Best piano sample library? especially Steinway?

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Renaissance Man
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Post by Renaissance Man »

Dave, I'll definitely take your words to heart. This client had a brand new Steinway delivered to his home just this past year, and I'm sure has high expectations. One gamble we are faced with is the condition of the Steinway I'm able to obtain for the gig. There is only one outfit (out of Akron) that even has a Steinway available. Once delivered, set up and tuned, it could be a fine instrument or it could be a pale shadow of what he has in his living room. What I was seeing in the sampled/modeled pianos is consistency. However, if the difference with a real Steinway is dramatically better it may well be worth the gamble to get it.
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Post by Dave Connor »

Christopher,

I would examine all the pros and cons and present them to the client. If for example, you can't audition the piano itself that's a big con. If the renter says it sounds great but you have no way of knowing than let the client make the call and incur the risk. Also find out the capabilities of the studio and experiance recording pianos. Bottom line is you don't want any surprises.

Depending on the clients need (very important) you could also show him the bird in the hand that is samples. It seems like he wants to record a solo piano however and this is where samples fall down dramatically.

Good luck (and find out about that piano in Akron - my family used to live in Dayton ; )
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Post by wonder »

nothing better than the original.

but the new UPRIGHTS from Ivory they had at NAMM are gonna be cool.
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Post by PrimeMover »

Make sure you're not confusing the difference between a live performance of an acoustic piano, and a recorded one. Of course, live, no synth is ever going to come close to a real concert grand, mostly because of the amplification. But for studio recording, you'd be surprised at how "authentic" a softsynth can sound on a recording.

I've recorded both acoustic pianos and used a few various softsynths, and it's starting to get to the point where, for recording purposes, it starts to make little difference, especially if it's mixed in with other instruments.

I'm a pianist, and I'll tell you that there's nothing like the feel of playing a concert grand in a well-tuned hall. You feel the wash coming out of the reverberation chamber, "feel" the instrument in your whole body. But that's not the way people are going to hear it on a recording, or even sitting in the hall.

Oh, and I've always loathed the feel of the Kurtzweil K2600. It may have a fairly advanced modeling engine (for its time, for a hard synth), but even my dinky Alesis QS8.1 feels better than its controller. A lot of pianists I know swear by Kuwaii electric pianos as controllers.

Also, for recording in a studio, at this point I'd prefer using a softsynth over an acoustic. Getting an acoustic piano to sound like you're in a hall... in the studio, is a hopelessly impossible task. You're going to have to have one hell of a mic setup, with a number of baffles setup in strategic places. Don't get me wrong, pianos are SO MUCH FUN to record, but you're likely to get a much better hall sound if you can keep the studio out of it.
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Post by toodamnhip »

Shooshie wrote:People say that hearing a real piano is different than hearing even the best piano sample, but they are comparing apples and oranges.* The real comparison is between the piano samples and a RECORDING of a real piano. The Ivory samples were very well-recorded. It would take some sophisticated mics, preamps, and a really good room to surpass Ivory. Not to mention a top-notch piano perfectly tuned. Factor in the number of takes and punch-ins, and then you're looking at a tremendous difference in cost, not to mention the possibility that Ivory's recorded samples may still sound better than your recorded piano.

Also, if you get Ivory's Italian Grand, it's going to up the bar even more. The thing to do would be to do a pair of test recordings where the client does not know which is which, play them for the client(s), and then let them choose the sound they prefer.

Shooshie

*a more accurate analogy is comparing apples with pictures of apples. In the end, it will be pictures of apples vs. pictures of apples, and you need to see whose pictures look more realistic.
Interesting food for thought Shoosh...

I agree, you have to the piano samples and a RECORDING of a real piano. and for that, no one can doubt Ivory's quality.

The tough part is that it just sucks to play a controller triggering samples compared to the tactile of the real thing...

The resonance, you can feel a real piano.
perhaps some company will make a senser -round piano that makes us enjoy playing the damn samples as much as the real thing?

Because if the player aint feelin; it, then the performance suffers.

