Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site peora.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!hjuxa!petsd!peora!jer From: jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) Newsgroups: net.music.synth Subject: Re: synth shopping... Message-ID: <1946@peora.UUCP> Date: Thu, 30-Jan-86 08:48:22 EST Article-I.D.: peora.1946 Posted: Thu Jan 30 08:48:22 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 1-Feb-86 03:26:58 EST References: <661@aicchi.UUCP> Organization: Concurrent Computer Corporation, Orlando, Fl Lines: 56 > BTW: It seems no-one can do a good acoustic piano on a synth (or sampler). > Why??? I am reluctant to post this, since I don't want to get into a "can you synthesize mechanical instruments electronically" debate, but a few weeks ago I saw a new, very amazing, instrument by Yamaha which uses FM synthesis to do a reasonably good synthesis of a number of keyboard instruments, including a piano. Now, "reasonably good" is putting it somewhat constrainedly, since in my opinion the sound produced was sufficiently close to a home upright piano that I don't think most people would consider it significantly different. What was really amazing, though, was that the keyboard *felt* and responded *exactly* like a piano -- not an approximation, exactly. I experimented with it a good bit to try to discover how effective a simulation of a piano was involved, and couldn't find anything anomalous. (One thing I didn't try and regretted later was striking one of the lower keys sharply, which on a conventional piano down in the lower octaves produces a particular sound, which I guess is due to an increase in the amplitude of the higher harmonics due to the hammer striking the long strings so close to the end of the string, but I don't know.) The weighting and action of the keys was identical to that of a good piano, with one exception, viz., that on many pianos if you depress the key slowly there is a point of detent near the bottom of the key's travel, such that the loudness of the note produced is more a function of how rapidly you push the key through the detent, rather than simple velocity at the time it reaches the bottom of the key's travel, or the force with which it is depressed. (The reason for this, at least in grand pianos, is that as you press the key, the key works a series of levers that throws the hammer upward toward the strings. However, near the bottom of the travel, there is a sort of "break" where the direct connection between the key and hammer releases, so that the hammer can fall back. If you push the key sufficiently slowly that it doesn't throw the hammer up against the string, then when it reaches the break point, the mechanism that releases the hammer to let it fall back seems to go through a sort of secondary motion that again has the effect of throwing the hammer up towards the strings again, at a different rate.) However, a lot of upright pianos I've encountered don't do this, and so I don't think it's an essential thing to simulate. Anyway, getting back to this instrument... it produced only sounds made by mechanical keyboards (several types of piano, harpsichord, and some sort of not particularly good organ), and cost around $3000, so unfortunately I didn't remember the model number. It did have a MIDI interface, though. It's worth looking at if you're mostly interested in a synthesizer that produces conventional keyboard instruments' sounds. [Incidentally, I also saw the allegedly immediate predecessor to this instrument, which was made by the same company, had a similar name, and looked like a piano. (This new instrument looked more like a conventional synthesizer.) This predecessor instrument sounded terrible, nothing at all like a piano, so they apparently made a lot of technological progress between the time the two instruments were released.] -- UUCP: Ofc: jer@peora.UUCP Home: jer@jerpc.CCC.UUCP CCC DNS: peora, pesnta US Mail: MS 795; CONCURRENT Computer Corp. SDC; (A Perkin-Elmer Company) 2486 Sand Lake Road, Orlando, FL 32809-7642 LOTD(4)=s