Topic: Glenn Gould's piano

I love Bach's music and in particular, Glenn Gould's rendition of it on the modern piano.

He seemed always to look for a harpsichord-like sound but still allowing the whole range of dynamics and the resulting contrapuntal clarity that he was famous for.

That's why he tortured to death his trusty CD318 Steinway into giving him what he wanted.

After the death of the instrument, he recorded his famous 1981 version of the Goldberg Variations on a Yamaha which, it seems, gave him what he wanted.

Now, I like that version very much and although I also have the 1955 one, I prefer the most recent, one of the reason being of course the much greater recording clarity.

But then, I recently found by accident that the 1955 interpretation has been recreated in 2007 on a Yamaha Disklavier system.

Here is the reference : http://www.zenph.com/sept25.html

Listening to the mp3 example files, I can't help to think that although it sounds like Gould's playing (without humming), he seems to be playing on Murray Perahia's piano!

So, I unleashed the power of pianoteq to try to emulate the sound of the piano used in the 1981 recording by playing the aria and the first variations or two.

The result is the GG.fxp which I just uploaded.

Now this fxp is pretty unusable on the upper two octaves, but then Bach doesn't use them.
I also stretched the dynamics to try to accomodate the Gouldian range without any pedal.
It was monitored with Grado SR80 headphones.

Zenph Studios didn't release the midi files of their effort, but while looking for it, I stumbled on a piano competition site where all contestants are recorded on Disklaviers.

Here is that site : http://www.piano-e-competition.com/ecom...efault.asp

The fun part is they archived all the past competitions in midi format.

Although the real Yamaha format is an extension of the standard, these files are readable and interesting to listen to using your favorite preset, since for example a lot of subtle pedalling is dutifully recorded and well recreated by pianoteq.

This brings to mind the close relationship that the instrument used and the piece played can have, a bit in my mind like the unique effect a particular human voice has when singing.

Gould would have loved pianoteq!

Re: Glenn Gould's piano

I just noticed that I inadvertently switched to the stereo speaker outputs while modifying other parameters even though I monitored with headphones.

It should be left as is because it sounds completely different with headphone output.

Sorry...

Re: Glenn Gould's piano

Gilles,

Thanks for posting this information and these links. Could I ask a favor--could you post an mp3 of one of\part of one of  the variations using your fxp so we could be sure we are hearing what you are hearing? Makes it much easier for everyone to listen fast, without downloading and then loading both the preset and the midi files...

(At one time, there was a loose agreement here that each posted preset would be accompanied by an mp3 using the preset, so everyone could hear the preset at work, and know what the poster was trying to accomplish--without the mp3, varying keyboards and velocity settings on each might create a sound that differed from what the poster intended. But I've fallen away from this, too, since I didn't post an mp3 of the last preset I uploaded. Come to think of it, I think that I was the one who suggested this loose agreement, and I've gotten looser...)

Thanks if you can find the time.

Re: Glenn Gould's piano

Hello Jake,

I was unaware of that unwritten law since I'm new here.

Reading the posts and listening to many posted mp3 examples makes me realize that a lot of members here are professional musicians, which I am not, being a mere amateur with limited technical skills in playing the piano.

What I did with the Gould CD is to listen to the sound of the instrument and try to emulate it by reading maybe two or three measures at a time from the score and trying to imitate his playing a bit while tweaking pianoteq parameters.

I thought I came closer as compared to the Disklavier performance that I wrote about, so I posted the fxp file just to add my "grain de sel" like we say in french.

I don't think posting a couple of bars of my playing with the fxp file would help very much as compared to listening to this very well known record I am refering to.

I'm actually a computer scientist and not a professional musician which may explain this more "experimental" approach...

In fact this fxp is not really, as you seem to infer, a file that could be of use to a professional musician, it is merely an experiment in mimicking a particular instrument as part of a playing style.

I hope this is ok with you...

Re: Glenn Gould's piano

An unwritten law? No, no. At one time, I was trying to get everyone to post mp3's with their fxp's, though, so we could listen to them faster and hear the intended timbre.

In any event, many of the mp3's are done, I think, using midi files instead of live playing. (It once took me over an hour and six or seven "takes" to get a short passage down, so I understand why...)

But thanks for the fxp. Looking forward to trying it out.

Re: Glenn Gould's piano

Since there seems to be some interest manifested in downloads of the GG.fxp I posted some time ago, I finally gathered the courage to post an example using it, in the hope of having some feedback in case some members played with it and maybe improved on it.

I just uploaded a midi and mp3 file of a portion of preludio no 24 from book 1 of the well-tempered clavier that I have been praticing for a while.

Since I am an amateur, I recorded live at 90bpm and played it back at 120bpm to get more of the feel I wanted to demonstrate. There was no further editing.

The idea of this fxp is of course to facilitate playing polyphonic music without using the pedal so as to try to separate the voices just by using different dynamics.