Topic: Soundictionary.

I would like to propose a idea of sondictionary for this forum and for Beta team.

A soundictionary it's a dictionary with a short sound sample, describing in words a given sound feeling, and with sound referent to the description.


I feel sometimes someone says the piano sound it's this or that, but I don't get what really means.  I imagine other people feel the same.
It's like not everyone always speak the same language.


We could start with everyone giving their usual words they prefer to describe a piano.


So, what do you say?

Re: Soundictionary.

Maybe helpful, maybe still difficult to catch the meaning of individually used terms...

There will be always a gap between words and something we hear in piano sound. We want more "woodiness", better "clonk", more or less "metal", less "hollow" or "muddy", better "defined bottom", more "body", less "nasality" or "artificial" sound. All of those terms describe basically something else than sound in strict sense. In our musical use they are metaphors and for sure not very clear what they try to describe.

Maybe this obscurity is the magic of all this discourse... Another thing is that we cannot even listen to same thing. You can say that "listen to this sample X to hear what I mean with word W". Problem is that my ears are different; I know that 20 years of gigging has permanently taken out some frequencies in my hearing! Also, we all have very different sound systems and acoustical environment. It also seems to me that we may even have kind of personal filters in our brain! Some people may accept (or not hear) something that others feel very disturbing. And as we know, our preconceptions tend to affect to our hearing. There's no "pure" hearing for sure...

All this been said, I don't mind trying to develope and sharpen the piano sound vocabulary.

Last edited by Ecaroh (29-04-2012 11:04)

Re: Soundictionary.

I agree with Beto-Music, it is a good idea and would be "nice to have".
I also agree with Ecaroh, it is difficult to interpret what others mean by even the most commonly used of the various terms.

I suppose one could start with some very broad classifications, as we already have, then add tags to indicate to the next level of detail;

e.g. Classical, Jazz, Romantic, Baroque, Pop, Blues, Bee Bop, disco, , , , ,  etc.
Major Tags; Individual composers and performers who it is thought typify the sound and/or genre.
Minor tags; Specific recordings, You tube links, similarity to known instruments, well known sample sets, etc.
The adjectives; "wood", "honky tonk", "metal", etc.

Not that I want to design the database for this :-D

Personally ?  I would probably throw in "Don Smith" when searching for presets.

BTW, can we already DO this with the search function ?

Re: Soundictionary.

having such a dictionary might be nice but it'll still be as subjective as anything else...

no there's no such key classification in the preset system yet - as a matter of fact I suggested it a couple of weeks ago here on the forum, to be able to select on style or mood and actually did not get any response...

Hans

Re: Soundictionary.

Thank you for the input folks.

The soundictionary it's not something easy, or that someone would take the work.  It's a idea of a collaborative effort For each term everyone would opine and maybe send few records of what he understands by that term.

Let'ws give a very simple example to start.  A honk tonk piano.  Everyone who listen to one knows that the unison typical adjust creates that particular sound.

For some complex sounds, difficult to describe in words, each one would opine and maybe record his own sound clip to describe the sound.  Not just a record of a note, but if necessary a short performance, like chords, or a very short melody, to try to describe better.

Also sound examples of the intented description, followed by the oposed description would help. Give a piano (or sampled one) in the key range that have the effect you refer about, describe it, and get a piano or software with the opposed sound quality for that range.

If we take pianoteq v1 and v4, we can do many interesting comparisons , to describe the metallic and thin of V1, and compare with the present warmer sound of V4.  Also using many of the historic pianos, and even the harpsichord, cause such instrument maybe have a tonal quality that help describe some aspect.

I'm not saying the soundictionary will be perfect, but certainly it will help to reduce the misinterpretation when someone says:  "This sounds this or sounds that.

Come on, lets put in practice.  Specially you who have many piano samplers, many VSTs, or two or three different real pianos on home.

We can start with only the words each one use to describe piano quality, and select the ones that are more difficult to guess in terms of "what sound that means ?"