piano sus strings movement

[RobS]

Don't know if I should thank you, because this beautiful improvisation of your has made a few euros vanish from my wallet, it's really lovely.
Yes I think I shoud say thanks

[RobS]

Mmm first contact a bit of a disappointment honestly. Two main reasons: only white keys were sampled, and there are brutal dynamic jumps especially when damper is down… not the smooth experience I was anticipating

[Piet De Ridder]

Rob, first of all: sorry for having been partly responsible for you having spent money on disappointment.

That said, I don't have those 'brutal dynamic jumps'. Here's the audio of the same chord played 21 times, with the pedal down, and the velocities gradually increasing from somewhere around 20-25 to, let me check, 124-126. The thing that's bothering me here is, as I mentioned before, the timbre near and at the end doesn't suggest fortissimo (which you should get, I feel, when the velocities exceed 120) and still sounds like forte.

Maybe you can improve things a bit by editing the velocity map in those areas where the jumps distract you?

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[RobS]

no no Piet, don't feel sorry at all, I still like the sound of the library, and as soon as I can I'll do my best to make a usable patch...
But to explain what I mean with dynamic jumps, here is an mp3 where you have G2 and Ab2, damper pressed, playing at velocities of 36 first and a few beats later at 37. That's an increase of 1/127 but the resulting dynamic change is exaggerated. Next I played a few notes with exactly the same velocity (32) in the first group the C sticks out while in the second the B in considerably stronger. The effect to me is that suddenly some notes disappear while others stick out.

Velocity response.mp3

(1017.49 KiB) Downloaded 25 times

[Piet De Ridder]

Yes, that doesn't sound right. And I just checked, it's the same here. (I've only checked the G2-Ab2 part of the example.)

The jump seems to occur from value 36 to 37. So I had a look inside Kontakt's editor, but the group that's being triggered by those velocities (that's group 1C as far as I can tell) covers the velocity range 31>46, so I don't understand why there should be this strange jump from 36 to 37. (If there were a group starting at 37, I could understand there being a jump, but according to Kontakt's mapping window, that isn't the case.)
Perhaps it's again one of those scripting things that I don't know anything about.

Premier Soundfactory was present on VI-C around the time of their Kawai release. The representative's name is Saw Ichiro (VI-member name: ichiro). Maybe he still responds to PM's on VI-C? Or, other suggestion: Premier Soundfactory have a (support) forum on KVR.

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[RobS]

They are using a combination of lowpass filters and velocity scaling to get a smooth transition between velocities, but I believe they overlooked the range around 30-50 which is for me an essential dynamic range. It could be a good idea to write a message to mr. Ichiro, I'll probably do that later. I'm sure the problems we're having trying to fix things has to do with the scripting. I was even thinking of copying/exporting the single groups and build a new patch, but the resonance is too complicated to deal with for me

[RobS]

I've been able to get a more balanced and playable instrument, normalizing every sample and re-building the piano from scratch. Now the long journey begins of patiently adjust every key at every dynamic. Already as it is I think it's now my best "jazz" piano. I revisited a brief portion of the Evans' solo from his recording on Night and day with Stan Getz (no special care for drums and bass, that wasn't the point). I should have render the piano in mono as in the original, but I like it better in stereo, and after all I'm content of simply getting close to that sound. Quite happy

Night&Day-Evans-Premier.mp3

(2.11 MiB) Downloaded 5 times

[Piet De Ridder]

Very nice, Rob.
When you say "re-building from scratch", do you actually mean re-assembling all the samples in a new, empty Kontakt patch?

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[RobS]

Yes, I’ve exported the three main groups, pedal up/down and releases. Changed the velocity response and the volume of the individual zones (wip). Later I’ll pm you the patch so you see. If you feel like trying it remember to save the patch with samples and batch normalize them or it won’t sound right…

[RobS]

Ah I also made up/down groups both active at the same time, so it’s possible to crossfade between the two

[RobS]

mmm... looks like files with .nki or .zip extensions are not allowed as attachments

[Piet De Ridder]

Rob, I sent you a PM.
Thanks for doing all this work and being prepared to share it.

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