Re: [LAU] Yamaha Disklavier Pro grand piano

Roberto Gordo Saez wrote:

> I've noticed that the disklavier is recorded very dry (probably on
> purpose), so adding a reverb is almost essential; otherwise it sounds
> like if the head is put inside the piano :-) William Coakley piano
> samples contain some ambiance, and I guess they are recorded in real
> stereo (unfortunatelly this can't be done in the disklavier soundfont,
> since source samples are in mono).

Yes, I believe that the Coakley samples were recorded in stereo. One of
the things that impresses me is that although William Coakley is an
engineer, he is also a musician (he plays piano himself). This made him
approach the project in a different way, focusing in it as much through
a musician's eyes (and ears) as through those of a sound engineer.

This brief article of his about his observations and approach is very
interesting:

Why Bigger Isn't Better -- by William Coakley

http://williamcoakley.com/articles.php?article=bigger.php

An analogy I might make myself is that it is not necessary to photograph
a scene simultaneously from 5 different angles or perspectives in order
to get a good photo of that scene.

I personally believe that one could create a smoother, more expressively
responsive piano soundfont with fewer layers, with perhaps only 2, or 3
layers at most. Coakley's piano samples, to the best of my memory, have
only 2 layers, one strongest at minimum velocities and the other
strongest at maximum velocities, with several variations in the
gradation between them (several sound "patches" or settings of the same
samples).

One reason I believe that fewer velocity-layer samples would be needed
is that in a piano, perhaps in contrast with a few other musical
instruments, the basic character of the sound--to the ears of a person
or musician, not necessarily to an engineer with a waveform
analyzer--doesn't change character that much. Yes, there is a difference
in sound when a piano is played softly and when the keys are depressed
with great force, but the intermediate volume levels and characteristic
sound are just a relatively smoothly graded variation from one to the other.

In the Disklavier soundfont, it seems (I'm not sure) like the forte
samples predominate. In order to accommodate all 5 layers, it seems that
samples for ffff, fff, ff and f are spread out too much over the
velocity spectrum, infringing on the space that should normally be
reserved for softer layers. This would seem like a natural thing to do,
because the alternative would be to allot a very small area of velocity
values to each of ffff, fff and ff (or fff, ff and f--each of the
strongest-sounding samples), which almost makes one or more of those
samples seem superfluous (which perhaps they are). :-) If a person
considered the dynamic range of a piano as going from soft to loud as
follows--ppp, pp, p, mp, mf, f, ff, fff, ffff--then I would think that
samples of "p" and "ff" or "fff" would be sufficient to represent the
entire dynamic range, in just 2 layers. This is of course just my opinion.

Also in the Disklavier samples, were the pp and p (soft) samples
normalized to raise their volume? I ask this because the volume or
dynamic range of the soundfont seems compressed. It almost sounds as
though--despite triggering the sounds with various velocities--as though
the soft samples have been amplified or normalized and the loud samples
have been compressed. In other words, it seems difficult to achieve the
full dynamic range of a piano when playing the soundfont with a full
velocity range on a MIDI keyboard (even when setting the MIDI keyboard
to different velocity-response curves).

These are just questions and notes intended as "input and feedback"
only. (Hmm-- "notes," "input," "feedback," all musicians' terms :-)

Best wishes,
Steve

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Received on Mon Sep 15 20:15:02 2008