Topic: This bass thing...

Don't I have something better to do..?  Of course, but...sometimes I like to hear myself type...
I have a theory about this bass thing.  A real acoustic piano is a very complex wood and metal structure that interacts with the floor, nearby walls, acoustics, the antique clock and giant coffee mug on the lid, etc...  The lowest notes create the most resonance, producing a lot of overtones, not just in the other strings but also in the piano structure.  I believe some of this comes back at you as unison with a tad of delay as the sound is banged off the soundboard and structures.  Digital reverb helps.  But to model the complex resonance of the piano structure and it's surrounds is really impossible (unless we get a SETI thing happening !).  Pianoteq does a darn good job.  I find that doubling Pianoteq with my Kurzweil piano module is actually a bit more inspiring to play -and way more than the Kurz alone !  I think it's because of the "thickness".  It's not a chorusing effect, though that may be in there.  I've heard mention about these plugins like Pianoverb and Sympathizer and I haven't tried them yet.  But I do think that this (besides the built in reverb) is a case for a post process within Pianoteq to apply mostly to the lower keys -some type of additional resonance, quick multi-tap delay, or other possibly random effect.  Other than that, there's nothing sacriligious about using other instruments with Pianoteq - I don't think we are insulting its software mother's by such experimentation..:)

"Downing a fifth results in diminished capacity."

Re: This bass thing...

I think you're right on.  And it is very complicated - this is not quite a real piano, so we're lucky it sounds this close.  But obviously I and many others, would very much love a deeper bottom end.

One idea I thought of (that you also mentioned) is putting two pianos (one being Pianoteq) on the same channel, therefore layering the sound and possibly getting the best of both.  If I had the money, I'd get the Synthogy Ivory, and try that combo. But right now it's hard to justify another $300 or more.

My purpose in my post was to 1) encourage Pianoteq to fix the 'problem', if you can call it that (and I'm sure they're working on this), and 2) encourage other forum members to design a piano with a better bottom end, and still retain the wonderful overall sound of this thing.   Is there anyone out there that can do this???????

If so, be my guest - and PLEASE post it!

Music is the fuel of my soul engine

Re: This bass thing...

dreamsmith wrote:

...encourage other forum members to design a piano with a better bottom end, and still retain the wonderful overall sound of this thing.   Is there anyone out there that can do this???????

Along those lines, I had already been looking into the following idea...
I actually spent some time searching the webniverse for a free, cross-platform, lightweight little vst (or equiv) sampler.  Those enterested (in their massive free time) could work on sample sets that enhance Pianoteq in various ways that may suit some projects and ears -and raise a few nostrils to boot (all good).  I'd want the sample sets to be small and, for the most part, subtle -but it would all be subjective and fun.  For instance, a sample set could be used to only enhance the bass but could fade out an octave before middle C.  Or rattles and spastic key noise could be added for an aging pianobeast.  Here's one little sampler I found:
http://homepage.mac.com/bismark/bs-1/index.html
It would be great if Pianoteq could host a VST (or equiv) of its own to enable adding the mini-sampler or effects within the standalone version.  I know, purists may say this defeats the whole idea of modeling, but really we all just want "that sound" and I'm sure the Pianoteqnicians will continue the search for the grail.  Oh darn, they've already got one arm in the white jacket, so I can't type anymor....

"Downing a fifth results in diminished capacity."

Re: This bass thing...

Hi Cellomangler,

Have you tried just the Global resonance slider for the bass that you're wanting? To me, the problem is more that this control seems to affect the treble a little too much, as though it might need a curve, so that, as you say, the heavier bass strings had more of an effect than the middle strings and the upper register.

Try this control on the M1-Rock preset for more rumble.

Re: This bass thing...

Hello,

I discovered an interesting scientific article about stretched tuning here: http://www.mmk.ei.tum.de/persons/ter/to...retch.html

The author points out that bass strings typically have upper harmonics that are higher than integer multiples. This comes, because the bass strings are thick and stiff.
This, he says, is one of the reasons for stretched tuning.

Would be interesting to know, if, or how, ptq emulates this behaviour.

Peter

Re: This bass thing...

Jake Johnson wrote:

...the problem is more that this control seems to affect the treble a little too much, as though it might need a curve, so that, as you say, the heavier bass strings had more of an effect than the middle strings and the upper register.

Exactly... that's why the Pianoteqnicians are going to implement a keyboard scaling range/envelope for many of the parameters in a future version...
I'd still love the VST hosting idea or even a built in mini sampler, but I know that won't be included, and I understand why - It would hurt the marketing argument that Pianoteq does what it does without sampling -which it does do, don't it..!  But experimenters will be experimenters and in the immortal words of Freddie Mercury:  "I want it all.. I want it all.. and I want it now !"

