The Real Steinway D & The Real Bosendorfer 290
REAL PIANO BEHAVIOUR by Xavier Bidault
(updated 22nd january 2005)
I wanted to recreate a real string behaviour with pedal down. When you play one
note on a piano, you play only a (one, a couple, or three) string. And when you
use sustain pedal while playing again this note, the previous one “disappears”
to let the new one sounding. This is not really a problem when the second note
is louder than the first one, but it is when the second is softer! On each
actual patch, the first loud note keeps on sounding and expressivity is very
poor. So i made a modification to gain this realism while playing.
And this
improvement has the good idea to save polyphony... no need to have 256 voices to
avoid loosing notes in rich playing (for example : a bass note keeping on
ringing although the polyphony limit should have cut it a long time ago).
I
improved this for each note, and managed not to destroy the sympathetic
resonance (non-struck strings resonance) but keeping the reinforcement effect, and still with realtime sustain.
I spent also time to improve release behaviour, to improve staccato,
legato, and double-escape.
All patches are agreed by each piano editors and producers
PMI Gold Old Lady (1923 Steinway D) and Emperor (Bosendorfer 290 SE) :
- patch 5.00 Emperor and Old Lady (kontakt 1.5.3 - improved release staccato/legato)
- Skylark Emperor 5.00 mp3 demo
- Skylark Old Lady 5.00 mp3 demo
Notice : It seems that some people have a little problem with the "noise key release" rack. It uses only one no tracking sample: the one in the "extra" directory called "bos key soundx", mapped from A-1 to F#5. Set the Root at C4 and the sample volume to 12 dB. To do well, the "Extra" directory should NOT be placed in the "Old lady samples", but directly at the root of the "Old Lady" Directory.
Sampletekk Black Grand (Steinway D) :
- patch 2.03 Black Grand Close (kontakt 1.5.3) (fully remapped pedal up rack + accurate release) (not yet real string behaviour)
- Skylark Black Grand Close 2.03 mp3 demo
PMI Bosendorfer 290 :
Compatibily with kompakt player is not full. You will loose some features (see PMIB290 Plug-In Real String Update on-line)
Galaxy Steinway D :
- patch kontakt 1.5.3 (contact Bestservice) (by Xavier Bidault & Olivier Frappier) (BestService is not interested by our patch)
- Live demo on a turnaround (10th june 2004)
- Galaxy SD skylark (28th may 2004)
- Galaxy SD Images (28th may 2004)
PMI Steinway D :
- patch kontakt 1.5.2 (updated 27th may 2004)
- SD brighter Adagio Cantabile
One feature still resist me, but actually, it's due to kontakt 1.5.3 limit (see : Piano pedal FX during note release)
It appears that Gigastudio has a special "Piano release mode" that allow this behavior
But Kontakt 2 is now annouced... (see here)
I have to say that the Gigapule (convolution reverb) in Gigastudio 3 simulate marvellously well pedal down resonance,
only by using an impule file of the resonance of the piano, sustain pedal down.
When correctly tweaked, Gigapule can also simulate staccato/legato release
with an impule file of the resonance of the piano, sustain pedal up.
Related forum links :
Demos of PMI Bos 290 with my kontakt 1.5.2 patch
PMI Steinway D Kontakt Real pedal updates
PMI Steinway D sur Audiofanzine (french)
PMI Bosendorfer 290 sur Audiofanzine (french)
Hardware material :
- P4C HT 3GHz, 2x512 Mo PC3200 Dual Ram, 2x80Go SATA HD Raid 0 (stripping)and a 40Go for OS, in a shuttle XPC 75G2 V2
- ECHO Mia Midi
- Master keyboard : Roland RD 170