Conference napalm::commusic_v1

    Not that it diminishes the argument of .0 at all, but I think the
    Kurzweil PX-1000 (or whatever the piano version is) supports 24 notes.
    I believe the folks at Kurzweil (in their brochures) think that
    this helps add to the realism of their products.
    
    - John -

    An awful lot of piano music is dependant on the sympathetic vibration
    of the 'non-played' strings, when the Pedal is pushed. I happen
    to like the feel of it. I suspect that you could set up simple patch
    that came close to this quality, but the tone would end up changing
    for each note that you hit, or the background tone would be a chord's
    worth of background tones. I don't think that it would sound right.
    Then again, if you set the tone up as a single note type of sound
    & used some reverb.....  Naw, I'll just keep my Piano for that sort
    of thing when I record at home, and not worry about it live.
    
    							Jens

    I think the sustain on the SPX90 would suffice, but you'd have to
    be able to turn it on and off with a pedal.
    Well, you CAN 'bypass' with a pedal (I do), but the thing is, 
    when you push the pedal to use the effect, you would hear
    sustained tones from all previous recent playing; i.e., it wouldn't
    just start over acquiring tones to sustain when you hit the pedal
    Now, it would work to RECALL the sustain effect each time you
    hit the pedal, and bypass when you let it up, but that would require
    computer control, taking pedal inputs and sending them out to the
    SPX.
    
    It's obvious (from other current discussions here) that there is
    a 
    need (I can hit my own RETURN, thankyou) need for a device like
    so:
    Accepts switch pedal inputs of different types, sends them to the
    computer, the computer program interprets them any way you want,
    and sends appropriate codes to the synths/effects.
    Tom

    I noticed that even my curde JX3P sounds more piano-like with a
    good reverb patch running on the MIDIverbII....but  only more 'like'
    
    dave

    As the former owner of a 16-voice 'piano' and current owner of a
    24-voice 'piano', I tell you that I never heard ANY truncation from
    EITHER unit. I've also got some decent piano samples for the Emax,
    an 8-voice unit, and you can hear some truncation when playing
    passages with the sustain pedal down.
    
    I don't think the 'generic string wash' sample idea would work,
    for the simple reason that the overtones generated sympathetically
    are changing moment by moment. Perhaps some very fast calculations
    could be made regarding what overtone series to emphasize. However,
    this would also impact the number of available voices issue.
    
    My only other offering on the sustain wash issue is the one I put in the
    Kurzweil note : use a MIDI-switchable digital reverb and somehow
    link (software/hardare) pedal on/off (MIDI controller #64) to the
    MIDI patch changes for the reverb unit.. pedal off, small & 'dark',
    on, large and 'bright'. This is possible today.
    
    When I saw the topic name I thought this was gonna be about the
    resonant characteristics of the piano body; the 'formant' EQ curve.
    Finding a way to digitally impose various formant EQ curves on 
    outgoing samples (not just pianos, cellos, basses, etc.) would add
    more realism.. of course, all those notes were sampled from real
    instruments anyhow, so maybe those 'formant' frequency curves are
    builtin already.. except that the formants change as the notes are
    transposed digitally.. 
    
    karl

    Re: "Formants"
    	
    The ESQ-1 and SQ-80 have formant waves (multisampled across the
    KB) built right in.
    	
    The PIANO2 patch uses one, I believe.
    	
    	-Bill