[LAU] Yamaha Disklavier Pro grand piano

[Stephen Doonan]

Roberto Gordo Saez wrote:

> I've noticed that the disklavier is recorded very dry (probably on
> purpose), so adding a reverb is almost essential; otherwise it sounds
> like if the head is put inside the piano :-) William Coakley piano
> samples contain some ambiance, and I guess they are recorded in real
> stereo (unfortunatelly this can't be done in the disklavier soundfont,
> since source samples are in mono).


Yes, I believe that the Coakley samples were recorded in stereo. One of 
the things that impresses me is that although William Coakley is an 
engineer, he is also a musician (he plays piano himself). This made him 
approach the project in a different way, focusing in it as much through 
a musician's eyes (and ears) as through those of a sound engineer.

This brief article of his about his observations and approach is very 
interesting:

Why Bigger Isn't Better -- by William Coakley

http://williamcoakley.com/articles.php?article=bigger.php


An analogy I might make myself is that it is not necessary to photograph 
a scene simultaneously from 5 different angles or perspectives in order 
to get a good photo of that scene.

I personally believe that one could create a smoother, more expressively 
responsive piano soundfont with fewer layers, with perhaps only 2, or 3 
layers at most. Coakley's piano samples, to the best of my memory, have 
only 2 layers, one strongest at minimum velocities and the other 
strongest at maximum velocities, with several variations in the 
gradation between them (several sound "patches" or settings of the same 
samples).

One reason I believe that fewer velocity-layer samples would be needed 
is that in a piano, perhaps in contrast with a few other musical 
instruments, the basic character of the sound--to the ears of a person 
or musician, not necessarily to an engineer with a waveform 
analyzer--doesn't change character that much. Yes, there is a difference 
in sound when a piano is played softly and when the keys are depressed 
with great force, but the intermediate volume levels and characteristic 
sound are just a relatively smoothly graded variation from one to the other.

In the Disklavier soundfont, it seems (I'm not sure) like the forte 
samples predominate. In order to accommodate all 5 layers, it seems that 
samples for ffff, fff, ff and f are spread out too much over the 
velocity spectrum, infringing on the space that should normally be 
reserved for softer layers. This would seem like a natural thing to do, 
because the alternative would be to allot a very small area of velocity 
values to each of ffff, fff and ff (or fff, ff and f--each of the 
strongest-sounding samples), which almost makes one or more of those 
samples seem superfluous (which perhaps they are). :-) If a person 
considered the dynamic range of a piano as going from soft to loud as 
follows--ppp, pp, p, mp, mf, f, ff, fff, ffff--then I would think that 
samples of "p" and "ff" or "fff" would be sufficient to represent the 
entire dynamic range, in just 2 layers. This is of course just my opinion.

Also in the Disklavier samples, were the pp and p (soft) samples 
normalized to raise their volume? I ask this because the volume or 
dynamic range of the soundfont seems compressed. It almost sounds as 
though--despite triggering the sounds with various velocities--as though 
the soft samples have been amplified or normalized and the loud samples 
have been compressed. In other words, it seems difficult to achieve the 
full dynamic range of a piano when playing the soundfont with a full 
velocity range on a MIDI keyboard (even when setting the MIDI keyboard 
to different velocity-response curves).

These are just questions and notes intended as "input and feedback" 
only. (Hmm-- "notes," "input," "feedback," all musicians' terms :-)

Best wishes,
Steve