Building a Piano Instrument - Couple of Issues (clicking sounds & sus pedal)
Needed a piano sample for a track I'm developing. Being a freelance I don't have what you'd call a 'disposable income' and I had some piano samples laying around, so I've been building my own piano bank for BM3! It's sounding looovely and got a really natural sounding velocity curve and timbral 'slope' to it. I actually like it more than any other piano sounds I have available on iOS!
I'm having a few issues with it though, was wondering if anyone could help me.
I'm getting clicking sounds even though all the samples start at zero points. I even went through them with zero point snap enabled and moved the start points forward a little to double check. I have an amp envelope which varies between 3-12ms (depending on velosity layer). If I disable amp envelope then the clicking gets worse, but it continues somewhat when it's on too.
I'm also having trouble making the sus pedal work correctly. My amp
envelope sounds fine without sus and when I hold the sus pedal down and play a note it sustains correctly, however when I release it any sustaining notes will continue to sound until the end of the sample (while any new ones will play unsustained on note release).
Any advice on either of these problems?
Cheers for any assistance!
Oscar
I'm having a few issues with it though, was wondering if anyone could help me.
I'm getting clicking sounds even though all the samples start at zero points. I even went through them with zero point snap enabled and moved the start points forward a little to double check. I have an amp envelope which varies between 3-12ms (depending on velosity layer). If I disable amp envelope then the clicking gets worse, but it continues somewhat when it's on too.
I'm also having trouble making the sus pedal work correctly. My amp
envelope sounds fine without sus and when I hold the sus pedal down and play a note it sustains correctly, however when I release it any sustaining notes will continue to sound until the end of the sample (while any new ones will play unsustained on note release).
Any advice on either of these problems?
Cheers for any assistance!
Oscar
Comments
Just as an FYI i never trust zero crossing select in any sampler, not because it doesn't work, but because it gives a false sense of "No click" security that is completely false.
I always zoom in to the start and end of every individual sample i make/record and put a very tiny fade on them, just because the sample starts at zero does not mean that the second sample+ is anywhere near it and will easily cause a click.
Going into each sample to add fades is a last case resort here (in fact it'd probably mean that I ditch the whole thing - there are a LOT of individual samples here!)
Will look at the bank you sent when i get home
The samples were free to download from some place or other (I spent a few hours sourcing free high quality classical instrument samples) and are free to be used or shared however, under the stipulation that they're not resold on later as a sample pack for this sampler or that sampler or whatever.
I'm by no means an expert at this but these few things are what sound right to my ears. I'd love to hear other people's opinions on how I do it or how they'd do it differently.
1. Modulate the LP filter cutoff from note velocity in a way that overlaps the lower velocity layer crossover points slightly, to smooth the transition. I usually move the sample layer transition point around and adjust the modulation 'amount' for a while until I get it sounding right to my ears.
2. Modulate the amp envelope attack from note velocity with a negative 'amount' value. Only a small amount is necessary, when you get it just right then it subtly softens the beginning transient attack on the softer notes.
3: Reduce the 'amount' of gain adjustment from velocity until the lowest velocity level is loud enough to be heard. Silent notes on zero velocity is stupid.
Messaged this to Oscar, but probably should post it here too...
A neat little trick to try if you want a harder hitting piano, create a pitch envelope and make the start of it a super fast pitch up, you wont hear the pitch up, you will just get more of a pronounced thump as you press the key, best way to do that is to do it as a duplicate layer, then you can use the volume envelope to only hear the thud and use volume to add the thud to the normal layer as a mix.
If you can combine it with velocity too, you can probably get rid of the extra velocity layers entirely
Velocity layers are often over used when velocity modulation of softening and filter will easily cover the same ground.
Personally i still prefer pianos from old Romplers like the JV1080 where they used these tricks, but i don't make classical/soundtracks/ambient, so my choice of pianos is always very modern.
For some of my own instruments samples I actually only set two velocity layers and no volume envelope on note velocity at all, then add in a dynamic and timbral range with other kinds of control modulation. I find that the playability of easily choosing (by velocity, without consideration for volume) which sound you're going to get adds a level of playability that is useful and expressive in its own right.
As a bass guitarist I overcompress my instrument (hardware compressor in signal chain) so that there's very little dynamic range, and then I add in expression and dynamic by carefully controlling the attack and decay of my Sound through muting both ends of the string at all times (sounds tricky - I've played for a long damn time!). I find that this gives a much 'bigger' sound and more fine control over the feel and groove. Extra dynamic range would just reduce the consistency of attack!
If the only endgame is 'expression', then there are many ways to skin that cat!
Nice, Lalo Schifrin styled bass playing, that over compressed finger muting stuff is used to great effect on 'Scorpios theme'
I saw Thundercat doing that stuff live too a couple years ago, with his 9 string bass hahahaha, fruity bark.
