And one or two surrounding notes on most of my Pianoteq pianos. They stand out quite dramatically from others, and I'd like to take 'em down a tad, if I may.
Suggestions? (sensible ones preferably but we could use a laugh these days)
And one or two surrounding notes on most of my Pianoteq pianos. They stand out quite dramatically from others, and I'd like to take 'em down a tad, if I may.
Suggestions? (sensible ones preferably but we could use a laugh these days)
Do you have 'freeze' main volume enabled or another parameter? If so then something I realized recently was, if I adjusted the volume in Steinway B wide for example, and had freeze main volume then not just the volume (minus 7 limiter off) was effected but the entire volume editor adjustment that were made in the factory preset or my own on this preset. If then I change a preset to a Steinway D Prelude these not so suitable note adjustments will now be present.
Sometimes very small adjustments have been made in the factory settings, example, a few notes around Ab5 possibly but these notes might sound too loud on another preset.
This find, and one I will double check has made me look at freeze parameters as not been ideal and actually editing an individual preset and saving it as the best way. Nick
PIANOTEQ PRO permits easily any note dampening!
Have you MIDI that’s even coming across the board?
I say although on individual key press from the board, MIDI transmission has to appear fluid; too wet back it goes, the keyboard to its manufacturer...
Well, you’ve my perspective laughable or not...
You can also change the last damper in the Action panel.
I just noticed you meant dampening not volume sorry. I would still consider any parameters though that might be frozen and as Amen Ptah Ra suggests to check your MIDI keyboard. I might add to look at note 'off' values and check they are uniform, this would be from a keyboard that sends note off values, Kawai VPC 1 for example.
You describe the notes as standing out, is this in tone, volume or how long the note(s) take to stop when the key is released? Nick
I just noticed you meant dampening not volume sorry. I would still consider any parameters though that might be frozen and as Amen Ptah Ra suggests to check your MIDI keyboard. I might add to look at note 'off' values and check they are uniform, this would be from a keyboard that sends note off values, Kawai VPC 1 for example.
You describe the notes as standing out, is this in tone, volume or how long the note(s) take to stop when the key is released? Nick
Dammit! I shouldn't have mentioned dampening. Nothing to do with the pedals. for "Dampening" read "reduce somewhat". The note's too loud and echoes around my head. If I reduce the volume overall, the piano doesn't sound right.
I think maybe I need to upgrade to higher than stage to achieve this, but who knows? It's probably a resonance associated with a room or something. Anybody else notice this?
MeDorian wrote:I just noticed you meant dampening not volume sorry. I would still consider any parameters though that might be frozen and as Amen Ptah Ra suggests to check your MIDI keyboard. I might add to look at note 'off' values and check they are uniform, this would be from a keyboard that sends note off values, Kawai VPC 1 for example.
You describe the notes as standing out, is this in tone, volume or how long the note(s) take to stop when the key is released? Nick
Dammit! I shouldn't have mentioned dampening. Nothing to do with the pedals. for "Dampening" read "reduce somewhat". The note's too loud and echoes around my head. If I reduce the volume overall, the piano doesn't sound right.
I think maybe I need to upgrade to higher than stage to achieve this, but who knows? It's probably a resonance associated with a room or something. Anybody else notice this?
Upgrading Pianoteq shouldn't be required as the factory presets themselves don't have this issue. I would uncheck all freeze parameters (make sure none are ticked) first, then change preset to see if the problem has gone. Also try Pianoteq in stand alone mode, if this solves things then it's some setting in your DAW.
It might be a keyboard issue, recalibration could solve the problem. It would help to know the keyboard you use? Nick
The velocity sensors on some MIDI keyboards are not consistent from note to note; some have keys that are "hot," producing and transmitting a higher MIDI velocity value when pressed with the same weight and force as other keys. The manufacturers (like Kawai) provide an app you can install to edit velocity or volume, or include that functionality and customization in the menus of the keyboard's internal operating system.
Pianoteq Pro can compensate for uneven MIDI keyboard response, using it's Note Edit functionality.
Take a hammer to the notes. Problem solved. Humour attempted as requested
More seriously, take 2 tomatoes with milk and call me in the morning doctor. No, that's not right either..
Definitely, it's a job for spaghetti! (Note to self.. Eat something, must be hungry - or getting cabin fever).
Finally non-nonsense..
Room does seem a very likely cause (esp. if all pianos ring at a certain frequency range).
