Piano-Related Gifts this year

Happy New Year, everyone! This morning, I am at a customer site, trying to get a demo environment up and running. So while I wait (and wait) for their Database Administrator to get their database back up and running, I thought I would take a moment to tell you about the 2.5 piano-related gifts I scored this year.

The first is a software suite called Play Piano 2.0. In theory, this would take the place of a teacher, until I have the time and resources to get my own. It has animations showing chord formations and progressions, and all sorts of other fancy things I can't remember right now. I am going to give this a thorough tryout, and will report back.

The half-gift sort of came along with this. It's a virtual piano, something called Pianissimo by Acoustica.



A virtual piano (VP) is a software suite that takes MIDI input and converts it to real piano sounds. You probably knew this, but I had to look it up. People tend to use these in lieu of the piano sounds that come with their digital pianos. That is, you could connect your DP to your computer, which uses a VP to convert the sounds into something really nice and fancy, then connect your computer to your fancy sound system, which then pipes wonderful piano sounds all over the place. Not that I am going to do to this. This is, apparently, a low-end, entry-level VP, at least compared with industrial-strength heavyweights like Synthology Ivory Grand, Pianoteq, and the Garritan Steinway, which all cost hundreds of dollars. Still, for a simpleton like myself, it has more bells and whistles than I can possibly understand, much less use. For example, it has settings for the:

- Extent to which the virtual piano's lid is open or closed
- Size of the virtual concert hall*
- Velocity of hammer strikes
- Degree of sympathetic resonance

* - But sadly, no settings for the number or mood of the people in the imaginary concert hall, nor how much they like or hate your performance. Unlike, say, Guitar Hero.

I imagine I might tinker with this as a possible replacement for the soundfonts I had been using to convert recordings. Pianissimo starts with a 250 MB sample from a Steinway D, then adds some sort of sound modeling to it based on these settings I mentioned earlier. I'm no sound geek; but I can see how people get that way.

Finally, I also got a set of Grado SR60 headphones.



I've mentioned to you before that the one thing about our Casio Ap-200 that disappoints me is the sound. To some extent, I expected this, but didn't mind it. Sound quality was fourth on my criteria list, after price, touch, and build (sturdiness). But it's actually worse than I expected. The sound is anemic, as if a pillow has been placed over the speakers. Nobody is ever going to mistake the Casio, by sound alone, for an acoustic piano. I had hoped that the headphones I received with the bundle (Audio-Technica ATHM20) would make up for the poor sound, but they actually make things worse. When I play with those, they... how should I put this? They ring. Yup, that's it. When I play the piano with those headphones*, I experience a ringing in my ears that goes away the instant I take them off. Naturally, I blame the headphones.

* - "Cans", audiogeeks call them. See, look at what all you learn by coming here?

Nevertheless, as you saw earlier, Rowan doesn't seem to mind. So those are the kids' cans, while I have my own. And, though the SR60's are the cheapeast, lowest-end headphones in the Grado lineup, oh my goodness, Holy Harmonics, Batman*, what a difference! I won't attempt to describe the difference. Let's just say this... when I put them on, I thought that I had neglected to plug the headphones in; the sound didn't sound like it was coming from the headphones, but rather, from outside them. Only, the sound was no longer muffled, but rather bright and clear. So I took the headphones off and played a few notes, just to be sure. Sure enough, the headphones were plugged in, the piano sounds were indeed coming from the SR60's.
* - According to this site, Robin never uttered the phrase "Holy Harmonics, Batman". He did, however, say "Holy Haberdashery, Batman!" I'll have to mix that into everyday usage.

Memo to Sawtooth, mom3gram, and any others of you with digital pianos... buy some good headphones, if you haven't already. Sawtooth is probably way ahead of me on this, but just in case...

- Aw2pp, who thinks the Database Admin has now gone to lunch

More on Soundfonts

So here's what I did. First, I loaded up and installed SynthFont, a tool for listening to and editing Midi files, and applying Soundfonts to them. It came with a handful of very small Soundfonts, most of which tried to provide coverage for all possible Midi inputs (not just piano) in a very small footprint. This is the sort of thing that gives Midi a bad name, since the sounds produced from these Soundfonts are really puny and fake-sounding. Nevertheless, these gave me my first glimpse into how the process works. I then did a search on PianoWorld for people's favorite Soundfonts*, and downloaded those that seemed to be mentioned most often. This gave me a rather lengthy list of free piano Soundfonts to try out. Perhaps over time, I'll find more. What's more, of course, there are geeky sound engineer / computer nerds cranking out new ones all the time.

* - I’m always interested in having others do this sort of heavy lifting for me. That’s part of the point of this blog, come to think of it. You’ve been very helpful, I must say.

Then what? Well, I wanted to get some practice converting Midi files, so I found some of my favorite piano pieces in Midi format. I learned that as long as you're keeping the search field to older music, things in the public domain, you can probably find a Midi file for it. I kept it simple, choosing things I knew pretty well: Liszt’s La Campanella (Paganini Etude #3, if you’re scoring at home) and Joplin’s The Entertainer.

