Discover the “symphonic piano”
Imagine your piano with all of its expression become a real orchestra under your fingers and revive real musicians who have been recorded!
Imagine being able to record, without a time limit, everything you play in real time (your improvisations or compositions) and release an already very readable orchestral score!
Imagine having recorded in real time your improvisation with many changes of tempi, to be able to adapt musical measures and rhythm in a clever and fast way for your whole orchestra!
It is from two extra-ordinary softwares : Steinberg Cubase and Vienna Instrument with which the Vienna Symphonic Library is associated that this dream has come true.
I invite you to listen to the improvisation filmed in real time. This has not been the subject of any retouching, it explains the false notes, the passages without inspiration where I stop, the notes played too strongly, etc ..!
I invite you to turn your attention to :
- changes in instruments or groups of instruments
- changes in the changing music register
- changes in musical articulations.
The architecture of the symphonic piano is based on great rules of balance in orchestration. The way to play on the symphonic piano is similar to that of the harpists: these set their 7 pedals so as to define the tone of the notes they will play subsequently. Any change in tone must be anticipated by changing the pedal that is before playing the notes corresponding to the new tone. The analogy with the large organ is similar: the organist pulls out the stops before playing on the keyboard.
The symphonic piano uses 7 continuous control pedals which will allow the hands complete freedom to play. The positioning of each pedal will make it possible to change instruments or groups of instruments in real time, to change musical registers and to change musical articulations (for example, to move from a legato to a staccato), extremely fast and accurately.
The principle is simple: the positioning of the pedals must precede the playing of the note. However, once the note or chord has been played, any pedal changes will not affect the notes or chords played and not yet released, but only the issuing of the following notes.
Your principal keyboard is divided into two main parts: the accompanying instruments on the left and the solo or main instruments on the right of your keyboard. For the accompanying instruments, a pedal of register change will allow you to cover a range of almost 6 octaves.
At the extreme left of the keyboard: you will find introductory notes : “the keyswitches”, the possibility of making crescendo, or ascending scales and arpeggios or in reverse, decrescendo and descending scales or arpeggios.
At the far right of the keyboard: “keyswitches” for percussion instruments.
At the level of the Vienna Instruments, all sounds are arranged in matrix which will be classified identically and in real time for all the instruments of the orchestra. For the accompanying instruments, these are situated in the matrix.
The four main pedals are:
- the pedal of registers change which will allow mixing the accompanying instruments and to cover almost six octaves.
- the pedal of musical articulations makes it possible to change the articulation for both the accompanying instruments and the main instruments. Depending on the position of this pedal either all the instruments will have the same musical articulation or they will have a different one.
- the 3rd and 4th pedals correspond to the selection of the main instrument and also the staging according to high, medium or low musical registers between different voices (choruses, Tutti or soli strings)
The cubase software is used by activating (for recording or only for games) 95 tracks. These tracks are filtered thanks to small programs that are the input transformers.
At the end of a recording, powerful macros, true programmes allow to output a score that will be faithful to what you have played. It will suffice to adjust the rhythm and the musical measures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZyA953Jhqg