I always go from the real piano in my living room, to Ivory in my studio..and the transition always sucks...ALWAYS!

It might sound good when finished..but i rarely enjoyed playing it..gritted my teeth and somehow made it work despite matters...

The joy of playing a real piano is what needs to be re created...some of the yamaha psuedo-pianos make me happy..they are a joy to play...LIVE.
They might not sound as deep as ivory, but they are a joy to play..
Maybe I need to hook a speaker up under my chair to feel the damn thing?..lol
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Post by PrimeMover »

toodamnhip wrote:stuff
While I agree with you, there are a number of pyschological ways around this:

1) stop playing an accoustic piano so much
2) start playing on your controller A LOT MORE

When I moved into my current appartment, I didn't have the space nor the money for a real piano. So I begrudgingly lugged my QS8.1 in there and started playing on some softsynths. After about 4-5 months, I was more comfortable playing it than I was on most uprights. I know, shocking isn't it? It that this sounds like capital treason... another case of "technology dominating over nature", but its the truth. If you really care about your piano performance, and it's what you have to work with, it's what you've gotta do.

We're only comfortable with what we're used to. If you've been practicing a piece for weeks on an accoustic, then OF COURSE it's going to feel wrong on a controller. So you're going to

It's unromantic as hell, but to the audience, all they hear is the sound. Concert pianists have been known to give incredible performances on pianos they've never played, when they're in a terrible mood... why? Because they know how to fake sounding like the music has meaning. If they can do that, then you can make a softsynth sing and dance and feel as emotional as you need it to be. It might feel as if you're cheating on your lover, but after a while, you'll learn to do some wonderful things with it.

Don't mean to sound rude, but "how it feels to the performer" is irrelivant *IF* you can get a great recording out of it. That's all that really matters.
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Post by daniel.sneed »

PrimeMover wrote :
Don't mean to sound rude, but "how it feels to the performer" is irrelivant *IF* you can get a great recording out of it. That's all that really matters.
That's a great business assesment, but sorry, I'm still trying to be a musician !
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Post by Dave Connor »

PrimeMover wrote: "how it feels to the performer" is irrelivant *IF* you can get a great recording out of it. That's all that really matters.
This type of compromise is to be avoided at all cost and any pianist will tell you that. My initial response was to point out that if someone wants the sound and peformance of the flagship Steinway B (incredible instrument!) there's is no sample software/controller that could come close. Not for a solo performance with a modicum of expression. Mixing in sampled pianos with Pop or Rock or Film music is another story and I wouldn't hesitate to use samples for a second.

Someone point me to a demo of great sounding Jazz or Classical with samples and I'll be convinced but I've yet to hear even one beat of one bar that even reminded me of a quality recoding of the real thing.
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Post by Shooshie »

Ok, I'm going to try to explain what I've done for a living the past 16 years. I've been the director, arranger, and engineer for a live piano concert consisting of 5 pianos. I spent 8 to 12 hours a day with five Yamaha Disklavier Grand pianos for years on end. I came to feel and understand every nuance of their being. Because of the amazing accuracy of the Disklaviers, I was able to audition literally dozens of microphone positions, switching them around until I found the best pair. I took careful notes and drew graphs of the response curves for every microphone, and accumulated quite a lot of data, but in the end, the pair I chose required no data. Anyone's ears would have immediately grabbed those two, and yet they were completely non-intuitive. I've only seen one other mic setup that was close. The sound of pianos is simply a huge part of my life and livelihood.

It is not with casual indifference that I say that Ivory's Yamaha samples come very close to my recordings of those pianos. On top of that, I've heard countless piano recordings that don't come close to matching the Ivory samples, and by that, I do not mean that those recordings were better; they're just not as good. If you don't find the magic mic positions, your recordings don't stand a chance at being as good as Ivory. Then there is Akoustik Piano, which even has the hiss of the dampers releasing every time you hit CC#64. Both are very fine sampled pianos. They are not synths, by the way, and a Kurzweil 2600 (at least the 2002 model, since that's what I'm familiar with) is quite a good controller for this. I'm having to speak up about this, because I'm hearing things that simply are not consistent with my own experience.

