Kaway ES7 and MP6 partial sustain support

ES7 sends what Kawai terms 'half-pedal', and by that, means sends at least some variety of MIDI values. I've never read any and Kawai may keep them secret, but in practice it means ES7's Sustain acts like a mechanical piano's - varied amounts of damping can be applied, from slight to full.

Hello chaps,

Just to clarify this point, the ES7 does indeed send a range of values when depressing the pedal.

It's true that the discreet values that are sent are not written in the owner's manual, however this may change in the future.

I believe Kawai first introduced half-pedalling (i.e. sending progressive damper pedal values) support on portable digital pianos several years ago, and this has been a standard feature since the MP5...if not before.

Kind regards,
James
x

barmassimo,

Given the choice between the two, the ES7 is perhaps more suitable as a practise/learning instrument.  Moveover, it features a superior three-sensor keyboard action and higher resolution tone generator compared to the MP6.

Kind regards,
James
x

You could try one of the two alternate Pianoteq keyboard velocity curves (Slow, Moderately Slow) and see if they make an impression-difference (important to playing, adds up to "heard/felt differently", a psycholgical trick/adjustment analogous to astronauts learning to move around on the moon).

You'd lose no (giant) capability-equality between the onboard (Kawai) piano sounds and the offboard (Pianoteq) ones, because ES7 has equivalent curves of its own, if you want to keep these two excellent sound-sources both in play - (while ES7 additionally has two learning modes, that with identical material used might produce results approximate to what Pianoteq can learn of your touch .... and in any case you can set-to, and design, a Pianoteq match to whatever ES7 has ended up with).

When my Kawai VPC1 finally arrives I fully intend to park ES7 behind it, pass MIDI thru, and keep the ES7 sounds available and ready. They're that good.

I understood what you mean just as you mean it, and having the same keyboard proposed a trick (which by the way I've yet to try myself) which might help. You have to wonder, why name those curves that way? The touch doesn't itself alter, the ratio of output per unit force does is all you can say. Much as the the same kick as on earth would jump the astronaut out of the football grass and into the stands, on the moon; and reversely. You modify your kick by the results generated, and that's the trick built into the curve.

Anyway, without changing curves as I passed the ES7 this afternoon, I experimented with shaking the hand/arm while holding the striking finger rigid (shaking the finger doesn't work, yet at anyrate) in order to get fast repetition of a note. It may be THE way, in that depth of shake is easily kept constant, (and after that, you'd teach yourself different depths and different striking extents along the key to manage volume, which of course I didn't do in passing this afternoon).

Repetition must always have been troublesome, or why did the classicals write so many trills but so few one-note equivalents, like almost none?

Then they had to shoehorn in a specialised mechanical trick to help this (called Repetition natch); but help is all, it no way is a complete fix.

Evgeny Kissin is as accomplished a pianist as you can look up, and I posted a clip of a Polonaise of his in one of the recent VPC1 threads. It occasionally uses part of a rhythmic figure that's a constant part of the bass accompaniment in the Grand Polonaise Brillante which follows Chopin's Andante Spianato.

Accompaniment goes Dah, Dada Dit Dah Dit Dah; Dah, Dada Dit Dah Dit Dah etc, and the second da in Dada follows quick, or else, and quieter than the first Da, or else. Anything else is wrong. Well, Dah, Dada Dit turns up occasionally in Kissin's Polonaise too, and is sometimes right and sometimes daDa.

Which London to a brick isn't what Chopin wanted - or Kissin. And that's on a Steinway.

We can't do without Dah, Dada Dit and similar, and it can beat the best playing the best - (including the best mechanical Repetition ever). So aim to get along with means you can directly control - shake, finger-change, change strike-point, part-pedal fudge, anything that helps. So I say to myself. Forget that Kawai or Steinway will solve it.