Modartt user forum » Pianoteq user forum » Suggestion for future version - Ability to retune partials
Hello,
Just wanted to suggest for a future update/version looking into making it possible to retune partials of each note.
Allowing us to rebalance their loudness is great, but it would be fantastic if we could retune each partial.
Not sure if others are as interested?
Best,
DS
Hello,
Just wanted to suggest for a future update/version looking into making it possible to retune partials of each note.
Allowing us to rebalance their loudness is great, but it would be fantastic if we could retune each partial.
Not sure if others are as interested?
Best,
DS
Interesting suggestion. Wouldn't that basically allow one to create any possible sound?
DSTN wrote:Hello,
Just wanted to suggest for a future update/version looking into making it possible to retune partials of each note.
Allowing us to rebalance their loudness is great, but it would be fantastic if we could retune each partial.
Not sure if others are as interested?
Best,
DSInteresting suggestion. Wouldn't that basically allow one to create any possible sound?
Well-- not any possible sound, because each partial basically has an exponential decay envelope that starts from a unique loudness. However it would allow us to create a wide variety of percussive sounds.
What is most interesting to me about the idea is that the 1) modeled interactions could remain, and that 2) partials could be altered in their entirety.
It is possible to emulate the second part with STFT in a program like Max/MSP, but gets very cumbersome when you get to the note level, and you need to implement some sort of partial tracking / isolation from FFT bins which is complex and often has less than ideal results.
I would be personally extremely interested in a Pianoteq version that includes this feature. I think others who work in "new music" / electroacoustic composition may also be interested in such a feature.
best,
DS
I don't think that we can hope to see this--letting the user alter the pitch of each partial would mean that the user would be creating much of the piano's sound from scratch, without reference to the real piano that was analyzed. Pianoteq would then be more of a generalized additive synth program, instead of a piano emulation. Would I like to have this ability? Well, yes, but it may be asking for too much. I would rather have a velocity curve for each note.
But are you aware that you can control the pitch of the partials, up to a point, with the String length parameter? The shorter the string, the more inharmonicity--the higher the pitch of the partials compared to their idealized ratios. In combination with the Detuning parameter, which lets us shift the pitch in cents, you can exert quite a bit of control, particularly if the desire is to create percussion instruments instead of new piano sounds.
I don't think that we can hope to see this--letting the user alter the pitch of each partial would mean that the user would be creating much of the piano's sound from scratch, without reference to the real piano that was analyzed. Pianoteq would then be more of a generalized additive synth program, instead of a piano emulation. Would I like to have this ability? Well, yes, but it may be asking for too much. I would rather have a velocity curve for each note.
But are you aware that you can control the pitch of the partials, up to a point, with the String length parameter? The shorter the string, the more inharmonicity--the higher the pitch of the partials compared to their idealized ratios. In combination with the Detuning parameter, which lets us shift the pitch in cents, you can exert quite a bit of control, particularly if the desire is to create percussion instruments instead of new piano sounds.
Hmm... Not sure I agree. Each piano note has a "signature" of loudness levels and decay rates for each partial in its complex. With the controls given now, we already alter the sound of the "instrument." Sometimes greatly.
To me there is not much of a jump from being able to make the 7th partial louder to being able to make it flatter or sharper, for example. Yes, taken to the extreme we could move away from piano sounds altogether (part of the interest and fun of modeling), but it could also be used just to make subtle adjustments.
In anycase, I think there could be a market for it, and I hope this worry wouldn't be the reason it isn't implemented in the future.
(And yes, thank you for pointing out the string length parameter, which is interesting in its own right, but different.)
best,
DS