You've got to ask yourself how much of the "real" feel and sound is psychological. You can bet your booties that I'd prefer to have one of those Disklavier Grands in my studio, and I'd be willing to give up Ivory to get one. But in reality, I'd probably go buy Ivory back, simply because it's easier and the results are more predictable. Miccing and recording a piano is one of the most difficult things to do. If you imagine the loudness curve of a piano, most of the meat of the tone is in the bottom 1/4 of that curve. But you have to set your mics and preamps for that loudest strike, a sound which lasts a fraction of a second. No other musically expressive pitched instrument deals with so drastic a range dilemma.

Let me run down a few of the major concerns:

••• Close mic? Or room mic? Each requires a totally different approach, different equipment, and different dilemmas.
••• Close mic: how do you achieve balance up and down the entire range of the piano? The close-micced strings will sound loudest where they are closest to the mic. As they receed in distance, the law of inverse square wreaks havoc with your best-laid plans. Your closest string may be 12 inches away. The farthest string that depends on the same mic may be 24 to 28 inches away. Sound power diminishes at the rate of 1/d^2. The ratio of those two extremes would be from .00694 to .00128, a ratio of 5.5 times the apparent difference in loudness. That's pretty extreme, and there are a lot of other factors involved such as reflections and the soundboard, which causes sound to come from a more generalized source. But it's definitely an audible concern when it comes to hammer noise and dampers.

So, do you put the mics at the butt of the piano to minimize those concerns? Only if you want a dull, unresponsive, and boomy sound. What about under the soundboard -- a popular choice? Nope, it lacks detail, introduces floor reflections (or deadness from carpet), and loses harmonics.

••• Ok, so we try room miccing. First, you'd better have a good room. I mean... like Carnegie good, or Dallas's Meyerson good. Then you've got to decide how to record that room. Two omnis? Cardioids? Main/Side? Decca Tree? And how far away do you get? How much piano vs. room?

Ok, I'll just stop there. But we're barely getting started. I think you see my point. The guys at Synthogy (Ivory) did what I've always wished I could do. They went into more detail on every string of the piano than most people do for a full CD. It's actually remarkable.

If you have a great piano, and a great system for recording it that has become 2nd nature to you, then by all means use it. If you're starting from scratch, you might give yourself a year to learn it before subjecting your clients to it. Meanwhile it makes a lot of sense to use Ivory or Akoustik Piano. Let me clear up one point: I'm not saying that either one is better. I'm saying that circumstances may favor one over the other. Until circumstances favor the real piano, use Ivory.

As for those who say that the real thing is 1000% better in all aspects than Ivory or Akoustik Piano, all I can say is that I question that hyperbole. I've played my Skryabin etudes Opus 42 for a number of pianists, and they asked me if it was Horowitz, and seemed surprised that it's not. I rarely tell them what it really is.

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Post by Shooshie »

Dave Connor wrote:
PrimeMover wrote: "how it feels to the performer" is irrelivant *IF* you can get a great recording out of it. That's all that really matters.
This type of compromise is to be avoided at all cost and any pianist will tell you that. My initial response was to point out that if someone wants the sound and peformance of the flagship Steinway B (incredible instrument!) there's is no sample software/controller that could come close. Not for a solo performance with a modicum of expression. Mixing in sampled pianos with Pop or Rock or Film music is another story and I wouldn't hesitate to use samples for a second.

Someone point me to a demo of great sounding Jazz or Classical with samples and I'll be convinced but I've yet to hear even one beat of one bar that even reminded me of a quality recoding of the real thing.
Dave, can you tell me more about the Model B? The people of Steinway consider the Model D their flagship, but they mention the Model B as a concert instrument apparently ranking similarly to the Model D in the book "Steinway" by Ronald Ratcliffe (only one brief mention of a B in passing in the entire book). I can't find any information about the Model B. I do know that of 3000 American Steinways made per year, only 200 are Model D's. What distinguishes a Model B?

