Key Fumbler wrote:All that said you can make dramatic changes. It's perfectly possible that somebody could get very very close to some piano that you love as there are lots of parameters to change, to put it mildly.
so the idea is that, we can start with K2 or Bechstein, and adjust it here and there, and come up with a sound we think is very similar to Fazioli or SK-EX, and then we can share with other users?
Yes in the fxp section of the forum.
Of course you could name your presets whatever you like. Your presets aren't a commercial product if they're posted on here.
If you make something interesting other users might give your preset 5 stars, that's even if it isn't a very accurate representation of the target piano if your preset sounds good.
All that said you can make dramatic changes. It's perfectly possible that somebody could get very very close to some piano that you love as there are lots of parameters to change, to put it mildly.
so the idea is that, we can start with K2 or Bechstein, and adjust it here and there, and come up with a sound we think is very similar to Fazioli or SK-EX, and then we can share with other users?
]]>I've added presets for the F278 and two F308s to the FXP Corner.
https://forum.modartt.com/file/8mhzvbp6
https://forum.modartt.com/file/b3adxt09
https://forum.modartt.com/file/3b3zy0n7The F278 is their semi-concert grand, though it's bigger than most concert grands... It and the F308 have a very nice clean and slightly warm tone. The 308 is the largest generally available piano on the market. The longer string length gives a stronger bass range and less inharmonicity. There is a 333cm piano from Borgato (the Grand Prix 333), designed in 2017, but I don't know how many have actually been made or shipped (and they're twice as expensive as the F308). The first F308 prototype debuted in 1987.
Fazioli instruments are known for nice separation of notes, especially in inner voices, and recommend for recital material of Bach, Busoni, Rachmaninoff, or other "contrapuntal" styles of music. Overall I like Fazioli sound, especially the projection strength of the 308 is much greater than even a Steinway D, so I prefer them for Orchestra/Concerto work, if they're available, but I sometimes prefer richer (in my opinion) sounds from Bluethner or Boesendorfer for general recital material. It all depends on my mood...
Each piano has the Mozart Rail since it most resembles the function of the Fazioli Half-blow which works similar to an upright half-blow (though the pedal order should be different as it's Half-blow > Una Corda > Sostenuto > Damper on Faziolis but I didn't want to bother with changing MIDI I/O but I may change it to the regular Fazioli order in a future version). In this version pedal order is Una Corda > Half-blow (Mozart Rail), Sostenuto, and Damper/Sustain.
Paolo Fazioli started the company back in 1978. They produce around 140 pianos a year--all of which are of exception build quality. The marque is quite popular in Europe, the US, and Canada. (There may be more full-size Fazioli concert grands in my part of the USA than there are comparable Steinways at the moment.)
The F278 was sampled with Busoni's piano roll of Lizst's La Campanella (which students of Busoni don't feel does Busoni's pianism justice but that's a whole differnt debate).
https://forum.modartt.com/download.php?id=3682The "recital" flavor of the F308 was sampled with a piano roll of Tausig's transcription of Bach's Toccata and Fugue and a piano roll of Chopin's Bb Scherzo, and the "orchestra" flavor was sampled with the arranged piano of Saint-Saëns' 2nd Piano Concerto. The former is close miked for solo material, and the later has a harder action, more room tone, and farther mics to mix better with an Orchestra.
https://forum.modartt.com/download.php?id=3684
https://forum.modartt.com/download.php?id=3685
Thank you so much! I'm going to download these and try all three.
]]>Is .fxp just a preset (settings) of a built-in piano sound or can it simulate a new piano sound?
So this is to simulate Fazioli sounds and in theory you can create Kawai SK-EX, Ravenscroft 275, Bosendorfer, CFX sounds too? But then how do you "create" a sound by using a preset?
There isn't a blank sheet version of Pianoteq. It's not a pure synthesizer in that way. User FXPs are made from customising existing piano models mostly by ear, and by some small amount of known specifications perhaps.
Users with one of the three versions have a sliding scale of options to change the sounds from the presets. Pro and Standard allowing you to alter the models physical properties quite substantially.
Stage allowing you to choose from any of the presets which are in all three of the versions and change the effects.
All three versions allow you to make dramatic changes to the sound, Stage being the most limited.
Pro as you would imagine is obviously the version where you can change the models in the most fine detail, with more per note controls than Standard. Even so you can't create your own completely new pianos without starting from a finished model and customising it.
All that said you can make dramatic changes. It's perfectly possible that somebody could get very very close to some piano that you love as there are lots of parameters to change, to put it mildly.
]]>So this is to simulate Fazioli sounds and in theory you can create Kawai SK-EX, Ravenscroft 275, Bosendorfer, CFX sounds too? But then how do you "create" a sound by using a preset?
]]>]]>Hey tmyoung, it seems that you used a custom impulse response for rever,do you mind to share it? Thanks on advance!
On a side note, All-Steinway schools aren't actually All-Steinway, only a certain percentage of pianos at the school need to be Steinways to qualify for an application to Steinway for the designation: therefore, both in the case of WSU and UVU, there weren't that many pianos to begin with... I don't really know what the designation achieves, because Steinway doesn't fund the purchase of those pianos or otherwise subsidize the University, it appears to be only a pat-on-the-back.
BYU (Provo) which is only about 5-10 miles from UVU (Orem) probably has 5 or 6 times as many grand pianos (at least) and at least 20 times as many pianos overall (there's an upright in every small auditorium at BYU), but only about half of the concert instruments are Steinways, the rest are Baldwins, Shigeru-Kawais, Yamahas, and--of course--Faziolis. Matt Holland, the former president of UVU, recently (between 2009-2011 I think) wanted to see the (small) music school improve in prestige and quality, so he oversaw the fundraising needed to purchase enough new Steinways to make the school a Steinway school. Though, the last time I attended a concert there in 2013, it was a Steinway B used in a major recital--in a science lecture lab.
