Some of you may recall a popular commercial which ran during the 70s. That of a consumer tape brand, one which showed a glass shattered from merely its cassette recoding of the famous jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. Who had only seconds earlier in the commercial did shatter a similar glass, live to everyone who saw it. What the commercial of the tape brand seemed to demonstrate by the cassette is that a person viewing was unable fully to tell whether he indeed was witnessing the merited voice of the jazz singer Ella (who did with allegedly her mere voice shatter the goblet) or only in fact the brand of tape (that did so also).
MODARTT to me is a lot like the tape manufacturer!
Today I’m going to alleged whenever you’ve modeled piano used along with modeled analog hardware, you’d become indeed hard pressed to tell of any observable difference, that is, if you’d just listened to either an acoustic piano recording or a recording of PIANOTEQ.
And with that, Is It Live or PIANOTEQ? this entry into the Pianoteq Video Contest 2020 has been indeed nothing short of a lot of fun to me to create.
Firstly, I wanted to build a Grotrian piano preset around a MIDI XP file on a performance of Feng Bian from China, because whenever I loaded the folder of Feng’s MIDI XPs from the Piano-e-Competition that was held in 2018 I always had gravitated to just one of the many Grotrian presets. I really felt he performed some of Robert Schuman’s Fantasie in C Major (Fantasy Opus 17: II) at the Piano-e-Competition very indicative of ideas of a triumphant march.
To my surprise I discovered a few connections involving one Theodore Steinweg, Friedrich Grotrian, and Clara Schumann who ten years after the composer died did start to perform Fantasie in her concerts as it was from her husband whom she remembered. Heinrich Steinweg, Theodore Steinweg’s father began to build pianos in Seesen, about 1835 when the composer wrote Fantasie in 1836. MODARTT shows the following:
Back in 1835, Heinrich Steinweg built his first pianos in Seesen, Germany. When immigrating to USA in 1850, he gave his piano factory to his son Theodore Steinweg, who partnered in 1856 with another piano maker, Friedrich Grotrian. By working closely with prominent pianists such as Clara Schumann, Franz Liszt and Anton Rubinstein, Grotrian managed to produce pianos that pianists loved and used intensively. Today, the basis of the Grotrian tradition remains unchanged: a unique tone and love for music. The grand pianos of Grotrian are still hand made in Germany, and the production of each instrument takes eight months.
So, I’m saying about the preset I used and indeed any other preset built from Grotrian Concert Royal in PIANOTEQ, they are probably very appropriate to anybody wanting to perform a solo piano piece from the composer, in a historical context.
https://forum.modartt.com/file/bux6snwh
https://forum.modartt.com/download.php?id=4016
Now video production is a new endeavor to me. (Especially when it involves a soundtrack, I have to get the music to match somehow the scenes in a video.)
While doing the video Is It Live or PIANOTEQ? I became suddenly aware of the apparent advantage real-life audio engineers must have, undeniably, if often they get to see a lot of the musicians, equipment, and studio surroundings when the musicians record and when only they as the studio engineers themselves track their sessions. They get to see at first hand even the various expressions the performing musicians may make as artists are sometimes joyful er very gleeful during sessions. From which they, the engineers, will draw their inspirations. A lot they’ve remembered maybe as they sit down to a final mix. One to their advantage they likely happily visualize —with the mind’s eye.
My having a number of piano video clips was an asset to me to envision the piano instrument Feng may have played (that is) one likely similar to that depicted by the clips I got, and imagine the sound coming from such a vivid depiction!
To me it meant I had to base a lot on my vivid imagination to subsequently match: equalization, compression, and reverb to otherwise silent video.
Well, I just knew I was mainly after a vintage sound before I even began any video composing. So, I reached firstly to one of my plugin preamps. Additionally, my final equalizer and compressor (following some modern surgical like tools previously applied) are emulations of vintage hardware.
Like PIANOTEQ pianos, which are also modeled. What a likely combination of modeled stuff I use!
Last edited by Amen Ptah Ra (28-10-2020 21:40)
Pianoteq 8 Studio Bundle, Pearl malletSTATION EM1, Roland (DRUM SOUND MODULE TD-30, HandSonic 10, AX-1), Akai EWI USB, Yamaha DIGITAL PIANO P-95, M-Audio STUDIOPHILE BX5, Focusrite Saffire PRO 24 DSP.
