Topic by FuzzyBrain

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  • FuzzyBrain
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Topic: Help understanding mallet bounce

Hey everyone!

Can someone help me understand mallet bounce and how to use the settings in there? In the manual it says it's designed for chromatic percussion instruments, but I tried turning it on and fiddling with it on a piano and it gave an interesting dimension to the sound. I'm really not sure what it's doing though. I'm trying to create a realistic sounding piano and don't want to add this only to discover later on different speakers or something that I've introduced something very weird to the sound.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Reply by dklein

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  • dklein
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Re: Help understanding mallet bounce

Well, I can't say what the origin of this feature is, but it's incorporated into the Cimbalom Tzigane preset. 

I don't know any traditional instruments that work quite this way, but here's a YouTube video of a real cimbalom played in part with a repeated note technique:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-xeBcXfFww

Also, while not why the feature was put into Pianoteq, I vaguely recall that someone figured out how to modify the note attack on piano notes by setting some of the mallet features, but then setting the to its minimum, so the note only got struck once (or something like that).

Hope this has been helpful.  Play with it!

- David

Reply by BarbaraRB

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  • BarbaraRB
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Re: Help understanding mallet bounce

dklein wrote:

Well, I can't say what the origin of this feature is, but it's incorporated into the Cimbalom Tzigane preset. 

I don't know any traditional instruments that work quite this way, but here's a YouTube video of a real cimbalom played in part with a repeated note technique:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-xeBcXfFww

Also, while not why the feature was put into Pianoteq, I vaguely recall that someone figured out how to modify the note attack on piano notes by setting some of the mallet features, but then setting the to its minimum, so the note only got struck once (or something like that).

Hope this has been helpful.  Play with it!

That's astonishing. Thanks for sharing it!  (Does anyone else thing that the sticks he is using look like giant Q-Tips?)

Reply by miiindbullets

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  • miiindbullets
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Re: Help understanding mallet bounce

I don't know for sure, but it sounds really similar to Bitwig's Dribble.

Bitwig is a modular synth with a DAW built on top of it. You can do some interesting things like route MIDI data through a "dribble" module before you send it to a virtual instrument. I'd guess Pianoteq is applying something like this to the piano hammers. Pianoteq has more knobs to tweak on Mallet Bounce than Bitwig's Dribble, although BitWig lets you modulate anything, so the level of control might be similar. Anyway, it looks and sounds to me like similar principles are at play.

Here's an overview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWfD3sRBD9w

Last edited by miiindbullets (05-04-2022 19:13)
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