Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards V-Piano presets exchange! How many piano sounds can you get?

Following on from a suggestion from another thread, I am starting this new one for V-Piano owners and anyone who has access to a V-Piano. (Sorry, not applicable to anyone else .)

As we know, the Roland V-Piano is the only DP that uses modelling technology which means that its sound is generated from scratch, not sampled from existing pianos. So, the piano sounds you can obtain from it can be customized to your liking, from any of the 24 factory presets. (No synthesizer/organ/Hammond organ/marimba/celeste/onde martenot/harp/harpsichord/clavichord/string sounds are possible).

These are a few of the ones I've customized on my V-Piano, all based on favourite acoustic grand piano sounds. Any suggestions for improvements to them are welcome, as well as your own customizations. And feel free to comment on how close you think I've got to the real thing. (Bear in mind that I listen to my V-Piano only through my AKG K271 MkII headphones).

Parameters:
t=tuning h=hammer cr=cross resonance, sr=string resonance, sb=soundboard resonance, sl=sound lift, tc=tone color (all those not listed here remain at default setting)

Firstly, increase the decay time to +70 and damping time to +30 for all of them, to bring the sustain up to concert grand level.

'Bösendorfer' (from V1 Concert) t-60 h+70 cr+20 sr+20 sb+75 sl 0 tc+2

'Fazioli' (from All Silver 1) t-15 h-10 cr 0 sr+10 sb+10 sl+10 tc+1

'Steinway & Sons' (from All Triple) t-30 h+10 cr+25 sr 0 sb 0 sl+10 tc 0

'Yamaha CF-IIIS' (from V1 Concert) t-10 h+10 cr+20 sr +10 sb+10 sl+20 tc+3

Those are the most convincing ones, whose sounds I know well from playing on the respective concert grands. But here are a few others that are more speculative, in that I've never played on their concert grands personally (though in most cases I've played on their smaller grands and uprights), and am basing them mostly on CD recordings:

'C. Bechstein' (from Triple Power) t-70 h+20 cr+20 sr+20 sb 0 sl+10 tc-2

'Blüthner' (from V2 Concert) t-25 h 0 cr+50 sr+5 sb+10 sl+25 tc 0

'Baldwin' (from All Silver 2) t-15 h 0 cr 0 sr-10 sb+10 sl+10 tc-2

'Mason & Hamlin' (from V1 Session) t-20 h 0 cr 0 sr+10 sb+15 sl+10 tc-2

'Shigeru Kawai' (from Hybrid Silver) t-10 h 0 cr+20 sr+20 sb+20 sl+20 tc 0

'Pleyel' (P280, not Chopin's c 1849!) (from V1 Mellow) t-30 h 0 cr 0 sr 0 sb 0 sl+30 tc+3

'Steingraeber & Söhne' (from Silver Dynamic) t-20 h+5 cr 0 sr+20 sb+20 sl+20 tc+1

'Grotrian-Steinweg' (from Triple Power) t-5 h+10 cr+30 sr+30 sb+40 sl 0 tc 0

More customizations for your enjoyment/annoyance (delete as appropriate) based on the new Evolution upgrades:

'Stuart & Sons' (from V1 Impactance) sl+10 sr+10 sb+10 cr+10 tc+2

'Klavins 370' (from Triple Large) sr+10 sb+10 cr+10 tc+3 (note: decay time and damping time remain at 0 for this as Triple Large already has extended dt & dt)

'Ravenscroft' (from Metallic SB) sl+10 sr+20 sb-10 cr+20 tc-2

and from one of the original presets, a brand new setting that I've enjoyed recently ....'Steingraeber E-272' (from V1 Mellow) sl+20 sr+30 sb+100 cr+30 tc+5

New for 2012: Presenting the Yamaha CFX, which replaces the CF-IIIS as Yamaha's flagship concert grand....
From V1 Concert:
sound lift +25
soft pedal sense 0
string resonance +50
soundboard resonance +60
key off resonance +50
unison tune -50
stretch tune Deep
hammer hardness -30
cross resonance +50
decay time +80
tone color +3
damping time +40
damper noise level 0
tone EQ nil

I always thought the Yamaha CP1 used modeling as well ... ?

and the Promega from GeneralMusic ... ?

I think any the only thing that marginally passes as "modeling" for the AP voices in either is their sympathetic resonance algorithms. GEM lists a bunch of stuff under the modeling section of their manual, and Yamaha SCM gives some control over hammer stiffness, but at their core they seem to be plain old looped and stretched piano samples, not models.

