how to make digital piano sound real?...

I have William Coakley's Perfect Piano (3 versions), Holy Grail, and just about everything out on the market. A few months ago I got the Bosendorfer 290. Sad to say as good as they get they are still digital. Anyone feel that they have mastered the art of making them sound real through some sort of processing? I have spent hours with compression, eq's, maximizing, reverbs, etc. but it's still harsh-I mean it is digital-wake up and smell the roses Michael. Anyway, I'm mixing 6 songs in the next couple of weeks and would appreciate your input. I started to make the instrumentals only classic guitar but the piano was called for as well and that's what I do. I have to bring my guitarist from Tokyo every session and that's about 2 hours and $50 just for travel.
Plus, I would like to have a way to have my stuff auditioned by some of the forum members. I have an auditioning team that critiques my work but would appreciate some of your input as well. I have 2 FTP sites I am associated with but they are inclusive to certain clients. My website is under major construction, and I belong to send 2 store but maybe everytime someone downloads it I have to pay (I have to research it.) Is there some place I could put my music to have it streamed? (for like 3 days at a time and then remove it.) It would be better (this might sound incredibly naive) if they weren't downloaded and used for anything because they are for clients. Any takers. If this is the first post you've read from me, I will preface it to tell you that I live in Japan and there are a lot of things I don't know about stateside so bear with me.

Keep the groove.

Thanks

Hi michael,

What type of controller are you using? Does it have weighted keys with hammer action?

I use a Korg SP500 (dedicated digital piano), and until I bought it, I noticed that I never played convincing piano with an unweighted controller. Even if I were to record piano with a plug-in, if I wanted it to be realistic I would use the SP500 as the controller.

If you don't have access to a hammer-action controller, at least experiment with changing the velocity curves on the plugs that you have (if that option is available). Sometimes the synthy-ness comes from the ease of hitting loud notes on a controller.

Good Luck,

Eric

yep, got the best controller I could find Yamaha P-120. Great action-just trying to make the sound comparable to Danny Wright and others. Well, thanks, but it is digital. The velocity curves and everything are right and enjoyable to play-I'm talking about the actual tone-you know it lacks the warmth of a real piano.

I think part of the problem of traditional digital pianos is that sampling the entire range, length, and breadth of a piano's sound is simply not possible with the limitations of RAM. All the processing in the world is not going to recreate subtle nuances that were lost in the original sampling process.

At this point, I think something like Gigastudio is probably your best bet for getting an ultra-realistic sound, due to the fact that it can utilize an enormous sample set.

Have you seen this page? It does a head-to-head comparison of a number of digital pianos and sample sets. Fun to listen to.

http://purgatorycreek.com/pianocompare.html

The Kurzweil k2600 piano board sounds pretty good to me. It is only based on 12mb of samples, but is has good dynamics. Even though some piano sample sets might be gigantic, a lot of realism is lost due to poor synth programming.



I also bought I think a symphonic library silver edition on there and the piano sounds pretty real (over 100 megs). The only problem I have with a lot of soft synths is getting them to have the punch of my hardware synths.

If you don't have a real piano I wonder how it would sound to run the digital piano sound through some good speakers and record that ? Might give the sound some "air".

I posted this opinion earlier on a less-relevant thread... maybe it could be of more help here. I know that this topic is a stong matter of personal taste and experience, but who knows? Someone may use it and like it.

For piano, I don't use a sampler at all. AFAIK, no sampler exists that properly models the open harp and cross-resonance that causes the strings in a real piano to interact. All a typical sampler can do (plug in your favorite sampler here...) is to reproduce a recording of each note. But even if you sample every note and take 127 phase-accurate cross-faded velocity switches (I'm exaggerating here to make my point), the voicing system of a typical sampler does not implement the cross-modulation between notes that are ringing due to the open damper. Remember, in the real instrument, all of the strings are attached under high tension to a common harp, and resonate through the soundboard with each other.

Implementing this cross-modulation effect (sometimes called sympathetic resonance) goes a long way to adding life to an emulation of an acoustic instrument. I've experimented with this a lot on plucked-string physical models and the difference it makes, to me at least, is pretty astounding. The reason is that the cross-modulation component imparts a different character to each chord. That added dynamic character turns out to be pleasing to the ear; in fact, it brings the instrument to "life". An earlier post on this thread mentioned the PSP VintageWarmer. As strange as it sounds, added distortion is in fact a type of cross-modulation, although it is the wrong type. The point there is, even though it adds "dirt", it also adds "life".

I'd be willing to put an acoustic model with sympathetic resonance, even with a mediocre set of samples, against a best-in-class sample set without the extra modeling. Hit one note, and of course the best digital recording will win. But then actually play the instrument, especially "bare" without 10 layers of trance-synths behind it, and I'd bet on the resonator-modeled instrument every time. (I say play to speak directly to those out there who have gone through 10 years or more of trained instruction. I apologize if this makes my shirt look stuffed... but those of you out there know who you are.)

