Topic by jesussaddle

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Topic: noob question

So i bought pianoteq yesterday, which i think is just amazing. I completely agree with Mr. Sung's appraisal. Once i set a good velocity curve for my novation impulse i can reall "feel" what i'm trying to say musically.  My goal was to set it so that almost no atrack was almost quiet. Got much closer when i ignored the calib asst and simply adjusted the points on the velocity curve map manually. I think the asst would do a better job by adding more prompts and including that bottom almost silent area. We don't completely slam keys very much, but we do want to hear gradual quieting, so that should be one focus of the asst, not simply going from quiet to medium. Medium is too much louder than very soft.

IMO....

Anyway, i DO hear different harmonic content all the way through the velocities, and ANY keyboard player would appreciate this.  Only 2000 forum users. What? There should be a million. Stage is so cheap and low on cpu and memory footprint. Fantastic work guys.

Here's my question. I never played a piano - not sure how to set up a pedal.  I used the basic on-off variety last night. But now I've plugged in my yamaha FC7 (i used as an axe fx wah expression controller). It sends on cc 11. I set the pedal through calib asst and it is working, after a second attempt i got it to "reverse" for me. So my graph stsrts high ( i did it manually anyway, but then went back in and allowed the pgm to do it its own way.

What i want is a pro's advice. How can i best make use of continuous controller, and a 2nd pedal plugged in at cc66?

Half pedal - is that like half hired? (Like, it wasn't doing much, much like a half hired employee..)

Rocking off the sustain is less abrubt, is that the meaning of haif pedal?

SINCE POSTING I HAVE DONE MY BEST TO GET A CURVE WHERE THE HALF PEDAL EFFECT IS NOTICEABLE. I SUCCEEDED; ITS STILL MORE ABRUPT THAN OpTIMAL... I THINK A BETTER PEDAL WOULD BE A TRULY PIANO STYLE ONE - NOT THIS WAH STLYE EXPRESSION PEDAL. DOES THE M-AUDIO P2 WORK GOOD? OR THE YAMAHA FC3?

Do you recommend cc64 now for sustenuto now? Or harmonic?

Last edited by jesussaddle (01-11-2013 03:53)

Reply by tractor_music

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Re: noob question

jesussaddle wrote:

So i bought pianoteq yesterday, which i think is just amazing. I completely agree with Mr. Sung's appraisal. Once i set a good velocity curve for my novation impulse i can reall "feel" what i'm trying to say musically.  My goal was to set it so that almost no atrack was almost quiet. Got much closer when i ignored the calib asst and simply adjusted the points on the velocity curve map manually. I think the asst would do a better job by adding more prompts and including that bottom almost silent area. We don't completely slam keys very much, but we do want to hear gradual quieting, so that should be one focus of the asst, not simply going from quiet to medium. Medium is too much louder than very soft.

IMO....

Anyway, i DO hear different harmonic content all the way through the velocities, and ANY keyboard player would appreciate this.  Only 2000 forum users. What? There should be a million. Stage is so cheap and low on cpu and memory footprint. Fantastic work guys.

Here's my question. I never played a piano - not sure how to set up a pedal.  I used the basic on-off variety last night. But now I've plugged in my yamaha FC7 (i used as an axe fx wah expression controller). It sends on cc 11. I set the pedal through calib asst and it is working, after a second attempt i got it to "reverse" for me. So my graph stsrts high ( i did it manually anyway, but then went back in and allowed the pgm to do it its own way.

What i want is a pro's advice. How can i best make use of continuous controller, and a 2nd pedal plugged in at cc66?

Half pedal - is that like half hired? (Like, it wasn't doing much, much like a half hired employee..)

Rocking off the sustain is less abrubt, is that the meaning of haif pedal?

SINCE POSTING I HAVE DONE MY BEST TO GET A CURVE WHERE THE HALF PEDAL EFFECT IS NOTICEABLE. I SUCCEEDED; ITS STILL MORE ABRUPT THAN OpTIMAL... I THINK A BETTER PEDAL WOULD BE A TRULY PIANO STYLE ONE - NOT THIS WAH STLYE EXPRESSION PEDAL. DOES THE M-AUDIO P2 WORK GOOD? OR THE YAMAHA FC3?

Do you recommend cc64 now for sustenuto now? Or harmonic?

Though you say you have never played a piano I will assume that you know that the sustain pedal attempts to emulate string dampeners being held back ?