Interesting that you use Vintage 1 to make your Bosendorfer...Roland specifically claim that Vintage 2 is supposed to be a Bosendorfer...I really couldn't stand V2 - a very unrealistic noise in my view.

Good luck with this thread...it would be interesting to know just how many V-Pianos are out there...not many I should think. If money were no object I'd buy another just to test your settings! There are elements of the thing that I miss...the dymanics of it mainly.

Cheers,

Steve

Does anyone think (or hope) that v2.0 will be able to model electric pianos as well?

Add that functionality, make it a tad smaller, and cheaper, and I'll be on-board. Is that asking too much?

No, entirely reasonable. I know there are people within Roland UK who would very much like to see the V-Piano feature some decent EP sounds.

thanks for this topic!

Maybe some audio uploads from different presets would be nice, for us non-V Piano-owners!

I shall contribute some settings soon .

Have my hands full stripping an acoustic upright at the moment. Gave myself a christmas break and a christmas project.

Thank you sincerely for initiating Bennevis.

How many piano sound can you get? That all sound the same? Plenty!

That's one of the limitations of the V-Piano.

Funny, never took notice of V2, probably because it is unappealing to me; but I tried a few adj and it sounds much better. Am wondering if the Evolution upgrade has helped improve some of these models. I just use #28 for practice. Also, some have used the software modeling approach with a laptop to fine tune the simulations with some claimed sucess.

A reviewer on performingmusician.com claims to have made progress by introducing imperfections:

"So, did it sound as if I were playing a real grand piano through any of these? Well, not at first. Nor did my fingers feel as if they were playing a real grand piano; they still felt as if they were playing a very high-quality electronic instrument.

"To investigate this, I played the middle ‘C’ on my Broadwood and on the V-Piano. I then repeated the exercise right across the keyboards of both instruments. In every register, the Roland lacked all sorts of ‘stuff’, and I realised that Roland’s factory settings were a little too conservative for my taste. To overcome this, I first tried to identify the resonant frequencies that give my piano its individual character. The V-Piano’s main EQ section offers four bands that can be configured as four peaking EQs or as two peaking EQs flanked by a low and a high shelf and, after some experimentation, I found that a moderate bass boost around 200Hz and a couple of peaks at 1600Hz and 2kHz made all the difference to the timbre. The body was there, and the mid-range now sounded nicer, but the top end was less realistic than it had been before I had started. Wouldn’t it be excellent, I thought, if there were a way to stop the top end from becoming overly bright while retaining the peaky EQ across the whole of the range? Well, there is or I wouldn’t have mentioned it. The tone EQ allows you to insert a single equaliser into each of four user-defined zones, so I selected the notes from C6 upward and rolled off the high end with a broad Q filter. Much better.

"I next turned my attention to the envelope of the sound. Pressing the same key on my Broadwood and on the V-Piano showed that the sound of the Roland decayed far more quickly than the sound of the acoustic piano, so I found the Decay Time parameter and extended this almost to its maximum. Then I extended the Damping Time so that notes cut off a little less abruptly when I released the damper pedal.

"Now the illusion was becoming convincing, but perhaps the greatest breakthrough occurred when I started to mess around with the parameters of individual notes. My Broadwood is tuned professionally, but there are still notes that are slightly more detuned than others and some that cause strong resonances in the mechanism and case. I decided to replicate some of these anomalies on the V-Piano, using the editor to draw a bit more detune here, some more resonance here, and a clattering, harder hammer over there. The results were remarkable — the imperfections caused the whole thing to come alive, as no other digital piano has done before."

link

Interesting stuff. I tweaked around with mine but probably not to this extent. Whatever I did it essentially sounded like the same piano, across all presets and variations thereof. And the problem was I didn't like it very much in the midrange where there was always this synthesised artificial noise behind the note. Once it got into my head it's all I could hear and I deeply regret to say I ended up hating the thing.

I quite like the article linked-to above...not just because the reviewer found ways to adjust things to his liking, but that he has a grip of what makes all the other DPs inferior in a pure engineering sense, ie, he understands the limitations of sample based systems. And lastly, the mighty RD-1000 (which I also own - and love) is mentioned in appropriately reverential terms.

It's a shame there are not more V-Piano owners to share settings on this thread - it could have become quite a vibrant exchange of ideas like the Kawai CA93 thread.

