Pianoteq video contest 2021 - the winning entries

Warmest Congratulations to the winners and to all participants for interesting music and a wonderful range of ideas. I would like to say that everyone in this competition is a winner, because every music piece has beauty but not everyone can hear it because we hear different. Every contestpiece is unique, a highly creative work.

And just come out here next year again and give it your all, as I’m doing every year. Don’t be discouraged for not making it to the finals. Not being a finalist doesn’t mean never enjoying playing Pianoteq/Organteq and never making other people enjoying listening to your music. I have learned this all these years in the forum, and I’m paying it forward by telling these words. Keep up the good work!

And a big Thank you to Niclas and everyone at Modartt for the competition.
And thanks to everyone who listened to my ”Simply beautiful”.

And many thanks to the judges, who had an impossible task but still solved it.  I think I would never be able to judge fairly/right so many highly creative entries and choose 10 entries, with so many aspects which one  probably must have when judging ( originality of the composition and/or the originality of the sound and/or the quality of the performance, with no specific priority between them……..and…and…..) Anyway, I welcome your opinions as always. Thank you judges.

See you in next year’s contest again (my tenth contest, 10th) 
Best wishes,

Stig

A fine opportunity for a first posting. Congratulations to all the participants. I listened to all of them and liked them all. All are kind of winners. The contest was part of the reason, that finally mad me ditch the generous demo mode and become part of pianoteq - got the full package...

I am particularly into historic pianos, not available or even playable anywhere - and sort of piano-roll reconstructions. Therefore UrtextMIDI, please let us know more about the background. Do not tell us your secrets, just enlighten us a bit please.

Dear friends !

It was a great honor and pleasure to participate in this video contest with unexpected prize at the end. Thank you for high appreciation and support !

My friend and "brother in sound" Vadim (@vadium here in the forum) has also participated in the contest and it was him who actually has told me about it - thanks to him ! He is very talented musician, composer and much more  - will be waiting for him to surprise all of us next year !

My journey with Pianoteq has started a few years back, when I have completed my first zynthian (www.zynthian.org). An opportunity of having portable version of Pianoteq in your pocket for live concerts or just something creative was too tempting. When I've got the Standard license I was not impressed at first, but lately after tweaking the setting - wow ! Specially when you can combine the piano (or e-piano) preset from Pianoteq with some other pads or strings. So, zynthian immediately replaced all the keyboards and gears with Pianoteq inside.

Being not just an educated pianist - I bow to all excellent teachers and professors who have invested their time and patience in me, so lifelong love with piano became inevitable - I am also a professional piano technician (currently employed by Yamaha Music Russia) and my true dream is to take good grand piano action (properly regulate it, restore if needed), install midi strip in it and to make it in almost portable Pianoteq perfection.

Will be happy to share when some new music or other Pianoteq related project will be completed from my side !

Pleasure to be here among you !

I really wanted to attend this event. But I'm glad that there is an opportunity to at least watch his recording.

First, my congratulations to you: glad you arrrived first since you were my favorite :-) among the nominated (I admit I did not listen to all entries, so I am comparing you only to the ones who have been nominated).

Second, the concept of generating a MIDI file from audio may not be new, but there is so much detail in a performance! Every attempt (besides this one) which I've heard to do that conversion is sloppy to say the least! How can all of that be transformed "back" from sound to MIDI? Even considering only note number, the timing of each note and the velocity is a huge amount of information to recover correctly. I mean, if this performance as claimed is really "the original restored", I think it's legit to ask for more details since it's a winning entry. I want to know if this is this really "the original restored" and not "a different performance by a different performer time-synched with the video". I mean, even the latter would be noticeable and very worthy (and perhaps a winning entry), but it's a totally different kind of work, no?

Many thanks to Modartt for hosting the competition. What an oasis of eclectic creativity on this site! Sincere thanks to those who honored me with their nominations. For those who requested a reply earlier, I didn’t post while the competition was in progress, but now, even with the unavoidable risk of appearing self-indulgent, I will outline a few thoughts.
    I cannot avoid mentioning two names which have meant a great deal to me over a long period of time and I do so in the spirit of immense gratitude for their contributions to the art that we all hold dear.
    The first is Ikutaro Kakehashi, the founder of the Roland Corporation with a long list of brilliant innovations in electronic musical instruments. We met on many occasions and I became a staunch supporter of his mission to enable the MIDI protocol. An immense amount of water has passed beneath the bridge he helped build and to this day I work with a profound sense of loyalty to both the man and his achievements.
   I spent a number of years in various capacities with the Steinway & Sons piano company and that nurtured my passion for all things piano and those who performed with them. I knew many of these performers and when they left this world, I felt a silence had descended and I wondered what could be done to have them around again.
    Technically, I start with a Melodyne transcription. At the risk of sounding pompous, from there the task is eerily similar to an art restoration. The original performance is there, but obscured under layers of yellowed varnish and other anomalies. I’ve written a number of utilities, such as a MIDI notch filter to examine a specific range of velocities, and a digitized score template which I overlay on the Melodyne file, thereby eliminating much superfluous data. Of course often details are given by the camera itself, such as the movements of the dampers.
   The second name I’m obliged to mention is Glenn Gould. I purposely moved to Toronto to breathe the same air as Gould and Oscar Peterson, the latter with whom I became good friends. Gould postulated that in the future, classical artists would release what he called “kits” with their performances, allowing the end user to partake in the creative process, altering the tempo, cutting and pasting and modifying the piano’s tone. I can assure the principals at Modartt that they are exactly what Gould had in mind!
    In the spirit of Gould’s vision, several have written along those lines. They suggest it would be advantageous to have a Pianoteq video/MIDI library so they could set Rubinstein (or Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels or Michelangeli) to work on different pianos of their design and choosing.
    Those names are profound masters of the keyboard and it is to Modartt’s enormous credit that their instruments can well handle whatever those geniuses throw at them!
UrtextMIDI

Wow!  Fantastic budo. It sounds just like Keith Jarret would be sitting and playing Pianoteq. I was listening to the video in parallel with your playing 
I've listened to Keith’s video several times recently and his playing inspired me to make my own slow version 26.11 (without any kind of software). Petrof Mistral Dreamy.

https://forum.modartt.com/uploads.php?f...Boy%20.mp3

Thanks budo for pointing out this free software Onsets and Frames!

Best wishes,

Stig

Congratulations to the winners too

Very impressive!
I just converted a few Glenn Gould recordings of the well tempered clavier with the online version and I find the timing of the midi files almost perfect!
Dynamic and articulation do not quite come through but this produces already very good results.
Thanks to budo for pointing to this tool

Edit
I just notice that the tool has some difficulty with a very fast tempo.
For example the tool misses a lot of notes with the Prelude number 3 which Gould played quite fast.

In order not to continue to be OT in this thread I opened a new one about this tool
https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=8999