Somewhat like the half hired and half fired - I think you can take  "half pedal"  to mean "ALMOST un-dampened" or "ALMOST dampened"  half full or half empty.   
On a "physical" piano there is a difference between taking the dampeners half off and putting them half back on - not anything I can put into words right now
My own playing is not subtle/discrete enough to benefit much from a continuous controller for the sustain pedal.

What I understand a Wah pedal to mean is about like an organ swell pedal, i.e. it stays where you leave it.
At some level it MATTERS that the pedal springs back when you lift your foot, though you can probably develop an adequate (enough) toe to heel rocking motion as your foot leaves, although this might limit you at some point.

Depends where you want to go, personally I'm not on the "Konzert Pianist" track, I just play for my own amusement - to the annoyance of others

Reply by jesussaddle

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Re: noob question

Thank you for your kind answer. I've played around with the half damping some more. It works perfectly but my FC7 continuous controller "wah pedal" (i mean, that's why i got it, for wah wah. Did not know it would work as a piano pedal!) is not gradual. This is plugged into my novation impulse in the expression pedal jack. Looking in my sequencer after trial use, the position of cc values (i use cc 11) is totally uncontrolled, meaning i can hardly go between full, half, and off without very careful attention. I have to deliberately move just a baby step from full undamped or It'll sound nearly fully damped.

Maybe i should try the m-audio P2 or whatever its called.

The sustenato pedal plugged into pedal jack is fine.

I've been recommending thr pianoteq all day!

One complaint. Please make it easier to freeze and save the pedal and velocity info. Saving into a frozen preset doesn't load a frozen preset, is that right? I keep refreezing but when reopened its unfrozen and loading a preset to go back to your pedal settings seems incorrect. The icon, perhaps, on the main page should graphically show the state of pedal and velocity particularly, and a freeze should be the default of certain things, especially pedal and also velocity. This is because most players use the same hardware. I guess as it stands i need to be sure to freeze settings each time i start the program, or save the presets i'll use while the desired frozen settings are locked in.  I understand, programming is a difficult beast and we appreciate what you guys have done! Thanks!

Incidentally, what i meant by my poorly worded poll questions is this, do some of you have a single pedal perform not just half pedals, but sostenuto? Would this be possible, if you isolate a range in the expression pedal, say you want the near bottom to be undamped and the very bottom to be sustenato (my raised expression pedal is undamped and my lowered pedal is damped).

Last edited by jesussaddle (02-11-2013 05:58)

Reply by custral

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Re: noob question

As a concept of course that's possible. You think up a behavior and call it whatever you like. But conventional sostenuto's action is quite different from conventional sustain's (and particularly from the half-pedal side of sustain, sostenuto being either ON or OFF).

What sostenuto does is latch the state of any keys held down when the pedal's depressed, so those notes continue sounding while the pedal stays down. leaving the fingers free to go do business elsewhere. So it's an on/off pedal strictly, with that special use.

Notice that nothing prevents the freed fingers from restriking any of the latched notes, and the sustain pedal's free to act too, in either the half-pedal or full on/off ways.

Though I've never looked to see the implementation of physical sostenuto, one's easy to imagine, at least in a grand. Suppose the rear of each damper has a projecting spur, and depressing sostenuto brought forward a keyboard-wide bar to sit under the spurs of any raised dampers. That'd do it.

A consequence would be that any restruck latched key would have the restruck volume latched, and digital pianos would have to match that.

Last edited by custral (02-11-2013 19:20)

Reply by delt

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Re: noob question

What i'd like to know is how this is done on a real (mechanical) piano ...programming sostenuto in software is rather straightforward, but building the mechanism on a real instrument must be pretty complicated.

http://soundcloud.com/delt01
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Reply by custral

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Re: noob question

See my afterthought above. Dunno if it's real, but it's simple.

Reply by doug

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Re: noob question

My new  old (1897) upright has sostenuto. I found this out quite by accident--I had assumed that it had the usual bass sustain middle pedal thing and that it was broken. Then I randomly played some notes, then pushed the middle pedal, then let up on the notes and they just kept playing but the surrounding notes were still normal. Quite a surprise: I didn't even think they did sostenuto on uprights.

My tuner showed me how it worked:

When you press the pedal it slides up one little finger per note, that is positioned to engage only the dampers of notes that are currently depressed. These fingers prevent those dampers from returning to the muted position. When you let up on the pedal, the fingers disengage and the dampers return to their normal resting position.

The pedaling implementation in Pianoteq works exactly like it does on my piano. Exactly.

