I noticed that Yamaha had the Bolder Piano and Alan Parsons piano on sale for XF/XS.  I was curious if any of the piano libraries for the XF/XS worked with a soft pedal out of the box?  The stock Motif XS piano and even the s700 I believe are not affected by the soft pedal.  Looking for something to hook up to my 88 key Kawai 9500 for a different piano sound…

Thanks and God bless

KJandKT - 26 July 2014 02:36 PM

I noticed that Yamaha had the Bolder Piano and Alan Parsons piano on sale for XF/XS.  I was curious if any of the piano libraries for the XF/XS worked with a soft pedal out of the box?  The stock Motif XS piano and even the s700 I believe are not affected by the soft pedal.  Looking for something to hook up to my 88 key Kawai 9500 for a different piano sound…

Thanks and God bless

There is no specific “soft pedal programming” that can be implemented in a voice library.
“Half-damper” pedaling can certainly be programmed into any voice ("enable half-damper”
box enabled in edit mode). But there is no provision in the Motif synthesizers for soft
pedal input. That would be a function found in Yamaha digital pianos, including the
CP series.

Thanks for the reply Dave.  Maybe with the beautiful pianos that people like yourself and others are involved in making perhaps the programmers could take this need into account in order to make the sound sets work for all genres.  Especially in classical music the una corda pedal is a necessity...it makes it very hard to play completely expressively without this.  I know there are ways to assign on of the assignable pedals with filter cutoffs and such but can this be done perhaps by the company on the programmer’s side so out of the box a user could hook up an assignable pedal and use it as a soft pedal?  Or is there even a way perhaps to record samples with the una corda at a couple different velocity levels that are triggered by an assignable pedal...or a mixture of the two?  I don’t know as I am not a programmer but I think it would open up a whole new world of possibilities. I believe the Korg Kronos SGX piano even though the Kronos is not technically a DP responds to an assignable pedal being a soft pedal…

I like several of the piano libraries that are available for the XS and want to hook it up to my Kawai 9500 to use but really need to be able to emulate that sound using a soft pedal...and I don’t really know how to set things up to do it on my own.

Thanks Dave...God bless

KJandKT - 29 July 2014 01:02 PM

Thanks for the reply Dave.  Maybe with the beautiful pianos that people like yourself and others are involved in making perhaps the programmers could take this need into account in order to make the sound sets work for all genres.  Especially in classical music the una corda pedal is a necessity...it makes it very hard to play completely expressively without this.  I know there are ways to assign on of the assignable pedals with filter cutoffs and such but can this be done perhaps by the company on the programmer’s side so out of the box a user could hook up an assignable pedal and use it as a soft pedal?  Or is there even a way perhaps to record samples with the una corda at a couple different velocity levels that are triggered by an assignable pedal...or a mixture of the two?  I don’t know as I am not a programmer but I think it would open up a whole new world of possibilities. I believe the Korg Kronos SGX piano even though the Kronos is not technically a DP responds to an assignable pedal being a soft pedal…

I like several of the piano libraries that are available for the XS and want to hook it up to my Kawai 9500 to use but really need to be able to emulate that sound using a soft pedal...and I don’t really know how to set things up to do it on my own.

Thanks Dave...God bless

I think you’re misunderstanding something. There is no way for programmers to program a
soft pedal functionality into the current Motif or MO XF series. The synthesizer architecture just doesn’t allow it.

This would have to be something implemented in the “next” Yamaha synth workstation, whenever that becomes a reality. Disclaimer: No, I don’t know when the Motif’s successor will be released.

That said, using the soft pedal is a matter of personal choice for piano players. It may sound hard to believe, but II myself have NEVER used the soft pedal.

I’ve been watching this thread with interest the last few day and decided to chime in.

I am a pianist and although my first playing choice is always an acoustic grand I’ve owned and gigged with synths and sampled pianos for years.

Some observations;

No one has actually described what the “una chord” pedal does on an acoustic piano so here goes.

The pedal (on a well adjusted piano) physically moves the entire action so that one string of two (or three in the upper register) is ‘missed’ or not struck.

Not only is the result a lower volume note, is also creates a different set of sympathetic vibrations and slight intonation differences to say nothing of the sound of the action itself sliding back and forth on felt and the mechanical sound of the pedal being depressed.

it’s much more than just being quieter.

First you would need the separate sample of the same piano, and then how would you seamlessly go from the “una chorda” sample to the no pedal sample within the context of a measure or even one or two beats as the pianist might require.

Not saying it couldn’t be done, but it does create an extremely complicated electronic and sonic problem. And then there is the huge amount of memory that would be needed to have two totally different piano samples available instantly at just the push of a pedal.

I understand the occasional need for the soft pedal.
Sometimes no amount of technique replaces it.

Having said all that, I’d love to play those two samples if they were available.

Dave

Big software piano VI’s implement soft pedal
behavior via multiple sample sets that are
quite large (anywhere from 10GB to as much
as 250GB) and switching is done via SCRIPTING..
essentially sophisticated algorithms that
work like an Excel sheet ..if “x”
occurs, then “y” is the result, essentially.

The Motif family of synths does not implement
scripting. Nor is there enough memory available
to run huge sample sets that are way over
3GB or more.

So soft pedal implementation in a Motif
piano library? Never going to happen.

That said...its really not that hard to
connect the Motif to a computer and
trigger software pianos that way. Really
it’s not. You can even set up Master Mode
so that a master triggers the computet software.

You can do it!

Let me add my 10c. You can create a performance or a MULTI with 2 different piano samples of your choice, one for the full grand and one for emulating the una corda sounds. Now, triggering them using one of the 16 MULTI buttons during performance is generally not a problem (at least for me). Probably this triggering can be done using a specially programmed pedal.

Thanks Dave (Polich),

I understand a little better why the Motif doesn’t have it now.  As far as using it what Northridge Dave said is on track.  As a classical artist the una corda is used all of the time...not just to make things softer (you should rely on good technique for that)but for tone color....why back when the una corda meant what it translates to...one string....because there were two strings in the treble on a forte piano.  When you enacted the una corda it shifted the action over so that only one string per note would vibrate creating quite an obvious difference in tone color.  Now of course the treble in a piano has 3 strings and in the case of a Bluthner 4 so the shifting actually just removes one of the strings from play.  So for classical playing it is essential.  In Rock/Pop not as much.  I just was thinking of being able to use the nice sample sets in conjunction with my 88 key.

Sample data amount is a valid point.  However, because of the amount of sample data that it would take to do all of the levels with an una corda pedal companies like Kawai actually use harmonic imaging (like physical modeling) for components like resonance and una corda.

Anyway....I understand Dave why it hasn’t been done on the Motif now.  Thanks. 

Have a blessed day!