Topic: Short Altered C2 Chamber improv mp3 posted
I wasn't expecting to do this but it just sort of happened while I was experimenting with the various parameters. I couldn't seem to get any EQ working on the trial version, so I opened it in Logic (7) and worked on it there, as well as swapping L/R (for quasi-audience or mic perspective), adding some Space Designer reverb and 'Exciter' and some compression and delay. All this was after an extended tinker with the Pianoteq parameters, an extraordinary range. I must say I don't usually play (or listen to) this sort of piano sound and music, but there you go.
http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/uploads.p...20Pony.mp3
Restricting myself to the white keys for safety (that's for my technique AND to dodge the few missing notes in the trial version) I figured I could do worse than call the little piece "White Pony". My (sadly late) friend Cameron Retchford, a brilliant cellist, used to have a CD of Brubeck with a horse on the cover, so I think that inspired me on this little excursion.
In isolation, some of the notes below middle C sound a little odd, but in context it doesn't seem to show. I certainly enjoyed playing with this 'studio mid-size grand' patch that I made up—and several dozen other pianos on the way there. Maybe it would be nice to be able to get a little more 'fizzy' ping on the really hard strikes, perhaps there is a combination of settings that I have not chanced upon yet. It seems very convincing to me, anyway. Can you hear the strings interacting with each other and the 'hammers' under repeated hard strikes? That is so cool, and entirely impossible with samples. This really is an instrument (which I look forward to playing in other keys than 'C' shortly).
Having made many recordings of the Steinways at our orchestra studio using some nice microphones, fiddling around with distance and other placement considerations it's amazing to have a virtual instrument behaving so authentically. Someone mentioned using the piano harp etc. as a kind of reverberator. I have tried this acoustically, with solo violin etc (putting a sand-weight on the sustain pedal). It is an interesting but I think not particularly useful effect, that is for conventional western music I mean. For other styles, I'm sure it could be very interesting.
If anyone is interested I can try to transfer the Pianoteq settings onto an fxp file; in that way others might produce a more effective model in this style than my initial efforts have achieved.
Better get to bed, it's late,
Stephen.