Reply by delt

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Re: noob question

Ah, and on pedal press down, these "fingers" are prevented from popping up on notes that are not currently playing, right? ...since this would come down to ordinary sustain pedal behaviour?

Thanks for the explanation

Last edited by delt (02-11-2013 20:36)
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Reply by custral

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Re: noob question

Ho Ho! Here's a past discussion of this topic, on this very forum.

http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/viewtopic.php?id=1977

On the question does sostenuto apply to ALL the notes held undamped by the sustain pedal (ie keyboard wide),
it seems this is a feature of Steinways, at least according to a discussion -
HERE
- (and where also it seems the action is in the limit, unreliable).

ADDED: amounts to a vote for digital!

Last edited by custral (02-11-2013 21:40)

Reply by jesussaddle

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Re: noob question

Hey custral, thanks!

I would have never realized that sustenato works correctly on pianoteq, that is to say, with my set up of cc11 to pedal half pefal off pedal, and cc64 to sustenato.Indeed the sustenato does allow for restriking of and notes held open (held when pedal is depressed.) I had ignorantly assumed pianoteq was only holding the notes but that if you retriggered they would be damped like the others - i hadn't tried to retrigger them.

Proves what they say about making assumptions.

I think I've slready sold a few people on buying pianoteq and i only got it this thursday. Thanks in part to a helpful forum.

Reply by LTECpiano

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Re: noob question

doug wrote:

My new  old (1897) upright has sostenuto. I found this out quite by accident--I had assumed that it had the usual bass sustain middle pedal thing and that it was broken. Then I randomly played some notes, then pushed the middle pedal, then let up on the notes and they just kept playing but the surrounding notes were still normal. Quite a surprise: I didn't even think they did sostenuto on uprights.

My tuner showed me how it worked:

When you press the pedal it slides up one little finger per note, that is positioned to engage only the dampers of notes that are currently depressed. These fingers prevent those dampers from returning to the muted position. When you let up on the pedal, the fingers disengage and the dampers return to their normal resting position.

The pedaling implementation in Pianoteq works exactly like it does on my piano. Exactly.

Hi Doug . .  fine on the old piano having Sostenuto.  In about 1999,  I had the pleasure of visiting the home of a gentleman named Bud Cory.  Bud was an engineer at Wurlitzer and the inventor of the famous Wurlitzter electric piano action.  In his home was a prototype of a high end {pricy} Wurlitzer studio piano that was to be the equivalent of the Steinway 1098 . . and it was . . although it never went into production.  That upright he showed me had Sostenuto.  You are right . . . that is rare on an upright.

Lanny

LTECpiano's Website

Reply by jcfelice88keys

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Re: noob question

delt wrote:

What i'd like to know is how this is done on a real (mechanical) piano ...programming sostenuto in software is rather straightforward, but building the mechanism on a real instrument must be pretty complicated.

True sostenuto pedaling is only available on grand pianos, as far as I know.  Some cheaper grand pianos "cheat" in the same manner as the vast, vast majority of upright pianos.  That is to say, when the middle pedal is depressed on an upright and a low priced grand piano, the middle pedal releases only those dampers of the bottom few octaves.

True sostenuto pedaling makes use of a device called a "monkey bar", a thin metallic strip that extends across the width of the piano's action, and is able to slip under and hold up any number of the dampers.  When the middle pedal is depressed, the monkey bar slips under only those notes the pianist has depressed just prior to depressing the middle pedal.  In this way, ONLY the dampers remain lifted from those notes whose keys were just previously depressed. 

For the reason described above, when one depresses the middle pedal on a true sostenuto-equipped grand piano, but no notes are held just prior to depressing the pedal, the pedal's effect is not usually heard!

Here is a musical example where the middle (sostenuto) pedal is of value:  Rachmaninov's famous C# minor Prelude.  After the pianist plays those famous octaves:  A, then G#, then C#, he depresses the sostenuto pedal with his left foot.  The result of this action is to hold up the dampers of notes C#0, C#1 and C#2, and leaves all of the other dampers in their "down" positions.  Then the pianist is free to use the sustain pedal with his right foot, as the famous chords are played.  The middle pedal is released when for the second time, the pianist plays those famous octaves,  A, then G# then another C# -- at which time the sostenuto pedal is once again depressed by the pianist's left foot.

Note:  As long as the pianist's left foot depresses the middle pedal in this example, all of the other dampers will be released when his right foot releases the sustain pedal.

Hopefully this helps clarify the manner in which the sostenuto pedal works on a real grand piano.

Cheers,

Joe

Last edited by jcfelice88keys (04-11-2013 03:38)