Topic by dgelas

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Topic: Suggestion for Modartt : add attack samples for piano realism

I think the major flaw of Pianoteq with your piano models comes from the short attack portion of the sound : it's this beginning of the sound that makes the pianoteq pianos sound unrealistic, artificial sounding, un-natural.

Why not add true piano samples to your modelisation ?

Would be a big step up for realism, it wouldn't add many ram memory as you'll only have to include samples of just the attack portion (say some first 1/10 seconds of sound). You could sample the 127 velocity levels per key, wouldn't take much memory compared to the gigaB piano sampled libraries already available.

Some persons layer a Sampled piano (Ivory, VSL, Modern D etc.) for realistic attack sound, with Pianoteq for the realistic soundboard resonances and pedal.

Why not propose true attack samples, directly in Pianoteq ?

Reply by daniel_r328

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Re: Suggestion for Modartt : add attack samples for piano realism

Because reducing velocity resolution to an interpolation of a small number of layers, and removing the nonlinear interactions of repeated attacks of the same key, would make Pianoteq unsuitable for advanced musical situations.

Sure, a recording of a professional musician playing a note will sound "better" than me playing that same note but by that logic I could just put on a Margaret Argerich CD and call it a day

You can get what you're asking for by using Pianoteq as a resonance model for a sampled piano, here's a tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNPVl3ZAsbY - it gives you the "richness" of the note tail of Pianoteq with the canned attacks of a sample lib

dgelas wrote:

You could sample the 127 velocity levels per key, wouldn't take much memory compared to the gigaB piano sampled libraries already available

Sorry to contradict but the data intensity of 127 sampled velocity levels isn't practicable, otherwise the premium sample libs would do that. I recognise the intuition that the individual samples would be shorter, but consider that you'd need (say) at least 1 sec of attack + 1 sec of crossfade, times 127 layers, times 88 keys, times maybe 5 round robins (to be honest, to get to pianoteq parity you'd probably need more than that), times 8*8*8*8 pedal variations.... which would give you the samples for *one* particular set of design parameters, and people will probably want more. So it's quite a bit tricker than it seems at first!

Last edited by daniel_r328 (Today 12:48)

Reply by jmanrique

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Re: Suggestion for Modartt : add attack samples for piano realism

Well, personally, I love the attack on Pianoteq’s pianos. I’ve always found it very pleasant—especially on the Steingraeber, but generally across all of them. It’s perhaps in the resonance and the tail of the sound where I sometimes notice something artificial, particularly in the high register. I’ll take that as a personal observation, though I seem to recall this being discussed on this forum before; in any case, it’s something that can be fixed with Pianoteq’s editing options, which are fabulous.

We’re back at the eternal debate over Pianoteq’s 'realism'. It’s a curious matter; I suspect many people equate realism with how much it sounds like sampled pianos (which use processed samples, so they aren't 'real' either) or acoustic piano recordings (also not real, for the same reason), rather than the actual experience of playing the kind of grand pianos that most of us have only ever seen in shop windows or concert halls.

On the other hand, I find it unlikely that Modartt would add the option you mentioned. It would be like admitting their model doesn't work—something that I, and I suspect many others, don't believe to be the case. (But, interestingly, the opposite does happen—that’s exactly what current digital pianos do when they add physical modeling for resonance, dampers, and so on.).

dgelas wrote:

I think the major flaw of Pianoteq with your piano models comes from the short attack portion of the sound : it's this beginning of the sound that makes the pianoteq pianos sound unrealistic, artificial sounding, un-natural.

Why not add true piano samples to your modelisation ?

Would be a big step up for realism, it wouldn't add many ram memory as you'll only have to include samples of just the attack portion (say some first 1/10 seconds of sound). You could sample the 127 velocity levels per key, wouldn't take much memory compared to the gigaB piano sampled libraries already available.

Some persons layer a Sampled piano (Ivory, VSL, Modern D etc.) for realistic attack sound, with Pianoteq for the realistic soundboard resonances and pedal.

Why not propose true attack samples, directly in Pianoteq ?

Reply by jmanrique

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Re: Suggestion for Modartt : add attack samples for piano realism

Now that you mention it, daniel_r328, I think this is a topic that hasn't been discussed here yet, but as a classically trained pianist, it really interests me. We spend years training on acoustic pianos to develop a proper 'touch'—a good, natural, weighted 'fall' for the Romantic repertoire, as well as more percussive attacks for Bartók or Prokofiev, or the massive palette of attacks required for the music of Debussy and Ravel. Because of this, we know there are ways of playing that can make an acoustic piano sound 'bad.'

