Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Question about CLP-320 pedals

Hi folks,

I've been having a real hard time deciding which digital piano to get mainly for controlling good quality virtual instruments such as Ivory and Pianoteq.

I am currently thinking about the CLP-320, since as far as I know the 3rd damper sensor in the GH3 keyboard isn't an improvement over the GH when not using the DP's internal tone generator.

The question is: are all three pedals capable of full range of values? Or are the sostenuto and una-corda on/off and the damper pedal only capable of off, half-pedal and full on?

Any light shed on this subject would be greatly appreciated.

A sostenuto pedal on a grand piano is either off or on, and one doesn't tend to use continuous pedalling on the una corda either, although it is possible. Just thought I'd let you know that.

Oh, I know that. Continuous for sostenuto would be moot.

For una-corda though, could be a useful feature to have.

> I am currently thinking about the CLP-320, since as far as I know the 3rd damper sensor in the
> GH3 keyboard isn't an improvement over the GH when not using the DP's internal tone generator.

I don't think thats true - there was another thread here recently looking at the MIDI messages resulting from partial key up replay on such keyboards. It results in another note-on with no intermediate note-off.

Don't recall which KB brand that was looking at though...

Regarding the continuous pedal over MIDI, I've only had the S308 for a couple days and have not yet had a chance to plug it into my laptop and try pianoteq. Will do so tonight.

Hooked up the S308 via MIDI tonight. I assume the pedal implementaion is the same as on the 320.

Looking at the raw MIDI data reported by Pianoteq (in the MIDI panel in the OPTIONS dialog):

• Una-corda and sostenuto are on/off (transmit 0 or 127)
• Damper pedal is gradual with 8 steps. It transmits the following values:
  0, 24, 40, 56, 72, 88, 104, 127

GH3 - 3rd sensor: replay without full release: the first two note replays result in note-on without a note-off for the previous note (as you'd expect). After the 2nd replay though, note-offs are sent before every subsequent note-on. This really looks like a potential bug/limitation in Yamaha's MIDI implementation... Has anyone else looked at this?

Doesn't matter to me since I can't play that fast anyway . I suppose it might be different over the direct USB connection - will look at that if I can find the appropriate cable somewhere...

Hope this helps.

This looks to me as a meaningful behavior:

NoteOn -> 1st tone sounding
NoteOn -> 2nd tone sounding
NoteOn -> 3rd tone sounding

Now if it where going on this way, finally a lot of notes where sounding and polyphony would be unreasonable high after 100 repetitions.

I believe that a real piano will not only sound a new note for every hammerstroke. A repeated hammer stroke will also dampen the previous notes.

So I think it is a good idea to send a noteoff now.
The question is what will a softwarepiano do, if it receives a Noteoff:

Will it Mute ALL previous notes? Will it mute the FIRST note ONLY?

What will the keyboard do when the key finally is fully released: Will it send one Noteoff command for every repeated instance of the Note?

I dont know if this is inside the scope of MIDI specifications, but I bet, most MIDI sound generators and softwarepianos will do it wrong or at least in a meaningless confused and incompatible way ;-)
Therefor I think, a 3rd sensor is nothing for me yet ;-)

Peter

Conceptually, it shouldn't result in three+ separate notes sounding, since there is only one set of strings.

Each stroke is a new "strike" but still should result in only a single "note" sustaining, so polyphony should not be a problem.

I'm sure this concept wasn't considered when MIDI spec was written...

I don't recall seeing multiple note-offs when finally releasing the key.

Purchased a clp320PE one year ago. I'm enthousiastic. I mostly play classical music and lazy jazz.

UKWOMBLE, the clp320pe was earlier released than the S308.
Need I already start saving money for the clavinova s308??

Best regards,

Johan B

I think it was considered. MIDI is very much general purpose. MIDI has no requirement to stop a note before starting another. Some instruments can actually play two of the same notes at the same time. A guitar is an example.

If VST piano sends a second "note start" without a "note off" I think the correct thing for it to do is stop the current note (because the VST knows it is piano and not a guitar and then play the "pedal down" sample for that note. This is not so exotic a sollution that we should assume every VST gets it wrong. It would be easy to impements and I'd bet at least some get it right.

If you bought a sample set to be loaded and played inside Kontakt or EXS24 then you could, yourself make sure that it is done right. But if it's a self contained VAST there'd be no way to know what is going on inside.

Yes, that makes sense to me.

And it seems wrong to me that the Yamaha is sending a note off after three strikes, given the lack of a pairing requirement for note-on/off.

Ya, it also makes more sense to me if it would send noteons when the key is half-depressed and only send the noteoff when you fully release the key.

Then it would mute all prior notes with that #.

Thats would be the most accurate depiction of a real escapement spring mechanism in tandem with the key damper, IMO.

Then a physical model VST like Pianoteq could interpret that correctly to try and implement the exact sound of the hammer hitting an already vibrating and undampened string, and when the noteoff is sent just put the 'virtual damper' down.

Damn, I wish I could plug a notebook computer into a CLP-340 and after into a CLP-320, p-155 or another GH keyboard.

I'm using a CLP-S308, which is GH3.

I'm also using Pianoteq. From what I could hear (briefly) last night, it does seem to handle the multiple note-ons correctly.

I was though unable to get more than three in a row, due to the Yamaha behavior (which IMO is wrong).

I'll listen again more closely tonight, and also compare to the internal tone generator behavor.

Womble, are you running Pianoteq into the AUX IN of the S308 or using external speakers?

Headphones (Sennheiser HD-565 Ovation) connected to my laptop.

I've not tried running it through the aux-in yet, although I plan to. I just dug out all my cables for that this evening and now its too late (my son is sleeping) to use the speakers.