Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Ivory II, my first impressions

I was at first going to ask "in whose recording?" only to then discover that 2:20 lines up to the same spot in both our recordings, and both of us emphasize the melody there.

Its an important part of the piece imo, and it is often overlooked by people playing the normal triplets there. I also emphasize the melody clashing with the bass octave's in bar 56-57, the most beautiful bars of the whole piece imo.

For me the most beautiful part of the piece is the progression at bars 40-41. I like 56-57 insofar as they setup the three bass octaves of bar 58, which crescendo up to a climax. Though I typically play them with more zeal than I did in that recording, which in retrospect I now find a bit disappointing in that sense.

Victor - I've been playing piano for 35 years (wow, I'm getting old) and, probably like many of those here, I've had the opportunity in my life to play a huge variety of acoustic pianos. Your recording sounds very realistic to me, too.

A few years ago, having been dissatisfied with the sound from digital pianos, I purchased East-West Bosendorfer 290 and used it on MIDI solo piano recordings I had made in college. The result sounded artificial to me, unfortunately. Ivory II sounds quite a bit better. And to be fair, I think the East-West product has probably been updated since I tried it.

As an aside, I have been disappointed by every digital piano I've tried except the V-Piano, to which EssBrace compared the Ivory II sound. The V-Piano plays and sounds better than any DP I have tried (caveat - I have not tried the Yamaha AvantGrands). It is possible that I just have a different taste than some others here.

Euhm... you mean the progression from the rising/falling arpeggio back into the main theme? (thats 40-41) Yeah thats beautiful too ofcourse, though not something I would note as special about the piece. The thing that intrigues me about 56-57 is that they give a very new progression from E to A. The specific note's I'm talking about is:

LH: Octaved A on RH: C#,
LH: Octaved A on RH: D#

and if you place an accent on both the A in the left hand, as well as the G# before the second A, you will hear what I mean, the second time around its:

LH: Octaved G# on RH: C
LH: Octaved G# on RH: C#

again the accent on both the G# in the left hand, as well as the F# before the second G#

You don't hear this in many recordings, but imo, it is really one of the most beautiful things ever written. A new and unexpected transition back into the main theme. If you however play it as the normal triplets that are in the whole piece, it is nothing special. Therefore, please try it, put that accent on the note before repeating the octave. I think you will be surprised!

Cheers,

Victor

Different taste is good. As long as you play a quality digital piano, you can transfer quite easily to a normal piano, plus it of course has many advantages. I live in an apartment for now, and even though a grand piano is well within my budget, a place to put it is not. So I know that for the next 2 years I will be playing mainly on my DP, but thats fine, because I can learn just as much on it as on a real piano. Ivory II lets met play for 90% as expressive as a real grand, so that means that I can learn a lot of pieces on it, and finnish them off on a real piano.

Cheers!

-> It is very late, yet I still want to share this with you.

Thank you for your constructive criticism! I will thoroughly read every post and understand which accentuation he/she is talking about. I will reply

Lets get to the VERY interesting discovery. Earlier in this thread I asked, whether "voices" had been sampled accidentally, or if I was going crazy.
Check this out:

This is the settings I had prior to hearing this "phenomenon", using Ivory II in Cantabile:



When playing the first couple bars (listen to audio demo for exact length) of Moonlight Sonata
with pressed una corda AND sustain pedal and NOT depressing them,
you hear the strings ringing and slowly fading, but what you then hear is not the piano lol,
I hear a very strange sound, like a woman saying "hey" or "ey" at the very end.

Listen for yourself, you can clearly hear it several times at the very end.
http://www.box.net/shared/g9m5gg42f1


Something must've went absolutely wrong during the sampling process for this to be recorded.
I also had this voice-like artifact at the very end of the Moonlight Sonata, when the last chord was played and is left ringing out, so it does have a realworld impact on playing pieces.

So far I was only able to hear this "artifact" using the exact settings as seen above (Concert D 18 Lvl 2 etc.)
using 128 voices etc.

Please try to reproduce this with your copy of Ivory II.
During the course of playing the Moonlight Sonata, I've heard quite a few other interesting sounds,
but those deserve a seperate post.

Well I've had an interesting day messing around with SSD technology. Yesterday I knew nothing about it, so today I'm learning. I decided to buy a 64 Gig SSD for my computer. First problem was hooking it up, I thought it just needed a SATA cable, but like any other hard drive it also needs to have the power cable hooked up as well. That took me about a half hour to figure out. So then it showed up in my bios but not in Windows>My Computer screen. After another half hour of pulling my hair out, I discovered it had to be initialized, formatted, and a drive letter added in the Windows Disk Management section of Windows.