The question would be: does Pianoteq account for this in any way, or are these just psychoacoustic strategies that we pianists invent but which have no actual physical basis?

daniel_r328 wrote:

Because reducing velocity resolution to an interpolation of a small number of layers, and removing the nonlinear interactions of repeated attacks of the same key, would make Pianoteq unsuitable for advanced musical situations.

Sure, a recording of a professional musician playing a note will sound "better" than me playing that same note but by that logic I could just put on a Margaret Argerich CD and call it a day

You can get what you're asking for by using Pianoteq as a resonance model for a sampled piano, here's a tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNPVl3ZAsbY - it gives you the "richness" of the note tail of Pianoteq with the canned attacks of a sample lib

Reply by daniel_r328

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Re: Suggestion for Modartt : add attack samples for piano realism

jmanrique wrote:

The question would be: does Pianoteq account for this in any way, or are these just psychoacoustic strategies that we pianists invent but which have no actual physical basis?

I've done some reading on this before and iirc, the general consensus is that "touch" is mostly in attack velocity - but concretely, how a given pianist chains velocities and adds character to them with micro- and macro-temporal variation (cf. organists faking dynamics with very short delays), pedal use, and preceding key release. These give enough variables to create a unique fingerprint. My personal theory is that pianoteq accounts for these factors better than other libraries.

There's also a fringe piece of research that suggests that different acceleration curves that different pianists might use to hit the same velocity cause some elastic compaction of the hammer felts, thus changing the effective hammer hardness. This gives theoretical grounding for isolated notes of the same velocity sounding different with different pianists on the same instrument. But this idea is not well established and, at best, a very slight effect. I find it interesting because this is a mechanical difference that couldn't be picked up by the sensors, so no library would be able to capture this effect with existing hardware.

But at the same time, you're right that there's lots of psychoacoustic trickery going on with this instrument. Seymour Bernstein says in one of his lessions "the piano is a series of illustions" and demonstrates an in-note crescendo by leaning into the keyboard, and I defy you not to hear a crescendo as he does that . So those coexist with the real, lab-measurable acoustic differences.

Reply by jmanrique

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Re: Suggestion for Modartt : add attack samples for piano realism

All of this is so interesting, daniel_r328!! I’ve accepted the concept of velocity ever since I started using MIDI keyboards (which was around the same time as my classical training, during which, by the way, I never heard a word about 'velocity' or 'acceleration'—though it’s obvious they are key, or at least the former).

The idea of acceleration curves is appealing to me, because deep down I still think that making a piano sound 'bad' must be something more complex than just attack velocity. What you mentioned about key release is also interesting: if you're using the pedal, holding the key down to play legato is essentially just a trick to control the attack velocity by transferring weight from one finger to another (the Polish school, I believe), but it unintentionally reduces the volume—however slightly—by keeping the damper close to the strings. Is that what you’re referring to?

As for Seymour’s crescendo, it’s a wonderful illusion, indeed—a magic trick, just like when Barenboim does it by widening his eyes, haha!

daniel_r328 wrote:
jmanrique wrote:

The question would be: does Pianoteq account for this in any way, or are these just psychoacoustic strategies that we pianists invent but which have no actual physical basis?

I've done some reading on this before and iirc, the general consensus is that "touch" is mostly in attack velocity - but concretely, how a given pianist chains velocities and adds character to them with micro- and macro-temporal variation (cf. organists faking dynamics with very short delays), pedal use, and preceding key release. These give enough variables to create a unique fingerprint. My personal theory is that pianoteq accounts for these factors better than other libraries.

There's also a fringe piece of research that suggests that different acceleration curves that different pianists might use to hit the same velocity cause some elastic compaction of the hammer felts, thus changing the effective hammer hardness. This gives theoretical grounding for isolated notes of the same velocity sounding different with different pianists on the same instrument. But this idea is not well established and, at best, a very slight effect. I find it interesting because this is a mechanical difference that couldn't be picked up by the sensors, so no library would be able to capture this effect with existing hardware.

But at the same time, you're right that there's lots of psychoacoustic trickery going on with this instrument. Seymour Bernstein says in one of his lessions "the piano is a series of illustions" and demonstrates an in-note crescendo by leaning into the keyboard, and I defy you not to hear a crescendo as he does that . So those coexist with the real, lab-measurable acoustic differences.

Last edited by jmanrique (Today 14:06)