"Downing a fifth results in diminished capacity."

Re: This bass thing...

peter wrote:

The author points out that bass strings typically have upper harmonics that are higher than integer multiples. This comes, because the bass strings are thick and stiff.
This, he says, is one of the reasons for stretched tuning.

Would be interesting to know, if, or how, ptq emulates this behaviour.
Peter

You are right, the stretching of overtones, called inharmonicity, is due to the fact that strings have a certain thickness and thus react like a beam under tension (instead of like an "ideal" string). This is modeled in Pianoteq, and the tuning itself takes the inharmonicity into account by matching as much as possible the overtones in octaves, fifths, etc. A consequence is that the tuning changes very slightly if you change the piano size, as it happens with real pianos tuned by human tuners.

Re: This bass thing...

One of the first things I did when I first logged into this forum (yes, today), was look for post regarding the bass register. This is also what I think is the weakest aspect of Pianoteq, maybe because I heard the plugin in my local music store side by side with Ivory, which had the necessary rumble. But aside from that - Pianoteq really shines in comparison with the piano I have been using until now, The Grand (v1).

To remedy the lack of punch in the bass register, I will try some multiband compression, adjusted to affect only the low notes. I'll let you know if it is successful

Re: This bass thing...

Surprising to read this return to this subject--I've been thinking about it too, and thinking about sympathetic resonance, and listening to real and sampled pianos and PianoTeq with a focus on the cabinet and soundboard response\rumble and the sound of sympathetically vibrating strings. I'm wondering if the location of the sound and the way it spreads might be further explored. I've come up with more questions than answers, and a longish post:

1. About the soundboard and cabinet response: Part of the difficulty is of course that the original model was for a classical, distant perspective, from which the vibrations from the soundboard would seem more grouped together and coming from a single location. The same is true of the cabinet vibrations. In any case, my impression--what I seem to hear and what I assume from common sense--is that although the entire soundboard and cabinet shake, rattle, and roll, the evolving sound of the rumble is at first localized near the string and then spreads out. In other words, taking just the soundboard as a resonator (forgetting the filtering and reflective properties): the vibrations from the string first vibrate the nearest area of the soundboard, but the vibrations are quickly transferred throughout all of the cells of wood until they reach the surrounding bracing, and then the standing waves are established. In Pianoteq, the sound from the soundboard seems a little more permanently localized near the string--the partials are correct and at the right amplitude, but the sound doesn't spread across the entire soundboard. Insofar as there is a problem, it's just with the narrowly defined location of the sound? In other words, could the desired rumble be achieved by fairly simple means, something along the lines of what was done several versions ago in changing the apparent location of the "strings"--by having the sound spread out more in all directions, very fast, and then stay spread as it dies? (I'm not sure if the amplitude of each part of the soundboard changes much as the vibrations bounce off the bracing and return to form the standing waves, and I'm not sure how much we can perceive the isolated locations of each standing wave, but a listener sitting close to the piano might need to hear, without consciously hearing, that the partials are slightly spread across a narrow area of the soundboard.)

2. Similarly, the sound of the Global resonance (the cabinet and harp) is also more stable in the model than it is on a real piano: it seems to come from, and stay at, a given location. I don't want it to pan, exactly, but instead to both stay where it is and pan. Is there a name for that--a widening stereo and vertical spread that responds to velocity, perhaps? This approach might be more efficient, in terms of coding, than a convolution reverb approach. (However, I would still like to have the harp resonance decoupled from the body resonance, with impedance and filter controls for each. The current coupling and lack of controls greatly limit the user's ability to shape the sound.)

3. About the sympathetic resonance: Is it true in real pianos that the closer an undamped, unstruck string is to the struck string, the more it will vibrate in sympathetic response to the vibrating string? Seems as though it would--an undamped D next to middle C would receive much more force from the vibrations of a struck middle C than the F below it. I understand that the amplitude depends largely on the extent to which the unstruck note contains partials of the struck note. However, the simple force of the hammer on the string, which causes the transient noise, does seem to set off vibrations on neighboring notes on real pianos--even on damped strings, for pianos that have a less than perfect damper. (The ones I often love.) I'm not sure I hear the effect of this relative closeness in the model though--I miss it particularly in the middle C area. (In other words, does hitting middle C cause the strings for the D beside it to sound as D? Seems to, a very little, at the transient stage of the sound envelope and a little after that. Maybe that sound is just part of the transient sound, but it's not just noise.)

