Why Are Sampled Pianos SO RUBBISH???

While I support Christian and Crow Hill, wish them well, and is looking forward to their products, I still have to say I don't really agree with the premise. There ARE really great moldable and dynamic pianos out there already. Take a look at Garritan CFX, Native Instruments Noire, Fracture Sounds' various pianos, Spectrasonics' Keyscape, and also the most moldable one: Pianoteq. And there are more out there in fact. The problem, according to myself, is mostly the actual keyboard and its weighted keys. Nice idea for a video though and so far I enjoy the instruments you are coming up with. Cheers!

I just use Keyscape for pianos. It’s very realistic because it has adequate velocity layers and the Spectrasonics folks did an immaculate job matching all the samples and provide the user control over the sound.

My classical piano setup is Pianoteq with a Yamaha CF50 as the keyboard. If your hardware keyboard doesn't feel like a piano, you can't play it like a piano, and the difference is audible. As for the vst, anything with samples feel like playing a tape recorder. Played one note at a time, sometimes sampled pianos sound better, but playing more than one note just doesn't feel like playing a single unified piano.

Funny, I was just thinking about this subject earlier today. Because when I've recorded live piano it always has this life that sample piano's just don't have. Which is kind of strange considering how one would think a piano should be a relatively straight forward instrument to sample.  And I think it mainly comes down to a couple of thing:  1. Natural resonance in the instrument, especially when you play with big differences in dynamics(like quickly going from very soft to very loud, the instrument reacts differently than samples do).  2. How when you play the same note repeatedly(especially while holding the sustain pedal down), a real piano usually resonates/reacts/sounds different from a sampled piano. 3. How playing multiple notes together affects the overall sound(which simply doesn't happen with samples, where every note is sampled individually).  4. How sampled pianos are typically recorded and engineered in such a way that they sound much too sterile and clean(sure, there are exceptions, like the Vertical Piano), while recording live piano often gives me a lot more character. Perhaps 1-3 are all pretty much about the same thing, the natural resonance response in the instrument, that is not translated when playing static samples(even with all the velocity layers and round robins in the world), or maybe there is more to it than just resonance.

Keyscape and Acoustic Samples C7 Grand are the most realistic piano libraries I've played. I have spent hundreds of hours on a real Yamaha C7 and when I play the sampled version, it literally tricks my brain into thinking I'm hearing (a great recording) of the real thing.

Why I use Pianoteq? Dynamics. I can set it how ever I want. I can always squash it later with compressor, but I want dynamics when I record. Sampled pianos always lack that. Pianoteq is an instrument. Sampled piano is a sampled instrument.

I understand that you’re trying to sell a product and therefore want to create the idea you’ve got something special to offer, which is fine. But the things you’re saying about other products on the market can at best be described as an ‘opinion’, but calling it misleading would probably be more accurate. We’ve progressed far beyond the Korg M1 piano sound you show a small clip of. There are quite a few options on the market that offer great dynamic range with many sample layers, offering a realistic sound with smooth transition from the softest to the loudest played parts. Also ‘less perfect’ pianos with ‘character’ can be found in many libraries. So your piano offering these features is fine, but not really unique. Ironically your demonstration of your piano sound in this video, although okay sounding, didn’t demonstrate that ‘great dynamic range’ you claim is missing in other libraries at all. 😅

The whole vibrating and resonating of all the parts of a vertical piano, let alone a grand piano, and the whole interference of all those vibrations can never be reproduced by whatever speaker system. Also the tuning can be very delicately different from pure equal tempered adding a lot of character and specific blending. And then the touch of the keys and the whole key mechanism. Forget it, you'll never get there...

I think part of the issue is how MIDI velocity works. Its not measuring dynamics at all, its effectively measuring the speed between two switches. Plus, it doesn't matter how good or bad your technique is - someone else has gone through and played all the keys before you did. You're playing someone else's performance

The shed's looking a little bare but you're looking happier and healthy in this video which is good. Keep at it!

Stina Nordenstam!! Legend. Took me back to my student years in the 90s. A disgrace that she's not better known. great rendition.

I love the videos in the shed.The lighting is great.I still play your old videos,hahaha keep up the teaching.

This is funny coming from the creator of the 400$ Hans Zimmer Piano library lol (just kidding, I really appreciate everything you do for composers, Christian).

The biggest problems for me with sampled pianos I face as a mastering engineer is that they cannot provide phase coherence at the bottom end. A sampled piano note played with another sampled piano note below Middle C is NOT REMOTELY the same as the sound of both notes being played together. With two sampled notes together, the phase intreractions cause comb filtering of the low end. I'm sure this is why piano sample libraries always have over-hyped stereo - they sound great in stereo. Try summing them to mono and hear all the low end of notes disappear with random gay abandon.

I hope the mention of a realistic bassoon was a reference to Synthesizer Patel from Look Around You, even if subconsciously 😆

Very interesting vid. Soooo good to see the Shed!! I would love to come work for/with you.

Your piano part reminded me of Ben Folds. Great sounding piano! I suspect one of the great difficulties in creating a real souilful, responsive sampled piano is that it's virtually impossible to capture how different notes (when played as a chord) interact rather uniquely with the space around them inside a room

The fundamental problem seems to me not to be the dynamics, but the fact that the strings of a piano interact with each other through resonances, a feature that most other instruments just lack. If you would want to capture that with samples you’d need different samples per combination of struck strings, which is of course not feasible do do in a generalized way since there are millions of possible combinations, especially if you also consider the cases where the player does not hit the keys as block chords but some frequencies are already decaying when new frequencies come in. That is why physical modeling has really got an edge over sampling if it involves pianos.

I can't believe I just found this channel. I am obsessed with your Fly on the Wall studio session video. Very talented and thank you for sharing your knowledge and life.

I have spent ages crafting my own piano setup on my DAW so i can use it across a wide range of music styles. It consists of four midi tracks and two return channels. 1) Grand piano setting in Ableton live. 2) American Grand vst Arturia anolog lab V 3) German Gand vst Arturia anolog lab V 4) Savoy piano vst Arturia anolog lab 4 A return track with reverb and one with delay. Track one's piano i use the full range of the keys, track two is for the bottom half of the keys eq. For a boost on bass, track three for the top half eq. for highs and track 4 is eq. Egressively for that mid range punch. My reverb is eq. To roll off all the low end and the delay is just there in the background and peters of quickly.