Step-by-step: Modifying a Preset to match a piano - Steinway B to F

Listening to it this morning while playing, I'm pretty happy with it above A3, but it's a bit dark and veiled below there.  I tried changing a few things, but haven't figured out how to just brighten or crisp the lower half of the register, without worsening the upper half.

As I went off this morning, I was thinking to myself that Pianoteq is a lot like Photoshop – if you have an image as a starting point and in your mind the impression of what you would like your image to be, there are several paths you can take to get to that point. The difference between the paths depends on where you are starting from, how much difference you are trying to make, what other side goals you have in mind, how much trouble you want to spend achieving your result, and how much collateral damage you will accept in your pixels of the image. This is where I find that a lot of people get frustrated with Photoshop – they wish that the program had only one method for each possible editing result, thinking that it will be easier to learn that way. Having learned on the continuum, I am not sure if they are right or they are wrong, but I know that I get frustrated by programs that have only one set of tools – sometimes the hammer that they give you is just not correct for the combination or the nail and for the wood into which you want to drive the nail.  Just like I frequently purchase alternate tools at my local Harbor Freight, I frequently learn clever new tricks in Photoshop that are quicker, cleaner, or more elegant to achieve the same outcomes.

Pianoteq appears similar for sound editing.

So, knowing that I wanted to change the "snap" of the notes below midrange, I figured that one way to do it would be to go into the Note Editor and adjust the hardness of the hammers for these ranges. I have uploaded a new version of my preset file reflecting that. Additionally, I made a recording with my cell phone of alternately playing all the white keys from top-down. First, played softly on the acoustic piano followed by played softly with my Pianoteq preset (every once in a while you'll find that my index finger is not well calibrated, but then I adjust!). Following this, the same routine for mezzoforte beginning with the acoustic and following with Pianoteq. Lastly, forte.

Here is the location of the revised preset:

http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/file/dtw50u84

And here is a link to the audio file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xmmpc2fuclp0o...n.m4a?dl=0

There are a couple things that are curious to me – first of which is how wide the variations are that I had to make amongst the settings, especially in the mezzoforte range. If you look at my curves, you will see that they dip and climb like a roller coaster. While the changes between the midrange and the bass make sense because that's where the unisons change from three strings down to two strings down to one string, the more curious point is between the midrange and the treble where there is a particularly "hot" section that gets very soft below that (you will see that compensated by a dip below the line followed to the left by a very sharp curve upwards). The second curious thing is that increasing hammer hardness does not exactly replicate the type of tone that I hear on my piano with the notes that are "snappier." Increasing the hammer hardness tends to get a tinny, metallic sense, without "punch" once you get past a certain point, almost like the old-fashioned way to put thumbtacks into the hammers on an old Western saloon piano. Instead, these more aggressive notes on the piano have a more distinct tone, whether it is more volume, more or less overtones and undertones, or some other difference, I am not sure.  I am also not sure how to duplicate that increased "punch".

These experiments of trying to duplicate my piano have also given me an appreciation for how important the velocity curve is, and how huge the difference is in the apparent brightness versus softness of the piano depending upon the position and slope of the curve for velocity. I have two questions that maybe somebody can help me out on:

1) What characteristics are actually changing by increasing and decreasing the velocity curve? It is some form of timbre adjustment, but I am not sure what characteristics these adjustments contain.

2) With the three adjustments of hammer hardness (piano, mezzo, and forte), where are the cutoffs with respect to the piano through forte scale on the velocity curve, and do they represent hard steps from one to the other, or have some type of roll-off?

That's all for now, with plenty more tuning left for later.

– David

P.S.  ...I can't seem to get away and on to other 'Sunday afternoon tasks'!  I made a few more modifications, finding the Volume setting in the Note Editor, so I made some Volume curve changes, which allowed me to scale back a bit on the Hammer Hardness curves.  I erased the prior Preset posting from a few minutes ago, and replaced it with the modified one from 4:47 Eastern Time.  It's better, but still a ways to go, and I still do not know the answers to my two questions above about the velocity curves.