4. Similarly, is this relationship (of proximity to amount of sympathetic vibration) modeled in the Full sustain resonance parameter--the parameter on the Options menu?

Am I in already explored territory, here?

Last edited by Jake Johnson (01-10-2008 02:54)

Re: This bass thing...

To get more bass, it is probably necessary to do the simple and important stuff first and look into the more or less esoteric details later.

E.G. my sampled piano (I use Galaxy and in short will use Ivory italian grand)  has an adjustment for the bass volume. That is, volume for notes below middle C can be adjusted separately.
PTQ should have something similar, but more powerful.

Low notes shoud have a spectrum profile of their own.
It can be tried in PTQ: if you rise the volume for the first and second harmonic, then you get stronger bass, but this affects the treble also and this is unwanted.
(I dont know yet, if it is possible in PTQ to rise the volume for the 0th harmonic (basic tone))

So a separate overtone profile would be needed for the bass, and probably also for the middle and very high notes. The software should interpolate from these 3 profiles and internally calculate a profile for each string, so that the sound color is not too different between neighboured notes.

It is clear, that a bass string produces less overtone energy because it is thick and stiff and has internal friction and thefore the overtones are relatively more dampened than the overtones of thinner strings.
Therefore the basic tone and the first overtones (1,2,3) must have relatively more volume, when the string is thicker.

In short: I want separate volume,velocity,overtone profile, equalizer adjustments for the bass,middle and treble notes ;-)

[After posting I have edited this for clarification,my english is not so good, so dont wonder, if you have read something different some time before]

brgds,

Peter

Last edited by peter (02-10-2008 12:33)

Re: This bass thing...

This product was brought up in another topic, but check out the extra metallic ringing from the strings and the body of the piano that you hear in this sampled piano excerpt:
http://www.proaudiovault.com/audio-file...ison-1.mp3
This is what Pianoteq can't give us yet, IMHO.  And I think these resonances enhance the bass register as well.  Pianoteq (obviously my favorite) is wonderfully pure, but a tad unrealistically so.  I don't know if these subsidiary sounds can be modeled or if they might be better represented with standard subtractive/additive/fm synth technology that could be added as a subsection of the Pianoteq program.  A sample subset would do it, but we all know sampling lacks the dynamics and organic feel of a modeled or synthesized instrument.

"Downing a fifth results in diminished capacity."

Re: This bass thing...

I should add that the M1-Rock preset has a lot of rumble. I've created more than one Cantabile lite split that has the M1-Rock preset in the bass and another preset in the treble. Works well.

(The many presets and piano models really give us a lot of room for designing instruments. I tend to forget, however, and try to force one piano model to do things it wasn't intended to do. I need to explore all of the models more fully.)

Re: This bass thing...

I made some new, but probably self-evident, discoveries about creating a Cantabile split that creates a bigger bass without creating strangeness in the midrange and upper octaves. I'm sure that other people have tried similar things, but I like the results so much that I thought I should share them:

1. In the bass split, try keeping the Direct sound slider around halfway between the center and the far left. Since the large strings act almost as beams, they tend to transmit more energy to the soundboard than resonate themselves with low velocity strikes. (For the midrange, I tend to move this slider to the far left.)

2. Thus, move the Soundboard resonance a little more to the right than you might usually have it. (I still keep it well left of center.)

3. Increase the Global resonance. This will make the bass sound appear to spread more across the soundboard and cabinet. Instead of staying localized near the string, the sound will appear to resonate more towards the middle of the keyboard, while still sounding as though its original source is the string.

4. Slightly reducing the fundamental on the partial sliders may give you a better sound. Doubtless, this is already calculated in the model: many bass notes have partials that are louder than their fundamental. However, raising the Global resonance may create too boomy a sound unless the fundamental is lowered slightly. (Try a decibel at a time.) Too much reduction, of course, creates an overly crisp bass note. On the other hand, for a more distant and smaller piano sound, lowering the fundamental further may be fine. Raising the 3rd partial (the fifth, roughly, of the fundamental) may also create a resonance that sounds good swirling around in the cabinet, given these other settings. Again, a little can go a long way, particularly if the fundamental is reduced.

5. Obviously, play around with all of the other settings, too, including the Size (reduce), the Stereo width (reduce), the Sympathetic resonance (reduce or increase for very different bass sounds), and the Soundboard filter and Q.

I'd welcome other suggestions about methods people are using to develop bass splits.

Last edited by Jake Johnson (18-10-2008 03:03)