Personally, I use an Oberheim Mini Grand piano module, which does implement the harp model very nicely. The have also gone to the trouble of adding hammer sounds, and blended them in at just the right amount to sound natural when playing (ahem! ). Anyway, for me it has everything... usable multisamples, full 3-pedal support, and an acoustic model of the harp that actually resonates, develops and sings. Yes, the samples are not the greatest. But to that I ask, what is the point: to play one note, or to play piano ()? The only other instrument that I know of which does this is the Generalmusic RealPiano series, but they cost a lot more and don't really do that much more (but that's just MHO).

Go up to your favorite digital piano emulation, and try this test: With the sustain pedal off, silent-strike C2 (Key On, Velocity=0) and then hard-staccato C3. (Of course, you can repeat the experiment with G3, C4, etc. for every harmonic of C2.) After the decay of the staccato note is complete, what do you hear? If it's silence, then that's what I've heard with every sampler that I've tried. If you have a sampler that does differently, then clue me in, because I'd love to be informed! With the Mini-Grand, you hear the sustaining sympathetic resonance from C2 that you would hear with a real acoustic piano. The resonance rings until it dies out naturally, or you lift C2.

Of course, all of these arguments can be extended to any acoustic instrument emulation, particularly any instrument having multiple strings strongly coupled to a common resonator. Acoustic guitar comes to mind as a strong second in this category.

Michael Japan,
I have tried most of the pianos and effects listed here and I too have the same complaint ( I had an earlier post with similar gripes re: digital pianos). While I have had some success in the studio , burying the piano in the mix and using some "warming " effects , my ear still hears the digitalness in the mid-register. My solution: record with a real grand . The time it takes to get a digital to sound like a real piano with harmonics you can spend on multiple takes of a real grand piano. IMHO .~} rombros

I think one way to look at this problem is to ask yourself, "Why aren't there any digital guitars?" or if there are, "Why aren't digital guitars as popular as digital pianos?"

What a cool thing it would be to have synthetic strings that never needed to be tuned on a fretboard that never bent?! You could even trigger trumpet sounds!!! Woohoo!!

Of course, you'd realize the sampled guitar sounds sounded nothing like your fender plugged into your favorite amp, or your acoustic with a fairly decent condensor stuck in front of you. Guitars are light and tuning and replacing strings is fairly simple. Show this "digital guitar" to a regular guitarist and he'd probably laugh at you then give you the smackdown for being such a weenie in his presence.

IMHO, the issue at hand is one of absolute laziness. No one wants to drag an acoustic baby grand or upright from apartment to apartment or house to house, deal with tuning it, and deal with whatever repairs may arise. If pianos were as user friendly as guitars, I sincerely believe digital pianos and syths would be nowhere near as popular as they are now. And consequently, guitars probably would not be as popular as they are.

Now, of course I see the advantages of using a digital piano in playing gigs and such, but come on!! If you are serious about recording music that you and possibly your kids and their kids will want to listen to and be proud of, GET A REAL PIANO!!! You can get uprights from free to $500 to however much you're willing to spend! Get two decent condensors for recording the thing in stereo (they can also double as mics for your acoustic guitar (you know you have one!!)).

I know this is a matter of opinion and all, but please. We're all going to sit here and fight about whether we can hear the difference between 16bit vs. 24bit or 44.1 vs 48 vs 88.2 vs 96, but then you're going to go put a stinky digital piano on that track?!!!

Oh yeah, and the same thing goes for drums...
(ducking)

Thanks, Kevin, for your "sympathetically resonating" points (sorry, I couldn't resist).

Assuming that any or all of these are true:

1) space is an issue (Japan, apartment, etc.)
2) studio time is $$ (or yen) and/or inconvenient
3) you would like to keep your piano parts under MIDI control

then you can also consider exploring the possibilities of harp-modeled pianos. Generalmusic you can get in Europe from here or here, though they seem to deliver worldwide (I've purchased successfully from them over here the US). Oberheim seems a little harder to find, but at least you can read up on them here.

make me a piano I like and I'll send you a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape.

Thanks

do you like red wine? That's one of my favourites though I don't drink it that often-usually Woodbridge (Mondavi), Bardolino, Chianti, some Chile wines. Anyway, If you got the juice to make something up to snuff, you may find great satisfaction and substantial income. I use to buy stuff from Garth at Rubber Chicken when he was first starting, plus he gave huge discounts because I do a lot of pro-bono-setting up studios in 3rd world countries, etc. Then Translator took off. He had the dream and made it work. I admire those of you who have that gift. Yes, I'll send you some wine-anytime.

Thanks,

Michael

now a couple of you have mentioned Vintage warmer. Do I need to pay the $150 for it or do the Waves packages have something similar? I have the Waves plug-ins.

Thanks

P.S. piano and playing sounded good. I actually don't use the tone of the P-120just as a controller. I use the Bosendorfer 290/16 layer/24 bit.

efffect

the proof is in the taste. After years of doing anything (even drinking) you get pretty adept at it.

GOd bless