Lanny, sadly, my Pianoteq did not toast the bagels for my breakfast with my parents this morning. But, in the flavor of Alton Brown's teachings, I would still not classify Pianoteq as a 'unitasker'. And, no, I have not done much with the blooming controls. I have only played with them a bit when working on my half-baked calliope preset, but am not skilled in their use (and I haven't found a way to get them to help my piano presets).
Joe, brilliant! You have completed my lesson by fleshing-out the observation that I have made in the past and had forgotten when I wrote this morning's email.
I do recall watching (in the past) the vibrations on a taught rubber-band change direction in a rotational axis, and I remember trying to trying to pluck strings and rubber bands to either enhance or decrease this behavior. The longer the string, the more obvious, and audible, the transitions. And, as I was just reading this morning about Erard's development of the agraffe in 1808, firmly fixing the end of the string to the bridge and thus to the soundboard (The Piano, Billboard Books, 2002, which I bought used on Amazon mainly for the images of historical pianos). I guess, in theory, since all waves have the agraffe as a nodal point, the string shouldn't transfer sound to the soundboard this way, but I'm sure that it actually must. While I did notice the diagonal offset of the string across the agraffe, I thought it was a way to increase the friction and security of the attachment point, much like wrapping a dockline angled as the first turn on a cleat. Whether the diagonal causing a change of the string's vibration 90 degrees was intentional or a happy accident to increase the sound transmission to the soundboard, I do not know. But I do know that in the mid 1800s, the two major players in Europe (the pre-Steinway period) were Erard and Pleyel - Chopin preferred the delicacy of the Pleyel, while the more dramatic Liszt preferred Erard. As no doubt our ears will tell us, every "modern" piano (including those of Pleyel, as well as Steinway, and all others) followed the lessons of Erard and gave us the dynamic instruments that we know, playing so well next to orchestras and bands. If the world followed the model of Pleyel, contemporary pianos would have been solo instruments in chambers and parlors until the likes of Leo Fender and his amplifiers!
Why sampled pianos don't have this transitional sound, I do not know, because the photos of piano sampling show the microphones way-closer than my ears are when I am at the keyboard. I wonder if the recording engineers for sampled pianos intentionally edit this characteristic out because people don't expect to hear it - it sounds foreign when you don't hang-out near full-size concert pianos. Well, I guess as I am learning piano for the past year or so and am seeking out these huge contraptions, I now know that this sound is normal and should be coveted instead of being shunned.
Thanks, Philippe! Thanks, Joe!
- David