Shooshie
PS: just for the general knowledge: In his foreward to the book Steinway Henry Z. Steinway opens with these words: "The piano is an American invention." He goes on to explain that Steinway was responsible for most of the patents that comprise the modern piano, and that those were created by the American company, Steinway and Sons. Their Hamburg operation was opened many years after the success of their American factory. The family was powerful in New York politics and city development. They ran a ferry across Long Island Sound for their employees, and they even opened the first Mercedes dealership in the US. In World War II, Hitler tried to shut down their Hamburg operation, thinking they were Jewish. They informed him that they were and always had been Christian. (a surprise to me, as well.) Turns out the name was Steinweg, and was changed to Steinway upon arriving in America in the mid-1800's. The Steinway company, then, is truly an American company from New York. I take far more pride in that than any offering of our military, sports, movie industry or even pop music. The Steinway company of New York was "instrumental" in the creation of much of the piano literature from the latter half of the 19th century to the present day.

--S.
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Post by PrimeMover »

Shoosh, that's pretty cool. Actually, I did the same for about 2 years towards the end of college (not professionally, obviously). I actually learned piano micing, to the best of my current ability, from using a Yamaha Disklavier. I used to record my own performances, and then spent days trying out various mic configurations. I used to love just spending an entire day or evening doing nothing but experimenting with mic placement, using baffles to shell off parts of the studio, and trying to use the back wall to generate my early reflections. I finally settled on a combination of close mics and room mics, and compansating for the delay time. I was still a long way from the sound I'd like to have gotten, but it was a great experience.

I think every institution teaching piano micing should have a Disklavier.
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Post by Dave Connor »

Shoosh the D is the flagship of the classical world and the B Jazz and pop etc. Yamaha C series piano's are their version of the B so-to-speak. Both Steinway models are incredible sounding instruments but back in the day you would find far more B's in studios than D's. Just like today you're going to find full grand's (7 feet ave.) and not concert (9) for the most part.

Being a piano player I can assure everyone there's just no comparison in what I can do on a real piano versus a sampled one. It's just two different worlds. I don't really equate the two. I don't argue the fact about the quality of sound or recordings of samples. I use them all the time but there are countless other factors that relegate the two into different sphere's. On one I can do everything on the other some things. One doesn't want limitations on their creative expression. As I said I would like to hear a demo on a sampled piano that is equal on something like a Debussey prelude or Scriabin sonata but I haven't heard anything like that or even close. If someone has a link I would love to hear it - honestly.
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Post by Frodo »

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Post by Proklaim Recording »

Well, I can't play piano, but I love to hear someone that can really do it well. It would be nice if anybody could put up some recordings of real pianos and some recordings of Ivory, or other good sampled pianos for us to hear some differences on. I would love to have a chance to hear both and see if I could tell the difference. I agree that the sound of the recorded piano, and the sound of the recorded sample would be close. I think I would have a hard time telling the difference, but then, I don't know. I have not really ever tried to tell the difference. Have not really had the chance to do so.

There is a piano on most recordings I have done. The Yamaha FP8 controller MIDI to an Alesis S4 with the piano card. That is the best I have for now. I know I want to move up to Ivory at some point. After all, $400 for Ivory and $10000 and upward for a good grand and then the mics and mic pres one would have to have to get the sound that Ivory can offer, is not even close I guess. But, I have not ever had the chance to really record a really good piano.
This client had a brand new Steinway delivered to his home just this past year, and I'm sure has high expectations.
Could you maybe go to the clients home and record his piano there, where he is used to the sound of it. Maybe that is what he is looking for, the sound he normally hears from it in a room he is used to. Maybe you can not do that, But it is something to think about if you can.
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Post by Dave Connor »

Ahh, nice link Mr. Frodo.

I should clarify that the D would obviously be considered the company's flagship i.e. top of the line. The B however being preferred by the non-classical world because of it's unique sound, obviously a result of it's design and size. A Hamburg B is considered the cream of the cream by many.
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