"Introduction to Fortepiano" a la Kremsegg 1 and 2

Thanks for the link. I love those old instruments. Apart from the Blüthner Model One, KIViR and now Kremsegg are the the most important selling points Pianoteq has going for it, IMHO (apart from being an awesome instrument in general).

Edit: I found this intro to the different historic instrument types also very interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uCCw_hmILA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9IaE2i-DmA

Well, if you are thinking of "the" first modern piano, I think you will be disappointed. As far as I know there were several innovations made over the years, which lead to our modern pianos in rather small steps.

The first fortepiano was built by Bartolomeo Cristofori. This was already a full 'piano', as early as ca. 1700. The first actual 'grand' was built AFAIK by Broadwood and Sons (late 1700s). In 1821, Sébastien Érard invented the double escapement, which is essentially the modern grand piano key action. Leather hammer coverings were replaced by felt. The 'Steinway pedal' (i.e., sostenuto) became popular in the late 1800s, though it is even older and was not actually invented by Steinway, if I am not mistaken. The American firm Chickering & Mackays introduced the full-iron frame, which in turn allowed for more strings and more tension. The choirs got three instead of two strings, leading to a fuller sound. There are probably dozens of things I can't think of right now.

The modern form of the grand was more or less 'fixed' in the early 1900s, I think, and can probably be attributed to Steinway, Blüthner, Bechstein and Broadwood as the most important manufacturers of that period.

Speaking about the Kremsegg collection, we just added a beautiful demo played by Joris Holtackers on the Frenzel grand piano, listen to F. Schubert - Sonata No. 20 Andantino on page https://www.pianoteq.com/kremsegg2. He mixed the piano with some church ambience which to me provides a very authentic sound.

Some other videos that are interesting on You Tube are under the name "Trevor Stephenson".  There is a one hour video called "from quill to hammer" that goes into great detail about Harpsichord and early Pianoforte.  Also one on tuning a piano in well temper for 18 century music.

Bill

That is pretty gorgeous! Can you explain the technique he used to add that "church ambience"???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pdBNkgdUJc

I don't know exactly, he wrote me that he "mixed with live church ambience noise I once sampled, for increased realism". I told him about the discussion here and will try to get more details.

I first made the same error... he did not use it as impulse but in a mix (at least that's what I understood). That means several minutes of church ambience. Not that it is impossible to use a truncated/faded out version as reverb impulse, but with no guaranty of similar result.

Hi Rachel and Delt,

I'm glad you like the recording, thanks!

Before the first note and after the last notes you can hear an acoustic "space" noise. That's the acoustic noise in the empty Nicolaï church in Utrecht that I once sampled just before a recording gig. So, it's no impulse sample.

Now about the acoustic reverberance.

First I bypassed all internal reverb & delay processing of Pianoteq.

Then I accomplished the acoustic church sound by making a subtle combination of different plugins:
• Native Instrument's Reaktor, loaded with the "Kraftverb" ensemble (for putting the
• Reaktor again, now loaded with the "Native Yardstick" ensemble
• IK Multimedia's Classik Studio Reverb
• Reaktor one last time, now loaded with the "Space Master" ensemble

When EQ'ing PT5's instruments, I mostly use IK Multimedia's T-RackS Master EQ 432 and/or Tokyo Dawn Labs SlickEQ.

Soon I'll try to have a closer look at the deeper possibilities of PT5's internal acoustic options.

Greetings!
Joris

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