Mr. Felice, La Campanella FXP?

Hello Curt,

I will be glad to upload it for you.  [EDIT:  It is named "K105 JF 23NOV10.fxp" in the user area.]  Just be aware that I disabled the built-in reverb, and used a Lexicon reverb plug-in entitled Medium Chamber.  Most likely, the as-is fxp will sound ugly without any reverb;  you will need to re-enable the reverb or add a suitable third party reverb that you like to use.  [EDIT #2:  Please disregard the above warning, as the reverb is enabled in the corrected fxp that works with the K1.]

Being a piano tuner who is able to "get inside" many pianos, I have modified the piano as follows:

1)  I made my own "stretch" tuning, by gradually detuning the highest 1-1/2 octaves upward to about 20 cents sharp, and progressively detuned the lowest octave downward by about 10 cents flat.  Next, I randomized the tuning slightly [EDIT: throughout the entire keyboard range], such that there was a little more "distinction" between individual notes, but by such a small amount that people do not realize that the piano has been slightly detuned.

2)  Regarding unison tuning, I emulated various aspects of a real piano one encounters when tuning it:  namely,  reducing the unison width for the single strings at the bottom end of a piano;  making a small "break" upwards in unison tuning where both the one-string changes to two strings, and where two strings change to three strings.  In addition, because it is comparatively difficult to tune the highest top third of the keyboard, I allowed the unison tuning to shift upwards.

2a) Still on unison tuning, next, I randomized the unison tuning (in PTQ PRO) slightly (about two or three clicks of the randomize button), and then scaled it upwards slightly.  The reason for this is that real-world pianos -- even professionally tuned ones -- have unisons that go slightly out of tune after a few days of normal playing, or after a few hours of playing hard in a professional concert venue.  This is why intermissions of classical solo piano concerts often find the piano technician touching up the tuning prior to the last half of the solo piano concert.

3)  Regarding hammer hardnesses for all three ranges, it is normal to find more hammer wear (which translates to harder hammers) in the areas that are played most often:  that is, the middle two or three octaves get a lot more wear than the low notes (also because the lowest bass note strings are heavier, they do not "groove out" the hammers as much as thin strings do).   Then, I randomized the hardnesses separately for the piano, mezzo forte and fortissimo ranges.   In this way, the piano does not sound exactly the same between adjacent notes or even adjacent octaves.

EDIT:  3A)  Although this sounds counterproductive, I actually raised the hardnesses of the piano hammers slightly more than the others, because when hammers get "grooved" under heavy playing, the hardened/worn hammers make it more difficult to play softly!  This is why, on some well worn pianos, I find myself using the una corda pedal much more than otherwise required -- to tame the beast.  As a countermeasure, I also INcreased the slider to allow the soft pedal to work harder (if needed) to correct for worn hammers played softly.

4)  Similar randomizations were performed on strike points, damper positions and damper decay times as are true to the architecture of real pianos.  I preferred to reduce the strike points on the bass notes (to emphasize the fundamental frequencies to a higher degree than the overtones).  In contrast, I raised the strike point ratios of very high notes, so as to help brighten the higher notes.

5)  I added +1db to the fundamental frequencies of all notes on the main spectrum screen.

******

Other than that, I did hardly anything to the sound !!!  (Just kidding, of course.)

In the case of La Campanella, I believe I left the velocity curve untouched and used my fingers to modulate velocity-on values.  In almost every other demo, I lightly suppress the velocity curve, so I can play slightly harder without making the piano go "too bright" too soon.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Joe

Hey Joe, thanks a lot for posting your preset but it won't load, I get the error message that it depends on an unavailable instrument K1 Grand Piano [ext2]

I'm using the standard version 3.6.5

Did you create it with a beta?

Joe, maybe you already have this in mind, but you can use the freeze feature to transfer your settings to a factory K1 preset of choice and save as a new fxp. That way, there will be no need to recreate all settings.

Thank You for a good fxp file!!!

I wonder what happened if i change settings with the std version? If I, for example, change the forte hammer hardness, is the "random effect" still there or will it be the exact same hardness all over the key-range?

The random variation from Joe's fxp will be kept if loaded in pianoteq standard, and if you then change the hammer hardness, this random variation will be "transported" by your own changes (exactly like if you were moving the hammer hardness sliders in the pro version).

Hello All,

I might add that you may wish to adapt your own velocity curve to this fxp, such that the piano will respond best to the manner in which you play.

Cheers,

Joe

Thank you Joe, excellent!

Just for confirmation, will the freeze function transfer every aspect of Joe's FXP into other pianos, in the standard version of Pteq?

On a related point, I have been using the freeze function to try out another great preset, the M3 "Jake's Steinway". What I've noticed though, is that I am unable to adjust the tuning to achieve 440hz. I'm not at my music computer right now, but I seem to recall the preset being something like 440.03Hz or thereabouts. I guessed this could be changed in Pteq Pro?

Excellent - That's fantastic.

I wonder if Pteq could have a parameter to create random subtle imperfections across all the notes. I'm tempted to upgrade to Pteq Pro, but, (being lazy), I'm not sure how long it would take to edit-in these imperfections.

I get quite excited when a Pteq-Pro user, like Joe, uploads an fxp. because it means we can get to see the true potential of the software.

(another small point, could it be made possible on the 'files' page to be able to identify which fxps are indeed created in the Pro version)

Pteq has so much potential it seems.

I see! This sounds good - and quick!
In the standard version there is a randomise function, but it is not parameter specific.

I'll see what Christmas may bring.

Dear Pianoteq,

I am really intrigued by the effect of Joe's fxp. Somehow it really helps me to make the piano sound more believable and 'live'. This probably has to do with the kind of pianos i am used to play on. I do not have the pianoteq pro version, so unfortunately i can not experiment myself.

I imagine that the application could really gain realism and interest by adding two new sliders: one for "piano age", to influence hammer hardness, small variations in strike points etc.; and one for "weeks since last tuning", creating random glitches in tuning. Realism could be increased by the kind of tactics Joe is using, e.g. affecting the most used keys more (but still with a degree of randomness of course).

Joe really has struk something valuable here, i think.

Hi all !

Im a new user of pianoteq, was using the demo for a month or so, playing and testing different reverb settings and really really liked the pianoteq software.

Was reading in this forum the post about Joes fxp this evening and decided it was time to buy the software - so I did.

But now, Im having problems finding Joes fxp, cant seem to locate it in the fxp area, can someone help me, I was so excited about trying it out !

Regards,
/ Erik