Smaller, stand-alone pianos. Is that something you want?

[Worra]

I've spent some time now testing different ways of making smaller, but still great sounding pianos.
We have done test recordings of several pianos, using both custom soft- and hardware, to get very accurate test data.

We now are very confident in that we can build great sounding pianos that have very cpu-friendly size.
The smaller pianos built around these new findings will be sold together with the Kontakt Player engine and feature stuff like real pedalling, sympathetic resonance and other goodies.

Now, we will record new pianos, but I found that it's possible to re-build our existing pianos in this way.

So, my questions to the forum are:

1. Is smaller pianos something that sounds interesting, (if they sound great of course...)
2. What would you like to see in these pianos when it comes to extras?
3. Would it be interesting if we re-build our existing pianos in this way, and provide an upgrade path for those of you who already own the pianos?

Any input are welcome.
Oh, the prize? Probably not over $100.....

[marce]

I've spent some time now testing different ways of making smaller, but still great sounding pianos.
We have done test recordings of several pianos, using both custom soft- and hardware, to get very accurate test data.

We now are very confident in that we can build great sounding pianos that have very cpu-friendly size.
The smaller pianos built around these new findings will be sold together with the Kontakt Player engine and feature stuff like real pedalling, sympathetic resonance and other goodies.

Now, we will record new pianos, but I found that it's possible to re-build our existing pianos in this way.

So, my questions to the forum are:

1. Is smaller pianos something that sounds interesting, (if they sound great of course...)
2. What would you like to see in these pianos when it comes to extras?
3. Would it be interesting if we re-build our existing pianos in this way, and provide an upgrade path for those of you who already own the pianos?

Any input are welcome.
Oh, the prize? Probably not over $100.....

+1

I would be interested!

[Pingu]

How about a slightly different idea. Since many users have now got used to using huge libraries, instead of using your new methods to make them smaller, why not use them to create a 'superpiano' that may well be about the size of the libraries we've been getting accustomed to.

In modern scores there are many new techniques asked for from pianists. Many have been sampled, but never in a library which also includes a 'straight' version of the same piano. So if I want to mock up something by Henry Cowell, which includes plucking the strings, zither effects, harmonics, and straight playing, I probably have to resort to four different libraries, and making it sound like a single performance is impossible. It's a bizarre situation. For every other intrument it's considered essential to include as many techniques as possible in a library, yet, for the piano, anything other than the most obvious articulation is still considered as an unessential novelty.

How about a library that included:-

• Straight piano, with sympathetic resonance, continuous pedalling, etc
• Several harmonics on every string, with the degree of the harmonic controlled by modwheel
• Zither effects at various speeds and dynamics - and the ability to hold down certain keys and have those notes sustain after the initial strum
• Scrapes along the length of each string at various speeds
• Effects created on the body of the piano
• Plucked strings, both with finger pads and plectrum
• Every string played with a variety of mallets
• A convolution so that other sampled instrument can be played 'into' the same piano with it's dampers off.

If you also wanted to create a John Cage preparation of the same piano that would be great, but the first priority should be having a single piano that can do all of the above in one performance, as can a real pianist.

...I'd also like to see the Seven Seas resurrected as a smaller library.

[user002]

I'd rather have a piano of any size that would just really NAIL it, which in my opinion hasn't been done yet. Although I haven't tested all piano libraries out there, I usually find a lot of problems in the release samples and ADSR envelopes of samples. Pianoteq from a playing technique standpoint "feels" the most pleasant but doesn't sound the most pleasant, to me, maybe because its not based on samples.

BTW there's nothing CPU-unfriendly in pianos, it's the RAM.

[Simodeus]

Ivory Grand
Ivory Upright
Ivory Italian
Ivory 2
EWQL Pianos
VSL Piano
Tonehammer's Emotional Piano
Garritan's Steinway
Pianoteq Pianos
Sampletekk's The Black Grand, Old Lady, Steinway D, 7CG, Forte E, Estonia, Bosendorfer 290, and on....
Art Vista's Malmsjo
Art Vista's Virtual Grand
NI's Alicia's Keys
NI's August Foerster
NI's Akoustik Piano
NI's Vienna Concert Grand
Acousticsamples A-Pian
Acousticsamples B-Pian
Acousticsamples Kawia EX Pro
Acoutsicsamples Old Black Grand
Bluthner Digital Model One
Imperfect Samples Braunschweig
Imperfect Samples Fazioli
Imperfect Samples Hohner
TruePianos
Musicrow Piano Trilogy
Acoustica Pianissimo
Steinberg's The Grand (1, 2, 3)

With all due respect, don't we already have enough pianos?