Cheers,

Steve

The V-Piano is out of my budget range, but I'm hoping that modelling can be developed into the future of DP's included sounds. The "imperfections" approach is appealing.

Quite interesting!

Here are some samples for the MKS-20, the rackmount version:

http://www.synthmania.com/mks-20.htm

I must say that the pianos sound pretty poor. Is this a faithful representation of the sound in the RD-1000?

I do very much like keyboards and modules that are highly programmable and rely purely on synthesis and not samples, as the variability then is limited only by the architecture and one's imagination. There's no technical reason a sampled instrument couldn't have similar variability, but only Nord trusts us to freely upload and manage the sample sets in our DPs.


Perhaps it's just as well, I'm not sure the PW server could handle the overload of smilies that this thread might generate.

The instrument is like "The Emperor's New Clothes"; When you own a Stein or a CFIII,you really humble yourself as you play. It seems that the V core model is the same across all the default sounds and only superficial changes can be made. Of course any sound can be modeled by the V. Look for Rhoads or Hammond patches in the future as the product evolves. I find that the "vertical" choice is the closest match to my C6. It is one that can play a midrange accurately and has the least "artificial noise"; however it is muffled and has to be tweaked. Use the equilizer to add some treble and it's "ok". For my money it is a solid unit, the only one that doesn't shake when played hard, and has low fatigue.

Yes and no. Piano 1 can sound better than that but...how do I put this?...The old RD is an instrument in the truest sense...it is the dynamics of the thing that you have to experience to believe. Elton John - most of us know him - in his entire touring career played exclusively Steinway from his breakthrough in 1970 until his sabbatical due to throat problems at the end of 1986. He is the best player I have ever seen...I make no comment about his songwriting, singing, celebrity, personality, private life or the f*cking Lion King...but he is the best player I have seen. He switched to the RD-1000 until it went out of production in 1993. Since that time he has used a Yamaha CF-IIIS carcass but his sound is still RD-1000...this is the principle tonality in his sound and is what provides the dynamic contrasts with further reinforcement from Yamaha Motif Power Grand I believe. You'd have to ask why he used/uses this thing but anyone who has ever played one knows the answer. Watched Status Quo for a few minutes last night from Montreux in 2009...their old 1000 still going strong.

My theory is this - the original Roland SAS was sufficiently different to a real piano to be something in its own right - like the Yamaha Electric Grand or Rhodes - but it behaves like a real piano, it can articulate the player's touch so faithfully and allows the player to use light and dark and everything in between...still the best after all these years. But if it's sonic fidelity to a real piano you are looking for it would disappoint. Anyway this is all off topic but I can never resist an opportunity to wax lyrical about the RD-1000!

Cheers,

Steve

According to a member of the EltonJohn.com forum (user "maxb162"), the acoustic portion of Elton's Yamaha is still used, in two ways:

1. It always "shapes" the sound, however he doesn't say how. I.e, even when the acoustic sound is not used, it is still used in some way to shape the sound from the electronic piano sounds. (MKS20 & Motif).

2. They gradually mix in more of the acoustic SOUND, as the concert progresses. I.e, they fine tune it on the fly.

If you search for keywords maxb162 & mks20 on site forums.prospero.com it should give you the relevant posts.
(here's a Search Link )

I don't like Elton's modern piano sound much at all. It sounds sort of electronic and cheesy to me. I prefer his older Steinway sound. One song (which uses ONLY the RD1000 or MKS20, I suspect) that I do like a lot though is "I don't wanna go on with you like that" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUU1vGuaurc

I had a cut down RD1000 (the old RD300SX - not the current one). It had a very smooth change of timbre with velocity, but it's sound was lacking. For example, I preferred the cross-fade Rhodes in the Kurzweil PX1000 module. This just used TWO layers, but the result was good. The non cross-faded versions were very nice too.

Greg.

(the fidelity of that song in iTunes is MUCH better. There's a section in the song where the piano is very prominent. My RD300SX never sounded that good, no matter how much EQ I used!)

GReg.

I've grown a bit tired of EJ's piano sound...it is ALWAYS the same and I am sceptical about claims that the acoustic piano is used at all. I would rather hear a real piano, knowing that sometimes it would work out better than other times. I also fully agree about I Don't Wanna Go On With You Like That...pure RD-1000 and a good example of how to use the RD's sound. As I say, the main attraction is the way is plays, not the way it sounds (although I like it) - I'd rather hear a Steinway (or whatever).

Steve