Finally, I converted selected pieces using the various Soundfonts, and listened to the resulting MP3 WAV files*. I was surprised at how distinct the differences were. Of course, all pianos are not created equal, and all samples (even samples of the same piano) are not created equal. I also learned, pretty quickly, that the size of a Soundfont file is not useless information. For the most part, unless someone was really sloppy, a 5 MB Soundfont is simply not going to have as many layers of depth and interest as a 50 MB Soundfont.

* - Another tidbit I learned along the way... something I mentioned in the previous post. WAV files have all that CD (and better!) quality you expect from digital music, not Mp3's. Mp3's are fine for storing lots of music in a confined space, like an iPod, but if you are looking for the best sound, you aren't going to get it from an Mp3. There is some compression that happens during the creation of an Mp3, and this results in the loss of... something or other having to do with high-quality sound. If you want to make a CD, use the WAV files, if you can.

Let me give you an example. First, Soundfont (WST25FStein_00Sep22.SF2) is from an 1893 Steinway D. When it renders a Midi of La Campanella (Midi copyrighted by a Bernd Krüger, just so you know), sounds like this.



The EXACT SAME MUSIC (this point cannot be emphasized enough, you won’t believe it when you hear it) sounds like this on an upright Bechstein. Remember, these are the same notes (pitch, volume, sustain, all that) as the first.



Which do you like better? Me, I have a strong preference for the first, and not just because it’s a Steinway. (I came across a couple of Steinway Soundfonts that sounded muted, hollow, or simply too mellow for my tastes.) I will probably use this Steinway Soundfont on my own recordings, along with some others. I’m keeping the Bechstein, though, partly because the file is so small (which probably accounts for the lack of depth) and partly because I think it would sound great playing Ragtime. There could be times when a beat up piano is called for, you know?

After awhile, it became clear that there were four or five that I liked best. But the closer I listened to them, and the more I compared them, the less I could tell them apart. I think my ear / mind got tired of this exercise. So I am going to put this to rest for awhile*, and use them to render my own recordings. I'd bet after awhile, one will stand out over the others, and I will prefer it. Or maybe I’ll use them all, depending on my mood. We’ll see.

* - No train commutes in the immediate future, after all. And once the new piano arrives, I'll have enough to do. Not to mention, you know, life and work and sleep and all that.

A Whole New World...

No, it hasn't arrived yet. But when it does, I want to get up and running quickly. So I have already downloaded the owner's manual, and fretted about locating a decent Phillips-head screwdriver. I have also ordered a Midi-to-USB cable, so I can connect the piano to my laptop. And yesterday afternoon, I downloaded and installed the various programs I'll use in the chain of events required to transmogrify* piano sounds into an MP3.

* - Calvin and Hobbes reference there, in case you missed it.

And oh mercy, I had no idea. It's... it's... a whole new world!




Ok, so maybe I'm overstating the case a little. But did you know (I didn't until yesterday) that you can save the electronic signals emitted by your digital piano, and encode them with something called a Soundfont, which then reproduces those signals as sounds from some other instrument?

The concept of a Soundfont is supposed to be aligned with text fonts. With text, you have the underlying characters, which take on a different personality depending on what font you use. I read twelve years ago that the preferred font for the Web should be Verdana, given its informal friendliness. Want to seem formal and authoritative? Times New Roman. Want to sound like a robot? Courier.

Likewise, with a Soundfont, you have the underlying notes, including pitch (high and low), dynamics (volume), tempo, sustain, attack (how abruptly / decisively the note begins) and other characteristics. Those remain the same for a given recording. But you can take those underlying notes, like text, and add a Soundfont depending on what sound you wish to portray.

In the case of pianos, people have recorded and freely distributed Soundfonts for pretty much any piano you can think of. Yes, there are Soundfonts sampled from 50 year-old Wurlitzer spinets. I'm sure there is a Soundfont out there sampled from a 100 year-old beast like Ole Bessie. (And in fact, I will probably be looking for such a Soundfont, so I can create an authentic recording of The Entertainer. Ragtime should sound at home on an ancient upright, don't you think?) But the most interesting Soundfonts, to me, are those sampled off the world's best pianos, including concert Steinways and Bösendorfers. I've got a few loaded up that I will be listening to on the train the next few days.* I'll let you know which ones I like best.

* - Now that I live 41 miles west of downtown Chicago, train trips take about 70 minutes. Glad I don't have to do that every day. But when I do go downtown, the train trip leave me with an unusual amount of "Hmm, now what do I do?" time. It used to be that I could queue up an entry from Tuesday Morning Quarterback, which would take me about 40 minutes to read. As soon as I'd be done, there would be my train stop. I just completed today's TMQ, and still have 40 minutes to go.

This means, among other things, that the recordings I end up posting here will NOT be the actual recordings of sounds coming out of the Casio Ap-200 (still en route, thanks for asking, but you knew that, right?). What you will hear, however, are recordings what Jillian, Jason, or I would sound like on a 9 foot Steinway D. Or 100 year old ancient upright, if the mood suits us.

I am fully aware that some of you have no idea what I am talking about, or interesting in the subject. I am likewise aware that some of you know so much about this topic, you aren't even reading this far, having long ago clicked on something else much more interesting and informative. But I think it is totally cool.

Upcoming topics: live blogging the some-assembly-required stage of digital piano ownership, comments / observations on various Soundfonts, figuring out where in the house the piano should go, first impressions, and what the kids have to say about all this. Good times!