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VI
review
It wasn’t until I began exploring the voicing
and design provisions in greater detail
that I began appreciating Pianoteq for its true
strengths flexibility. After increasing hammer
hardness for more overtones on the attack,
adjusting the hammer hardness and pedal
response at each velocity level to suit my
Korg Triton Pro X controller, tweaking the
tone color with the spectrum profile, and
adding presence through string response and
some creative tuning adjustments, I was able
to get very close to my favorite sample
libraries.
In fact I was able to get the entire keyboard
range to sound absolutely stunning,
and I don’t use that term lightly. The dynamics
are extremely convincing.
You can also get creative. For instance, the
ability to increase the length of the piano
incrementally means that you can take it from
A size to D size, or even create a 33-foot
grand if you like. Yet because with the harmonics
change as the piano is lengthened,
the bass notes remain incredibly solid and
believable. Conversely, I boxed up my perfect
Steinway D emulation into a respectable
sounding apartment-sized Heintzman piano,
detuned Coldplay-esque stage piano, detuned
honky-tonk, and even a tinkering toy piano.
But creative sound design is only half of
Pianoteq’s bag of tricks. Its playability is second
to none.
50 VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTS
The amazing tuning section gives you all
the possibilities typically done only by piano
tuners. For example, you can set diapason
(415-466 Hz), different kinds of temperaments
(from equal to well tempered), unison
tuning (for changing the timbre or color of
the sound), octave stretching, and direct
sound duration. Pianoteq also features a pro-
gressive sustain pedal, allowing partial pedal
effects such as quarter and half-pedaling; a
Sostenuto pedal; harmonic pedal; and una
corda (“one string,” i.e. soft) pedal.
Pedal play on glissandos sounds incredibly
lifelike—it’s as though you have your head
hanging over the harp. Pedaling in general is
spot-on. And it doesn’t just consist of the artificial
thunking in a lot of sampled pianos. I
was especially impressed by the ability of
Pianoteq to catch a flurry of staccato notes
with intermittent presses of the sustain pedal
and treat them accurately.
Because the plug-in operates with 32-bit
internal resolution at rates up to 192kHz,
there’s absolutely no funny digital noise, plus
the instrument produces a real progressive
variation of the timbre at 127 MIDI velocities
The interaction between strings, use of pedals,
cabinet resonance, position of the hammers, time
and space within a given room, etc. are all taken
into account.
per note. A phase/repetition variation scheme
ensures that the hammer strikes the strings
slightly differently with each note, and thanks
to the wonderful math going on behind the
sympathetic vibrations algorithms, chords
large and small truly sound like chords played
on a real piano as all the individual strings
interact.
Left me tickled
I really like Pianoteq. Its sound is pure,
vivid, alive with responsiveness, and without
question the most flexible of any “acoustic”
piano instrument on the planet today. Thanks
to its rather modest system requirements,
Pianoteq will run on any reasonably current
desktop computer with next to no impact on
the processor, and the extremely small 8MB
size and negligible RAM requirements means
it can run on any modern laptop. (A standalone
version with studio-grade compression,
EQ, and reverb would be useful for “straight
out of the box” stage use—and in fact the
developers are working on a stand-alone version;
they also plan a free update this spring.)
With more likely to come, there are currently
two free add-on presets available for
registered Pianoteq users at the Modartt website.
These include dynamic model constructions
of an 1812 Pianoforte Schöffstoss
recorded at Schloss Kremsegg in
Kremsmünster, Austria and a Johann
Evangelist Schmidt pianoforte, circa 1790,
recorded at Handelhaus in Halle, Germany.
The presets are meticulously modeled with
authentic tuning (well tempered) along with
all its charms and artifacts.
Though it may not capture one hundred
percent of the image that a stereo sampled
piano will, it’s the subtle real-time details that
make Pianoteq sound leaps and bounds more
realistic for solo work—and win you over
every time. VI