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Comment by cwillu | Hacker News Reader

Missing: in polyphonic instruments, notes affect other notes. For instance, on a piano, a staccato C2 by itself is a totally different beast from a staccato C2 played while the dampers are off other keys, from a haunting reverb from notes in a higher register to deep overtones from notes in a lower register.

Most simulated pianos these days add the extra harmonics when the sustain pedal is pressed, but very few seem to get the harmonics from the dampers being lifted per-key; PianoTeq gets this right.

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I have a Roland LX708 [1] that gets a lot of this right, like sympathetic resonance, and all the other artefacts of a real piano. It’s pretty damn good and it’s clear that modelling has come a long way, but still not as ‘rich’ as a real piano.

I wonder what the last mile is or whether acoustic modeling will always be stuck in a kind of ‘uncanny valley for sound’.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j9PDMdxm7Uo

I assume in company it is close (enough), but Piano alone can sometimes live from exactly the non-musical effects. I spontaneously remembered listening to Hania Rani with good headphones [0].

[0] https://youtu.be/kFRdoYfZYUY?feature=shared

Thank you very much for this link! It's amazing.

In a similar vein Hauschka [1] and his prepared piano is always inspiring. Really great live.

My favourite album of his: [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYsvlJgtAgY

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4i69t4rT2Q&list=OLAK5uy_ns5...

You might like Nils Frahm, a master of the prepared piano [1].

He had a new piano made together with piano maker David Klavins, with a matching VST from Native Instruments [2]. It supports being "prepared" out of the box.

Other fantastic pianist in the same space: Clem Leek ("America") and Dustin O'Halloran ("Vorleben").

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMnSjnzJTeg&list=PLVjWWIQMML...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfHK7_lSY-0

Oh, wow. This is beautiful. Thank you for this music discovery.

That resonance can be a defining element depending on the intent; the butteryness of the Rhodes style electric piano is due to individual pickups on each note picking up neighboring note resonance.

I think you're touching on the overall concept of harmonic and enharmonic overtones in sound synthesis.

Yes, exactly.

I got a free piano from a lady that paid 25k for it back in 1980. Mice had lived in it while in storage, but I could tell it was in good shape.

Spent a summer going down the rabbit hole of tuning it myself. I found the Entropy Piano Tuner app to be quite helpful. Took me weeks to get it tuned to where I liked it.

My digital Yamaha doesn't even come close to capturing the resonance you get on a real piano. I find it hard to play digital pianos for anything other than simple melodies.

Entropy website: http://piano-tuner.org/

My brother has a fairly high-end Yamaha digital piano which is supposed to do these sorts of things, a model from something like ten years ago, but although it’s clearly better than my cheap Yamaha P45 which lacks this stuff altogether, it’s still utterly unrealistic. Nice as it is and sounds, I’ll still prefer my old upright almost every time just for the responsive feel and the proper resonance and acoustic interplay.

(Though in practice both of my pianos have been comparatively neglected since I got a Kawai DX1900 drawbar organ a year ago, which I think is rather amusing. Analogue electronics are really fun, the wear and failure modes are much more interesting than digital electronics like they’d use if making this kind of thing these days.)

I should try Pianoteq and Organteq.

Pianoteq is actually amazing. I bought it years ago and to my surprise it fully supports Linux! For that alone I have to give the creator huge props.

Yeah, seeing Linux support on their list is very encouraging. I wonder if it’s common for people to embody this in an instrument that runs Linux—I can imagine that being about the most convenient.

I think the issue with a digital simulation of an acoustic is simply that an acoustic radiates in a full sphere from its body, interacting with a full surround environment, such that youre also hearing, subconsciously, the interaction of those vibrations with the full area, immediately.

Electronic speakers cant do this 100% generally speaking, especially when its not some really high-end audio installation. (I've been on projects where I was just in awe of what sound engineers can do with spaces) The sound would have to make a reflection or two before it actually hits all the same surfaces?

But most people are listening to music in a comparably humble setup and acoustic environment.

I am not an audio engineer, but this is my thought.

See Hainbach playing the room: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xm83hg7JXJ8

Is there a way to listen to that? (without a real piano or a synth)

I'm not at home for a couple days, but http://cwillu.com/files/sympathetic-resonance.rot.mkv should give some sense: iirc I didn't pedal at all in this piece (or maybe only a little, honestly don't remember, it was a couple years ago now), but there are 3 or 4 keys held down silently.

Noire and Una Corda by Native Instruments also do the same. On the latter it's almost the Raison d'être of the whole sound bank.

It's hard to do with sampled sounds but much easier with physical modelling, and yes PianoTeq is one of the best at this.

I have a kawaii ca99 and it does a very good job at handling that

How would I go about lifting the damper on a piano key?

Hold the key down.

Played sufficiently softly, the hammer doesn't strike the strings at all, but the damper is still lifted and held by the key.

Either gently press a key without the hammer striking the string, or play it as normal and wait for the string’s vibration to die out.

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