[runamuck]

Ivory Grand
Ivory Upright
Ivory Italian
Ivory 2
EWQL Pianos
VSL Piano
Tonehammer's Emotional Piano
Garritan's Steinway
Pianoteq Pianos
Sampletekk's The Black Grand, Old Lady, Steinway D, 7CG, Forte E, Estonia, Bosendorfer 290, and on....
Art Vista's Malmsjo
Art Vista's Virtual Grand
NI's Alicia's Keys
NI's August Foerster
NI's Akoustik Piano
NI's Vienna Concert Grand
Acousticsamples A-Pian
Acousticsamples B-Pian
Acousticsamples Kawia EX Pro
Acoutsicsamples Old Black Grand
Bluthner Digital Model One
Imperfect Samples Braunschweig
Imperfect Samples Fazioli
Imperfect Samples Hohner
TruePianos
Musicrow Piano Trilogy
Acoustica Pianissimo
Steinberg's The Grand (1, 2, 3)

With all due respect, don't we already have enough pianos?

It's not about quantity, it's about quality. Although piano samples have improved over the years, I still have yet to find a library that sounds as good as as a well recorded real piano. But it's getting closer and closer.

Without developers continuing to want to produce and release better and better libraries, there wouldn't be an evolution to this.

Jim McCarthy

[Worra]

BTW there's nothing CPU-unfriendly in pianos, it's the RAM.

Larger pianos - more diskstreaming - more strain on CPU

[Suntower]

Hey Per.

As you may recall, I was a beta tester for both BG and WG. I love 'em both.

That said, for the past two years, for my day to day composing, I use... Pianissimo. Why? For me, it has the best sweet spot between RAM usage, basic playability and FAST LOAD. The last is important.

Some libs, take -minutes- to load on my quad core machine. Unacceptable for sketching ideas.

What I want is something that sounds better than Pianissimo, but still loads FAST.

And by 'better' I'll be more specific.. Pianissimo doesn't sound bad at all for pop/rock/background stuff. And it is quite -playable-. I mean, it responds in a fairly real 'Steinway' manner. It has the balls and strong attack in the low end that is often missing from cheap pianos--without sounding like a harpsichord (as does PianoTeq).

But it could be more realistic in it's sound (especially at the top).

So I always replace it before rendering with something like BG.

Now... if you can get me 90% of the sound of BG but with 10% of the load time? I'll take two.

Best,

---JC

PS: @Pingu... I totally agree, mate. What I want is a keyswitch Prepared piano where I could flip a switch and go from 'Regular' to 'Rubber' to 'Paper' to 'Tack' to 'Strum' etc.... in one go. But that's another product.

[lallis]

...RAM usage, basic playability and FAST LOAD. The last is important.

Some libs, take -minutes- to load on my quad core machine. Unacceptable for sketching ideas.

Agreed.

Long load time is also disagreeable for sitting down a few minutes to practice, and it's yet worse for changing sounds between numbers on the bandstand.

My own favourite is the Seven Seas Grand. If you could offer something that sounds more like that than the 7CG Junior does, capable of loading up in -- let's say -- 20 seconds or less, and nicely playable on last year's computer,.you'd have a salable winner. Well...it would be salable to me at least...

Larry

[sullivang]

Would it make any sense to use an SSD only for the attack-portion cache, to a) speed up load time, and b) make the most of the still rather expensive SSD storage? This may still allow us to use the very large libraries residing on cheap rotating disks, but with a drastically improved load time. I guess with an SSD we may still need SOME pre-loading of attacks into RAM, though, and maybe the bulk of the pre-load time is consumed by file opening, rather than the actual reading of the sample data? Anyone done any testing?

Greg.