So now it's showing up in Windows. So I transferred a bunch of files from the Ivory file folder, and I tried to change the path of where Ivory would search for files to the "E'. Then everything got messed up and I couldn't use Ivory any more, The piano files wouldn't even show up in my Ivory browser. After a couple of hours I gave up uninstalled Ivory and re-installed it so I could at least use it again.

My SSD "E" drive still has the C7 and Steinway files on it, but I'm not sure on how to change the browser's file path so it can find them. At this point I'm just happy to have Ivory running again.

I'm not complaining, as I am making progress with this new to me technology of SSD's. I'm learning lots.

CS, that was freaky! Like hearing a ghost ... well whatever ghosts sound like! I was listening on headphones and had to resist the temptation to turn to look.

I've also listened to some of Victor's recordings and have really enjoyed the contributions made on this thread. You've been playing 12 months you say? Groan, I'll keep hammering away then ... literally Seriously though, well done.

I was involved in the high-end audio industry for many years, both professionally and personally, so while I didn't (don't) play an instrument myself, it was my job to learn to listen pretty carefully. I'd really love to hear this application in real life as I feel the whole process of recording it (on typically fairly "ordinary" equipment), then undoubtedly lossy-compressing the heck out of it to squeeze it onto the net is hardly doing it justice. Notwithstanding that, it's probably the closest I've heard to a "real" sound. However the Eb sounds very strange to me, I could hear it during the piece, and managed to see which note it was towards the very end. It sounds more like a doorbell than a piano!!! Does it sound like that in real life?

Again, thanks for sharing.

Pete

With my Ivory Italian grand I renamed or moved the "Ivory Items" folder, so that Ivory cannot find it. On startup it then asks for the path.

@PeteF - The 12 months, you weren't talking about me I hope, cause that would be closer to 14 years

About the Eb, do you mean on the Yamaha?

No I was addressing most of that post to "CruelStrings" and their post with the YouTube link. They said they'd only been playing 12 months.

Victor I know the equipment you have, do you hear what I'm talking about in that YouTube post? I believe you have a critical ear, how do you find the performance of the app in real life compared to files made ready for the net?

Pete

Which specific link are you talking about? I'l gladly take a listen.

My recordings have no processing whatsoever, they are exactly how they come out of my headphones when I'm silent-practicing.

The one above, on this page. I'm not sure how to post the YouTube link again, but look up on this page to the embedded YouTube link by CruelStrings, post #1535350.

Having listened again I don't notice as much this time, no maybe my own system was loaded when I was playing it, but around 5:17 of the recordings, both flats there sound a bit "odd" to me, especially the Eb. I very much expect the sample would be spot on, so either it's my own system, the compression, or my crap hearing

Pete

99.98% it is my crap playing

I just tried re-naming the Ivory file, restarted the program and nothing happened, it didn't ask for a new file path, it just opened, and when I went to select a piano, there's nothing there to select. So I renamed the Ivory file back to the original name and re-opened the program and the piano's re-appeared.

ATTENTION ALL CURRENT IVORY II OWNERS

Okay I was able to locate the exact key and velocity where this ghostly voice appears.

Sound example: Click Me (voice at 0:33)
I would love to have a midi file for easy reproduction, but the sustain/una corda movements are not saved in the midi file, only the keypress itself for some reason.

Follow these steps to reproduce this sound with your local Ivory II installation:

1. Load the Concert D Grand II Factory preset in Cantabile
2. Enable Release Samples and Soft Samples
3. In Session View set Silent Key Vel to 4, and Voices to 128
*increase Gain to +10db for good measure
4. Press down on on una corda and sustain pedal
4. Press the G#2 key at medium velocity (54)

When you let the key ring out, you will hear after around 30 seconds a female voice saying "hey" or whatever it is she is saying.

This is no natural occurance in any earthly piano I know of.
Synthogy needs to address this issue! The curling resonance in E3 (una corda) is also troublesome, but not nearly as important as this voice.

I kindly ask every Ivory owner to try this on their own computer and report, whether they can reproduce it.

I dont have Ivory II so I cant tell how far it is comparable.
I intend to get the Italian upgrade, when it is ready.
In the old Ivory Manual there is a chapter how to move the files to another drive. Isnt there something similar?

If not, there could be a workaround: replacing the files against symbolic links to the new location. Of course I cant say if this will really work...

This are the Instructions for windows:
http://www.synthogy.com/support/faq/pc.html#02
Possibly its similar.

Peter

Hey maybe you're uncovering a subliminal satanic message! Backmasking on a virtual piano

Well it might be an issue, it's definitely funny, but, to be honest, how often would this happen in a real world play? It's after around 30 seconds of decay for a specific key at a specific velocity with una corda and sustain pedal...

I would consider this Priority 99 on my list of 99 todos...

If you can access the individual WAV files, you could edit the specific WAV and set volume beginning at 30 seconds to zero, noone will ever detect this.