decay time for the lowest notes, whose heavily wound strings contain the most vibrating momentum by way of their increased masses.

Actually, by setting the "condition" slider to a moderate amount (no more than 25% of full scale) accomplishes much of what I've set out to do.  The main difference is that I tend to age my own presets to represent those middle octaves of the keyboard that receive the most use and abuse.

Hopefully you find this information to be helpful.

Cheers,

Joe

P.S.  For your information, the demos I have provided to Modartt do NOT use these aged presets.

About singers off key... You make remamber Paul McCartney in recente years, trying to singing notes he can't reach any longer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ox-Syj9QFM

I hope some treatment can help hin.

About detuning, a piano can get out tune with variation in temperature, and get back to almost the normal after temperature go back to usual (same when was tuned). Even without play, by only the effect of  time, a piano can get out tune.

I've never understood why anyone would want to emulate a piano that's out of tune.

Honky-tonk pianos shouldn't be revered, they should be destroyed. WINK.

How long would you tolerate a singer that was always off key?