Even moving your rig an inch here and there can help this - esp. if speakers are moved and angled to accommodate being further away from walls or square angles. I'd try a few small re-fits along those lines (along with some larger moves to be fair).
Maybe, an old favourite, a wall hanging behind speakers can absorb some low or low-mid frequencies which might be conspiring with the tweeters to push those higher ringing tones too much.
It's true, in Pro you could edit a lot of details per note - but it's never a second-rate idea to move your setup around physically. My relatively new space makes things sound good compared to my old space but, I benefited enormously by moving just 3 inches more from the wall about a year ago, sitting also a few inches further from speakers.
Take a hammer to the notes. Problem solved. Humour attempted as requested
More seriously, take 2 tomatoes with milk and call me in the morning doctor. No, that's not right either..
Definitely, it's a job for spaghetti! (Note to self.. Eat something, must be hungry - or getting cabin fever).
Finally non-nonsense..
Room does seem a very likely cause (esp. if all pianos ring at a certain frequency range).
Even moving your rig an inch here and there can help this - esp. if speakers are moved and angled to accommodate being further away from walls or square angles. I'd try a few small re-fits along those lines (along with some larger moves to be fair).
Maybe, an old favourite, a wall hanging behind speakers can absorb some low or low-mid frequencies which might be conspiring with the tweeters to push those higher ringing tones too much.
It's true, in Pro you could edit a lot of details per note - but it's never a second-rate idea to move your setup around physically. My relatively new space makes things sound good compared to my old space but, I benefited enormously by moving just 3 inches more from the wall about a year ago, sitting also a few inches further from speakers.
Well! This problem is not found in my native piano sound (P515); I use headphones so it's neither the room I'm in or the h'phones.
Interesting is it did the same with my last piano, the excellent FP50 on Pianoteq, but not the onboard instrument.
Happy days!
This problem is not found in my native piano sound (P515); I use headphones so it's neither the room I'm in or the h'phones.
Interesting is it did the same with my last piano, the excellent FP50 on Pianoteq, but not the onboard instrument.
Happy days!
Interesting. When you use the keyboard's onboard sounds, do you plug the headphones into the keyboard's headphone output? What do you plug the headphones into when using Pianoteq? I wonder if your audio interface might possibly be responsible for the accentuated resonance or volume at Ab5.
To locate the particular Ab you refer to, are you using numbering that would consider the lowest Ab on an 88-key keyboard as Ab0 or Ab1? Could you suggest a Pianoteq instrument and preset in which this louder-volume effect seems particularly obvious to you?
I don't know the limitations in Pianoteq Stage so some guess work here. If it doesn't have a note editor then you won't be able to see the volume (for example) and the subtle and not so subtle editing in the presets, they will still be there though in Stage.
The 'freeze' parameter, for anyone that has something checked (ticked), should be aware of the changes it can bring. In the past I would check (freeze) 'main volume' parameter for convenience, totally unaware I was actually freezing all the note editing (volume slider and volume per note) from this one preset. Many times I would notice uneven volume and thought perhaps my keyboard was faulty. I now only freeze velocity curve for both 'on' and 'off note' values. Nick
peterws wrote:This problem is not found in my native piano sound (P515); I use headphones so it's neither the room I'm in or the h'phones.
Interesting is it did the same with my last piano, the excellent FP50 on Pianoteq, but not the onboard instrument.
Happy days!Interesting. When you use the keyboard's onboard sounds, do you plug the headphones into the keyboard's headphone output? What do you plug the headphones into when using Pianoteq? I wonder if your audio interface might possibly be responsible for the accentuated resonance or volume at Ab5.
To locate the particular Ab you refer to, are you using numbering that would consider the lowest Ab on an 88-key keyboard as Ab0 or Ab1? Could you suggest a Pianoteq instrument and preset in which this louder-volume effect seems particularly obvious to you?
Headphones get plugged into their own devices. I have 2 identical sets, one into the piano and one into the computer output. It's noticeable on all the pianos, but the Grotrian is arguably more prominent.
I never notice these things on recordings. That's the annoying bit.
I suspect the room where these things were modelled/sampled (whatever) might have something to do with it. Every room has its acoustic niggles.
So maybe I'm the only one who's noticed this.
But i am getting on a bit . . .
Slowly I turn, step by step, from a comedic routine about Niagara Falls perhaps made famous from slapstick skits by The Three Stooges! (Smile.)