Thanks for the note and your contribution of your mom's piece. It's kind of funny that I have been reading Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi," and I'm at the point near the end of the book where he describes how families from the late 1800s would deal with the rising floodwaters of the Mississippi Valley. Twain makes the point that even when told to evacuate, they frequently did not, staying inside their houses, even living on elevated furniture in the form of countertops, loft beds, etc. as the water rose within their homes, ever hopeful that the river would recede beyond their door. Never having heard of the song that your mother is playing, Twain's stories seem not only plausible but frightening as the water literally starts lapping at your door.

I've made a few small changes to the presets since my last posting, but have not reposted. I am gradually reducing the hardness of some of the hammers that I had originally increased, and replacing it with increased volume curve input. Once I get it a little further, I will likely reposted again. Thanks again.

Thanks for your advice on the 'preservation of presets' tip - I will do so.

And funny that you mentioned a calliope, as a year ago I was on the American Queen steamboat from St. Paul to St. Louis.  What a fantastic calliope (you either love them or hate them), and what a great trip.  I tried to make a Calliope preset for Pianoteq, but was not doing a great job, so I put it aside.  Perhaps somewhat wants to contribute.  The preset, where I left it, is here:

http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/file/a5orb2l2

As far as MIDI, calliopes should be straightforward, as most are solenoid-controlled valves.  Here are some of the videos of the calliope from my trip on the American Queen last year:

https://goo.gl/photos/ui6J955mWeAgpw238

Hey, thanks for your comments and your post. Both my real Steinway and my simulated Steinway have taken plenty of hours that I could've otherwise spent learning to play piano, which I still am managing to fit in in between all the tinkering… Actually, I am doing more playing than tinkering at this point, and I can feel my skills improving, which is a nice sensation and a nice sound (at least to my ears – it's something like singing in the shower – you always sound better that way, rather than singing in public).

Yes, I have a copy of the Light Edition of Cubase that came with my Steinberg UR 22, and I certainly can load multiple Pianoteq VST's in Cubase to do just this. On the other hand, many of the changes that I am looking for can be done directly in Pianoteq via the note editor, especially things such as using spectral modifications, which another poster who goes by WDCO has demonstrated to me – he is a master at this, and I am at the very low end of that very steep learning curve. Ideally, all of the changes, be they volume, dynamics, hammer hardness, spectral modifications, etc. can and should all be made within Pianoteq using the note editor, to develop a preset that can be moved to other machines, other people, etc.

One of my frustrations is that my MIDI strip that I installed on the piano is quite "soft", so I always have to tweak my velocity curves. This would almost be as if I was working on a really bad video monitor, producing beautiful images with Photoshop or Light Room, but then when they are uploaded to the Internet, they look weird to everybody else, and vice versa. I have tried to work a curve for my piano's keyboard in the QRS Piano Scan software itself, but have not been able to come nearly as close with that as I can with the velocity curve adjustments in Pianoteq, as well as in native instrument's Kontakt.

Anyway, if you are new to this software, I hope you enjoy it. Some of my favorite presets are for the Bluethner.  Here is the link for one that I like a lot:

http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/file/5pvcro5w

By the way, even in the few weeks since I have made the preset for my Steinway upright, it has drifted even further out of tune. My real piano, last tuned in January, has gone from "flawed and beautiful" to "flawed and not-so beautiful"! (and it appears to be picking up speed in that direction)

I have been trying to contact my piano tuner, but he must be quite busy. In any case, I do not think that I will keep modifying my preset to match my worsening piano. I will hold off to publish the next version of this preset until I understand and have some more skills in changing spectral tones to clean up the lower half of the keyboard, where it sounds a bit muddy at this point.

Thanks again for your comments,

– David