The problem with velocities on a piano is the subtlety of it, a lot of big piano libraries are using the fact that they are 'BIG' as a selling point, but in everything but a classical piano solo a single velocity well velocity mapped piano is normally the way forward.
While a Piano is a ridiculous, nope, the most ridiculously interactive cross harmonic monster instrument ever created, it is also very very subtle, in a mix, you wont hear any of that subtlety, that is why the JV1080 pianos are still so sort after and relied upon as much as some 2/4/8GB libraries, and the Jv1080 Piano ROM is something like 2mb, that has to tell something about the big piano libraries and the modern world of sample instruments in general "Throw more RAM at it"
EDIT* There is a Kurzweil MP on ebay at the minute, those things are the f***ing daddy hahaha
If you ever find a cheap JV80/880/1080/2080 grab it, the bread n butter in those are superb.
That confuses me... Seems like strange advice and more of a personal opinion/preference than based on science? Maybe I'm not understanding the whole terminology about velocity mapped' etc (quite possibly... I've never dug in to this stuff before) but it sounds like you're saying something along the lines of 'a piano is so nuanced that you might as well not bother trying to accurately mimic it using as many samples as possible'? To me that doesn't make any sense? Surely having more samples for different velocities/sustains etc is a way better start point (when aiming for audible/feelable authenticity) than just using one sample per note?? Isn't that like saying the whole instrument sampling industry and 99% of producers are wasting their time/money, but no one else realised it's a futile con except you?
"in a mix, you wont hear any of that subtlety, that is why the JV1080 pianos are still so sort after and relied upon as much as some 2/4/8GB libraries"
Gotta beg to differ on this. To me those old romplers have a blatant 'sound' that's far from authentic. Even in a busy mix. They're cool/useful if that's the sound you're after. But guaranteed that no studio is using/relying on them for anything now other than recreating the sound of records from that era.
Not trying to argue, just that seeing this forum is for a relatively cheap ios app there might be some novice producers using it for production info and not sure I'd advise someone to take any of the above as fact
Cool, I was wrong again, my mistake.
I agreed with you and said i was wrong again, then i apologised by saying my mistake.
Now that is wrong too ?
Shall i delete the post ? Is that what you want ?
Also, as a bass player you end up sitting around in the studio chatting with the producer a lot. I can't even recall any specific examples but I can tell you for sure that I've heard a lot more comments along the line of "oh yeah, I just ran the built in sound of that keyboard through this valve pre and stuck this reverb plugin on it to gel it in the mix". Than "oh yeah I used this new 10GB piano sample library! It's got 18 layers of velocity and each key was also sampled upside down then phase reversed to create a 360 degree acoustic coagulation overcompensation matrix". I do hear the latter kind of comment on internet message boards pretty regularly though
I'd say that 7 of 10 sessions I did with a keys player, they just used whatever patch the keys man preferred from his own gear and DI'd it, no MIDI. Of other three, two of which just used the built in sound from Logic (it's always Logic producers who do it this way!) and the final 1 in 10 actually mic up the damn piano that's just sitting there in the live room collecting coffee rings!
I actually love Thumbjam's Upright piano sound. It sounds kind of shitty next to a more expensive piano sample, but it's very playable and I find that it works great in a mix. I'm sure a pro pianist or classical/jazz composer will have a different opinion, but for rock/pop/singer songwriter/electronic/contemporary folk (otherwise known as hipster music) etc., I've just not witnessed that attention to minutia of detail being a primary consideration.
Doesn't have anything to do with what's scientifically more realistic tho... Or what feels more responsive to play... ... Which was what we were talking about I thought? And what I disagree with when @5pinlink advising that
"a single velocity well velocity mapped piano is normally the way forward".
Every studio I ever used had a real piano in it so I dunno for sure what plugins they had as I never discussed alternatives with them and I/we always used the real piano. But I do know i/we would have walked straight out if they offered us a jv1080 as their best 'authentic piano' option.. Instant cheap 80s vibes. Can hear it a mile off. Even in a mix. Cool if that's what you're aiming for but otherwise...
And I'm saying in contrast to @5pinlink saying that -
"the JV1080 pianos are still so sort after and relied upon as much as some 2/4/8GB libraries"
That just isn't the case. At all. No one serious in the production world at the moment relies on those romplers unless they want THAT sound.. He's spreading his own opinion as fact. Which isn't very helpful if you're a 15 year old producer reading this stuff....
Either way, I'm out the conversation. Dude is incapable of having one where people disagree or where he might be wrong. Always snaps back with a super rude/sarcastic 'sorry, I'm wrong, my mistake'. Just makes me feel weird/awkward..