On 11/04/12 17:00, Folderol wrote: Thanks for listening and for commenting twice! Many thanks for the kind words, I appreciate it, especially as I get the impression you generally prefer more uplifting music and this is rather on the depressive side!

Hi SM Thanks for listening and commenting and I'm glad you enjoyed it. Melancholic beauty was what I was aiming for, so it's pleasing to know that it is perceived in that way. I don't really listen to classical music, but when I do I mostly steer towards the Romantic era though and I do like Chopin. Whilst Romantic in intent and inspiration (as in Romanticism, not romantic love), in terms of execution I deliberately veered away from what I see as excess that Romantic-style music sometimes displayes; the last thing I wanted was for it to end up sounding schmaltzy. I reigned in any temptation for the tempo to begin too high or for excessive rubato, aiming for a slightly stiff or stilted feel. I don't think I achieved this effect as well as I did during part of the writing phase -- probably partly with lack of familiarity plus I wasn't terribly well at the time and I think that helped the performance, but I wasn't about to make myself ill again for the sake of art! As for the sound, I generally am not fond of Steinways, much preferring Bechsteins, Bosendorfers or Bluthners, but the Sampletekk Black Grand is a very nice sounding instrument. I would love to have used my 1903 Bechstein but it's in need of tuning and I doubt I could do anything approaching a decent job of recording it. If anything, the Black Grand had a tendency toward a little too much brightness for my liking for this piece, but was bearable. I took some low end out (6 dB/octave from about 160 Hz IIRC) to tone down the effects of my left hand and also for a bit of distance and also shelved the mids (and bass by default), plus a slight dip in the low-mids, as they were unruly and muddy. I suspect I'd have had to do some serious EQing had I used my Bech as it's very warm and rich, probably far too much so as this piece needs cold and iciness. I suspect I might have been able to remove more of the mids, but was wary of overprocessing and making the sound unnatural. Also, bear in mind that this is not the sound of the BG out of the box, I added small amounts of body, soundboard and other resonances from IRs. I auditioned a lot of room and hall IRs before I settled on this one. It's not too obvious (after highpassing it) and fairly nondescript and unassuming -- it's there but doesn't draw attention to itself, away from the piano, which is what I was after. A few times lately whilst writing, I fired up the Native Instruments Akoustik Piano as it loads far faster than the BG in Linuxsampler -- now those are some seriously horrible sounding pianos, the Bechstein sounds nothing like mine and the Steinway sounds nothing like the BG, they're shrill, plasticky sounding bright... ugh. The BG feels, sorry no, sounds like playing a real piano -- someone needs to invent an affordable midi-controller that gives vibrational feedback through the keys, I miss that and I'm not even much of a pianist. Sorry for rambling. Anyway, thanks again for listening even if the timbral choices weren't to your liking :-) Cheers Q On 11/04/12 22:11, S. Massy wrote:

On 22/04/12 18:40, Folderol wrote: :-D It's the Erik Satie school of score annotation. He had some fantastically absurd directions such as: -- very shiny -- ask -- with the tip of your thought -- postulate within yourself -- arm yourself with clairvoyance -- open your head ..and so on. I think there might have been some method to his madness, I think it's more about the state of mind necessary to achieve the right style rather than directly instructing how to play it. Or it might just have been the absinthe talking!