Another comedic saying but as part of a reoccurring routine in a televised cartoon series is a still often heard, “Heavens to Murgatroid.” In the series an underlying music score of course has to include the Ab5 note viewable somewhere in its arrangement. (Smile again.)
'Heavens to Murgatroyd' is American in origin and dates from the mid 20th century. The expression was popularized by the cartoon character Snagglepuss - a regular on the Yogi Bear Show in the 1960s.
If appearance is anything to go by, Snagglepuss was the template for the later Pink Panther. The character had two catchphrases - "Exit, stage left" and "Heavens to Murgatroyd".
The expression is a variant of the earlier 'heavens to Betsy'.
The first record that I can find of 'heavens to Murgatroyd' in print is from the Ohio newspaper The Akron Beacon Journal, March 1961, in a small ad advertising the sale of a ranch:
"Heavens to Murgatroyd" she's a beauty.
It is quite likely that the copywriter got the line from the cartoon series, which was first aired in January 1961...
There is also an earlier newspaper cartoon, which appeared in the San Francisco Examiner and other US newspapers in October 1942.
The use of the words 'heaven' and 'Murgatroyd' there may just be coincidence and unconnected to the expression. It doesn't seem plausible that the phrase was coined in 1942 and sat dormant until the 1960s.
Despite etymologists' best efforts there isn't any record of the phrase that pre-dates the Yogi Bear cartoon series and it is very likely that it was coined by the show's writers.
The frequently repeated suggestion that the phrase was said by Bert Lahr's character in the 1944 film Meet The People isn't correct.
[I know, I've watched the film - which is 100 minutes that I'll never get back - and at no time is the phrase or anything like it said by any character.].
The Snagglepuss character is very similar to the persona that Bert Lahr adopted on-screen and may well have been based on him. However, that's as near to Bert Lahr as Heavens to Murgatroyd gets.
As with Betsy, we have no idea who Murgatroyd was. The various spellings of the name - as Murgatroid, Mergatroyd or Mergatroid to suggest that it wasn't a reference to an actual person but just a fanciful expression made up because it sounded wacky.
No fewer than ten of the characters in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera Ruddigore, 1887, are baronets surnamed "Murgatroyd", eight of whom (or is that which?) are ghosts.
Where then did the librettist Sir William Gilbert get the name? It seems that Murgatroyd has a long history as a family name in the English aristocracy.
In his genealogy The Murgatroyds of Murgatroyd, Bill Murgatroyd states that, in 1371, a constable was appointed for the district of Warley in Yorkshire, UK. He adopted the name of Johanus de Morgateroyde - literally John of Moor Gate Royde or 'the district leading to the moor'.
Murgatroyds may be thick on the ground in England but it isn't a common name in the USA. It may have been adopted by the Yogi Bear screenwriters because it sounded wacky to American ears.
It's long way from West Yorkshire to Jellystone Park but, linguistically at least, that seems to be the journey that Murgatroyd took.
The above is available at this link at phrases.org.uk.
Personally, I am one to laugh at anything, even though my mom used quite often to relay that she herself was named after a cow that was named Betsy by my big dad and his wife, my great grandparents. She had her name changed legally of course to Betty. And, I’ve as one’s been diagnosed with anxiety!
Peter, it is hardly enough to land me in one Buckingham Palace, no matter how much I may have laughed innocently at my watching Buckwheat and hearing countlessly “Ribbon In the Sky” (unlike Cabin in the Sky) sang by Stevie Wonder.
Although as a drummer I’m maybe allowed offbeat jokes and other unoffensive harmless humor (that is) until somebody else wants to complain to a moderator...
Addendum, “Slowly I Turn” also known as (A.K.A.) “Niagara Falls” was performed also in the Abbott and Costello team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello as well as in many other comedic performances including I Love Lucy in which it was referred as “Martha” by Lucille Ball herself.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowly_I_Turned.
See also clips below, including one musical number:
Man, the comedians of yesteryear had really gotten away with a lot, yet without any profanity!
I hear it was all done with smoke and mirrors though...
Yes, Amen Ptah Ra, I should have known the expression or name Murgatroyd as I live in Yorkshire! Interesting stuff, I was initially unsure (actually unaware been honest) of the meaning.
Thanks, Nick
Just watching Snagglepuss, good recommendation Amen Ptah Ra!!