| 300K
Total Posts: 0
Joined 08-17-2002
status: Newcomer
|
Re: copyright time?
Yamaha U.S. and Jim are exactly right. Not only should clients feel free to adjust the voice parameters, including the “feel” of the keys—they are encouraged to do so. Go ahead and share the result—that’s great. (But this is much different than copying our samples and giving them away.)
We have two basic technologies in play here. First, there are the samples of the piano. There’s a lot of work and money tied up in developing those (which is why we copyrighted all of them). Then there’s the technology whereby the player interfaces with the samples. This involves how the keys respond to velocity and other touch parameters, but there is much more such as how MOTIF will “play” the samples. There’s a lot of room for adjustment here.
Believe me, I have played some of the best pianos in the world. Some of these instruments are just breathtaking. Still, I have seen other musicians say they don’t even like those pianos at all. Pianos are very subjective and there is no way we could please everyone, with a PRESET and we know that. But we also know that given 32MB of outstanding piano samples MOTIF can implement those samples in thousands of different ways. Consequently, in the very rare event you are not thrilled with the piano right “out of the box” as was the case with Clint, don’t worry ... you just need to adjust it to suit your taste.
Anyone who comes up with a new set of voice parameters can save them as an “all voice without waveform” file. That’s MOTIF’s file that has the extension of .W2E It would be nice if there was a file format that would just save one “voice” rather than all of them (and maybe there is). Regardless, the W2E files are small enough that they can be emailed between users. These files do not contain our copyrighted samples, and any attempt to mail a file that did would bring down many mail servers, but the .W2E file should get through OK.
If clients want to trade .W2E files all they have to do is to first load the original piano into MO and then load in the .W2E file (after you save ALL of your work in MOTIF’s user memory in case something unexpected happens).
By the way, all 4 pianos on our current CD were “tweaked” while being monitored on a set of $60,000.00 “reference standard” speakers. The pianos sound very good. Still, we realize some people will end up playing the pianos through a guitar amp or maybe a public address system or so on. Naturally, the piano can sound only as good as the system it is being played through (but then you can “tweak” the piano for the playback system in order to help things.)
Yamaha brought up an interesting point which is that their piano is tuned differently than ours, not by much but there is a difference. (In case you don’t know this take note that there are countless ways to tune a piano. For example, many concert pianists will advise their tuner to maximize the tuning for the key signature they will be focusing on for the specific concert that night.)
I want to spend some time on this topic because I think it is important. There are many skills that have to be learned to tune a piano accurately, but there are just three basic parts to each tuning. The first, and the most important from a Tuner’s point of view, is called “Setting the Temperment”. This is the foundation on which the rest of the tuning is built, and the hardest part to master. It is also rather difficult to explain.
The musical scale that western ears have become accustomed to, and upon which the tuning of a piano is based, consists of twelve notes: C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, and B. This arrangement had been invented and used long before any of the composers we know of had been born. So, when they did get here, they inherited a system of music that they were forced to use, even though it has a few nasty little problems. The main problem has its root in what is called “Harmonics”. If you play a string, and then divide it in half by placing your finger on the middle of the string (what physicists call “the node"), you would hear a note one octave higher than the first note, which is called the “Fundamental”. (If you play middle C on a piano, and the C above it on a piano that is in tune, that is an octave.). If you then divide that half in half again, you would hear a ‘Perfect Fifth’ above the Octave. (Like playing C and the G above it). If you continued to subdivide the string in this manner you would hear a rather mysterious thing: a note two octaves higher, then a third (C to E) above that. Then the fifth, then a minor 7th (C to A#), then all the diatonic notes (like all the white keys), and then every single note. If you could go even further you would hear microtones, which are NOT part of the western scale, but which are a part of the music of other cultures.
This is all fine and dandy, EXCEPT for a problem known as the “Pythagorean Comma”. The first interval of a perfect fifth in harmonics is “pure”, that is to say, it does not have any warble or vibrato, called “beats”, when the two notes, the Fundamental and the fifth, are played together. All the intervals after this are also “pure” with the note previous to it, but they grow INCREASINGLY sharp of the Fundamental to the point that the Octaves are NOT “pure” with each other. They become sharp because of the “Comma”, which is a microtone that is missing in our western scale.
So, in effect, we actually squeeze what are harmonically THIRTEEN notes into our twelve-note scale. This is called “tempering” the scale, and the way in which we squeeze it is called the “Temperment”. When there were no keyboard instruments, this was not a big problem.
Instrumentalists and singers learned to tune each note as they played or sang, so that they would be pure to any other notes played or sung with them. Since pianos and other keyboard instruments cannot be retuned on the fly, dealing with this became a problem that no one has really been able to solve completely.
Before J.S. Bach’s time, Harpsichordists dealt with the problem of Temperment by constantly tuning. They would play a piece in say, E flat, and then re-tune the instrument to play in a different key, like A or D. Large pipe organs of the time would have different temperments in separate sets of pipes, called “ranks”. To play in a different key, you would change ranks. This method of changing temperments was not only awkward, but STILL resulted in some intervals sounding horribly out of tune.
The problem was eventually “solved”, during Bach’s lifetime. Someone figured out how to temper the scale in an equal manner so that whatever key you chose, it would be equally in (out of?) tune. To demonstrate this new method of tuning, Bach wrote two preludes and fugues for every key, and called the collection “Das Wohltemperierte Klavier”, “The Well Tempered Keyboard”. The “Equal Temperment” is now the standard tuning in every modern keyboard instrument. (But notice that MOTIF has many optional temperments that you can apply, if you please.)
This “Equal Temperment” theory is pretty well accepted with relatively few people knowing that it doesn’t actually work. You see pianos such as Steinway have their own “scale” and it is their unique scale that makes a Steinway sound like a Steinway. These “scales” are inconsistent with “Equal Temperment” and a truly great tuner will recognize the scale he is working with and tune the piano to take advantage of it—instead of “fighting” with it. The result is sort of a Quasi Equal Temperment.
Alright then, our goal was to produce a VERY real sounding piano for MOTIF. To reach this goal we sampled a real Steinway with REAL world tuning. Once recorded, we could have changed the tuning of the piano samples to make them conform with mathematical ideas but we decided to go with the tuner’s judgment. We were able to do this because we do not make hundreds, if not thousands, of different electronic musical instruments as does Yamaha. Our piano has to sound great and stand on its own merits but it doesn’t have to exactly “match” what Roland or Korg or anyone else has out there. (MOTIF enables users to change both the fine and coarse tuning so you can do this if you want to, but I don’t recommend it.)
We are grateful for Yamaha’s generous offer to adjust our samples to match Yamaha’s choice of frequencies and we are eager to hear the result. If this can be embodied in a .W2E file, then we will probably email the new file to existing clients so they will have the option of using the alternative temperment. My initial impression, however, is that even the extremely slight change away from what the original tuner decided on may yield a sound that is not optimal for the particular Steinway (semi) Concert Grand we used. The piano sounds gorgeous the way the tuner tuned it. Is that something that should be changed? On the other hand, we are talking about a few “cents” in change. That’s almost nothing. Perhaps any difference will be imperceptible.
One thing seems clear: 32MB Piano users will be getting more pianos than they expected!
Mark
|