UVU has a long way to go before it has the same quality of music facilities that BYU (founded in 1875) or U of U (founded in 1850) have, particularly as it's only been a full University since 2008 and was originally a technical college from its founding in 1961 until 1993. WSU is also really small when compared to larger music schools like BYU and U of U. The BYU Music department, on the other hand, has been in the same building since 1965 but the music school (depending on how you count the start of the department) dates back to the 1870s. That building is huge, has 9 full pipe organs, two medium-sized concert halls, and--I believe--at least 11 concert grands. I certainly have no bias: I went to BYU.
Here's a quick fun video from BYU featuring the work of my dear friend Keith Kopp (who has recently retired from BYU but he still works as a technician for private clients like me--he was replaced by Rick Baldassin who is the Fazioli technician and is also extremely nice and patient like Keith). He lists the number of pianos at the University as 443 in the video, but I don't know if that's the school of music or the University at large--I think it's just the school of music.
https://music.byu.edu/byu-piano-shop/
https://vimeo.com/46560745
Unision Width: 1.02 to 1.25
Octave Stretching: 1.02 to 1.13
That will tighten the treble into a more American sound than the European sound. American technicians will tune pianos to very narrow unisons to give the sound greater power and a brighter, more consistent timbre. While European technicians will tune Unisons wider to allow more "character" in the sound--because of having more overtones across the instrument compass which are generally more mellow. This is entirely a matter of personal preference and taste. While I live in the States, I always want technicians who service my acoustic instruments to create a tuning sound using the European method/tastes rather than the American tradition. (And yes, they hate it. Nearly all technicians dread me.)
I suspect that the American preference for a narrower unison width comes from the consistency of notched bridges and the behavior of capo d'astro bars in Steinways. When bridges are not notched, the strings of trichords have different speaking lengths which naturally increases the unison widths. My guess is that European pianists and audiences were used to sound of instruments where the bridges lacked notches much longer than American audiences and pianists encountered them (since Steinway has been a near monopoly in the States for 150 years whereas Europe has always had Bluethner, Bechstein, Boesendorfer, and Steinway sharing equally in the market during that same time and Europe has a much longer tradition of keyboard instruments of any description and their performance than North America does). If that is indeed the case, it would explain why--as all high-end and most low-end pianos have notched bridges today--Europeans want their instrument tuning to retain that particular sound quality of the un-notched bridge by extending the unison width, which usually Continental audiences find "warm" or "inspiring" or "bell-like" when compared to the bright and tight sound of American pianos and Americans (who have had Steinway notched bridges as the exclusive concert sound for over a century) find higher unison width as "out of tune" or "weak" or "rough" when compared to the clean, powerful, and bright American "Steinway" sound.
If that indeed makes the "QuaziFazioli" sound better to your tastes in the treble, it would still be an equally authentic Fazioli sound--albeit a more American treatment than a European treatment which is only at the tuning level, since you're changing what a technician would adjust to please you as a client, rather than changing anything structurally about the scaling of the instrument. (Which is exactly why I love PTQ, because no other library offers the ability to make adjustments to tuning, unisons or mic placement in the way that Modarrt does! Nothing like is practical with samples.)
]]>@Lanny Either that, or even having something in UI that shows the keyboard notes without dampers. It probably would be trivial to create a note edit for "Last Damper" that visually shows which notes have no damper, or a the main MIDI keyboard on the screen being grayed out on the damper-less notes while editing the Last Damper value.
Another way to clarify would be to optionally use on Pianoteq's virtual keyboard the same method as in the Organteq keyboard mapping illustration: show the MIDI number on every C key.
]]>Lanny
]]>Always looking for enlightenment here!
Lanny
]]>@sigasa You're instincts are absolutely correct that the default should be 91 for the F278--like it is on the Steinway D-274. Fazioli only changes the F308 to have two extra keys without dampers, so it comes in at 89; while there frankly isn't much audible difference, I believe they chose that to give the 308 a very slightly brighter sound and a little more subtle "ringing" in the high overtones for concerto/orchestral performance. Most modern pianos stick close the Steinway choice for the last damper, I just looked at a Boesendorfer 280VC that would be 92 in PTQ, while the Imperial would be 89 like the F308. I think we can safely assume that there isn't an active patent for where the damper rail stops, but it's definitely possible that there used to be, which would explain older brands having to use a slightly different key while newer models don't face that same restriction. While only theoretical, it sounds logical. Though, it does definitely change the character of a piano's overtones to have the value change by even one key, even if it's quite subtle. Yet another topic for an essay that I wish Del Fandrich would write.
@Philippe Perhaps we should add a note to the manual and/or the tooltip that "Last Damper" is calculated from the (somewhat arbitrary but mathematically convenient) "C -1" for 0 and any traditional piano note number should have "20" added to it. Or, in future--though it might change how usable the value is for MIDI integration--we could move to anything below the lowest A for #1 becoming a negative number, which might make data input from historical specifications easier for the forgetful types like me.
As a general aside, I honestly don't know what makers like Boesendorfer, Chris Maene, or Stuart & Sons do on their scaling diagrams or technical literature to deal with this essential difference from most pianos. In the back of my mind, I seem to remember that Stuart goes with 1 being the lowest of whatever scaling is in use. I would guess that the other makers do the same, since the information needs to relate to action and having negative numbers there would probably lead to endless confusion for technicians and builders. It certainly would be interesting to find out!
Here are corrected presets:
https://forum.modartt.com/file/d2bigg7o
https://forum.modartt.com/file/bf4l2szh
https://forum.modartt.com/file/987ckm00