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Well, you could pick just about any Etude that has pedalling in it. Op. 10 No 11 or 12, for example. No need to point out measures, it is a problem all the way through.
You know, though, I never did decide that 32 notes was the only limitation. The pedalled sound is thinner than a real grand piano and does not build up to nearly the same extent, but that might be partially due to notes dropping out and also due to the clinically clean pedal.
Not to make too fine a point of it, but I also have been performing in public. I started playing at 5 and gave my first public perfance in front of 300-some people when I was 7. Too bad you aren't in my neck of the woods - I will be performing Brahms Bb concerto in in 3 or 4 months, as soon as the date is finalized.
BTW, when keyboards are advertised as 32 notes of polyphony that almost always refers to mono voices. Stereo voices half that. For example, the old CLP123 advertised 32 notes of polyphony but when you played the stereo piano it was only 16. The 32 notes on the Gran Touch were frequently note enough, but the 16 notes on the CLP123 was horrible!
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I'm still waiting to hear the specific pieces and the specific measures where you feel 32 note polyphony is not adequate.
Sorry for the late reply, Dave. Some of us work for a living. I've already answered this question several times on this board. A search through the archives will give you more detailed results. But I'll answer it one more time: Different manufacturers rate their polyphony in different ways on different products. Roland, for example, rates their polyphony in "stereo voices". So in other words, a single note played uses up only a single voice of polyphony. On some keyboards made by other manufacturers, a single note uses two voices (one for stereo left, one for right). Some keyboards utilize a layered approach to acoustic piano sound design. One sample might just be the attack, while another layer handles the sustain. Thus a single note actually uses 4 voices of polyphony. I'm sure you're familiar with "velocity switching" (different samples that are triggered based on how hard a key is pressed). Some keyboards allocate polyphony based on the number of tones in a patch -- even if those samples are not actually triggered due to the velocity in which the key is pressed. In other words, even if only the loudest sample in a 4-sample velocity-switched patch is played, some keyboards actually operate as if the other 3 patches have been played. If this patch is a stereo sample, we're now talking up to 8 voices of polyphony for a single note. And remember, we're not talking about layers like strings/piano, etc. These are simply piano patches. Now consider the sustain/hold pedal: Many less expensive keyboards are unable to "reset" fast enough to free up polyphony EVEN IF the pedal is reset. It's an issue of RAM and processor speed. I'd normally just ignore your posts, Dave. It's obvious that you're not well-informed about technology. And this being the internet and all, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. But your tendancy to put your status as a "professional" (although you also say you're retired) in the forefront in order to give authority to your posts is troubling, as you're misleading people about technology you obviously know very little about. Your desire to educate people on the importance of technique is admirable. Keep doing it. Your enthusiasm for the GranTouch is great -- you're entitled to your opinion. But be careful about universalizing your own experience when in reality, you're a little out of the technology loop. I suspect that's what is sticking in Ryan's craw as well (although I'll let him answer for himself).
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SteveY, great lecture on polyphony! couldn't thank you enough for it.
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SteveY, thanks for the explanation.
Let's put this way, if an _acoustic_ piano were suddenly limited to 32 note polyphony, would anyone notice? At what level of polyphony would the polyphony police start knocking on doors and making arrests? (My argument uses one note played equals one note polyphony, OK?)
(Thirty-two notes in real playing come with playing a four note chord in the left hand while the right hand plays a scale for four octaves while the sustain pedal is depressed. Also bear in mind that a note will sustain for seven to eight seconds or less depending on how hard the key is depressed. When a note is no longer heard it gets removed from the total count. As an aside, my P250 has 128 polyphony which I will never exhaust unless I decide to sequence a Mahler symphony; I suspect even then, 128 note polyphony will be more than enough just as 32 note polyphony is just fine for piano playing, well, for at least my playing.)
Yamaha AvantGrand N1X | Roland RD 2000 | Sennheiser HD 598 headphones
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Originally posted by Dave Horne: <<<Apparently, some 32-note polyphony keyboards will only produce half that number of notes if the sound is in stereo, although this by no means apply to all keyboards. Please correct me if I am wrong.>>>
You wrote 'apparently' ... which pianos are you referring to?
32 note polyphony means just that ... 32 notes. the original poster is quite correct. it is very normal for a keyboard to only have half of the total polyphony when using stereo patches. This includes the Korg Trinity (which i owned), and many other keyboards. This is very very common. 32 note polyphony means 32 unique voices at the same time. If it's designed so that a stereo patch uses 2 unique voices per note played, then that is 16 notes.
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Originally posted by SteveY: [QUOTE]I suspect that's what is sticking in Ryan's craw as well (although I'll let him answer for himself). Nice explanation of polyphony. It was probably good to step back to discuss how polyphony numbers are derived (and frequently fudged!). One of the big selling points of Yamaha's Motif ES synths was that voice layers did not eat polyphony so that you can use all four layers in a voice and still have 128 notes. Also, nice explanation of what was sticking in my craw. That was certainly part of it. The other part was my own astonishment that a pianists would claim to not hear a difference between real grand pianos and a digital. And worse, I (and you) were called dishonest because we do hear a difference, a significant difference! I tripped all over my own words trying to explain the differences between digital and real pianos and how they couldn't possibly sound the same, especially to the human ear which is still the best frequency analyzer in existance. As an aside, both you and I know there are ways around many or all of the limitations I threw out, but most of these were not implemented in the Gran Touch to my knowledge. They are implemented in my fairly expensive Steinway sample library, however. And even with the best technology my ear can tell in 2 seconds whether a recorded piano is real or not. Hope I'm not accused for being dishonest again, but it's true. Honest! R'yan
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//The other part was my own astonishment that a pianists would claim to not hear a difference between real grand pianos and a digital.//
An acoustic piano can be heard without amplification so in order to level the playing field, as it were, we would have to record acoustic pianos and then compare them to a recording of a sampled piano, fair enough? I would also be willing to bet that ambient room noise (pedal sounds, squeaking chairs, coughing, etc.) plays a role as well in influencing people's ears.
I think many 'golden ears' might have a difficult time telling an acoustic piano recording from a sampled piano recording if ambient room noise were added. If the piano were in a 'mix', it would get even more difficult.
Yamaha AvantGrand N1X | Roland RD 2000 | Sennheiser HD 598 headphones
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32 note polyphony means 32 unique voices at the same time. If it's designed so that a stereo patch uses 2 unique voices per note played, then that is 16 notes. Correct. That's why some manufacturers have changed their vocabulary from defining polyphony in terms of "notes" to other terms like "voice" or "tone". For example, Roland uses the term "voice" instead of "note" as the latter seems to indicate a specific pitch or key being played, and the former speaks more to the specific "sound" that is being played. I know -- still confusing, but at least the companies are trying to simplify things.
PianoWorld disclaimer: musician, producer, arranger, author, clinician, consultant, PS2 aficionado, secret agent...
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I think many 'golden ears' might have a difficult time telling an acoustic piano recording from a sampled piano recording if ambient room noise were added. If the piano were in a 'mix', it would get even more difficult. It's true that there are many tricks that can be used to make a digital sound like an acoustic on a recording. But most of the tricks depend on the piano being neck-deep in a rhythm section, a style of music that is highly compressed, and an uneducated listener. That's not to say that there aren't some amazing samples out there. But at the end of the day, it takes an enormous amount of work to fool an expert!!!
PianoWorld disclaimer: musician, producer, arranger, author, clinician, consultant, PS2 aficionado, secret agent...
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Piano
by Gino2 - 04/17/24 02:34 PM
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Piano
by Gino2 - 04/17/24 02:23 PM
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