Topic by rael007

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Topic: Piano sound in deadmau5 Creep from while (1 < 2)

I'm having a hard time getting Pianoteq (5/6), with any of the presets I have (Steinway D/Grotrian/K2), to sound the way the piano does in the song Creep by deadmau5, as it sounds as published on the album while (1 < 2).  There are several variants of this song floating around online, but the sound on the album (from iTunes) is the one I'm trying to match.  The piano in the recording has a certain deep lushness that I can't seem manage with pianoteq.  I was under the impression that the piano used by deadmau5 for this was a Steinway D grand.  I have tried doing EQ matching with Fabfilter Pro-Q2, and other plugin tweaking, but despite the extensive work the results fell somewhat short.  Does anyone have any advice on how I might achieve this sound with pianoteq and audio plugins?  I have posted a short (fair use) excerpt of the sound to my website http://zopyra.com/CreepClip.wav in case anyone is interested in helping.

Last edited by rael007 (29-12-2017 22:20)

Reply by DonSmith

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Re: Piano sound in deadmau5 Creep from while (1 < 2)

It reminds me of this sound, but a little deeper or heavier:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pyhBJzuixM

or this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-0KRZXG8Yw

Sounds like playing with the 'Harmonic pedal' engaged.

Last edited by DonSmith (30-12-2017 22:20)

Reply by rael007

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Re: Piano sound in deadmau5 Creep from while (1 < 2)

Thanks for posting your examples, they are very nice.  I tried engaging the harmonic pedal, and though it helped, it still wasn't quite what I was looking for.  I'm wondering if the piano sound that deadmau5 got was recorded in the studio and had minimal post-processing, or if he heavily processed the sound to get those deep, soft, rich tones, especially in the lower register of the instrument.

EQ matching of the track got me very close, and I can work with it, but I was hoping for something more detailed on how to achieve this sound in general.  Is it solely EQ?  How about compression or saturation effects?  Other processing that might be used?

It seems EQ matching is a bit of a hassle to get the sound and I thought perhaps Pianoteq itself could be tweaked to deliver the sound I'm looking for.  I suppose I could try building a preset in Pianoteq itself that had the same settings as those derived from the EQ matching.

I was hoping there might be sound design experts lurking here in the forum who could help (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

Again, thanks for the lovely examples.

Reply by kamil.t

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Re: Piano sound in deadmau5 Creep from while (1 < 2)

This is one of the most important types of piano sound in modern music in my opinion and I wish Pianoteq would take notice and just created presets for us. I am pretty sure it would require some new reverbs and maybe a bit more than that. I like that Pianoteq is chasing perfection with each version but at some point it has to work on a good old playability and fun aspect and give us such "gimmicky" patches like this one

Reply by rael007

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Re: Piano sound in deadmau5 Creep from while (1 < 2)

I was hoping to spur some discussion involving someone from Pianoteq as well.  Pianoteq may be positioned as a "classic" instrument, but there are many other creative uses that it could lend itself to, and in this case, it's really not such an exotic of a sound I'm after, it's just one that I can't figure out how to get "out of the box", nor with a reasonable amount of work on my part.  In this case, perhaps it's not something Pianoteq is really built for, perhaps that deep, sonorous, mellow, rich sound of a real piano is beyond their technology .... but that's what Pianoteq is billed as --- something that truly matches the sound of a "real" piano.  I'd like to see someone from Pianoteq jump in and help figure out what would be required to really nail this sort of sound, although perhaps that would require examining flaws in Pianoteq itself.