19 ms·
The Alexander: Why did you build such a long piano?
- CarVac 5y agoAs someone who's tuned my own piano, the inharmonicity in the bass is really noticeably low.
- felipemnoa 5y agoFor those of us that know nothing about music, is this good or bad?
- LanceH 5y agoWhen played a note will emit overtones -- the same note an at higher octaves. So a low C will also have middle C, high C, etc at different volumes depending on the instrument. This is playing low notes without low volume overtones. In short, the low notes are more purely low.
- elihu 5y agoThat's not quite right. The overtones are the harmonic series, not just octaves (1:2, 1:4, 1:8, etc..) but an octave and a fifth (1:3), two octaves and a third, (1:5), etc.. In a piano, the bass and treble strings have a lot of inharmonicity. They don't behave like ideal strings for various reasons, so the harmonics aren't exact multiples of the fundamental frequency. Piano tuners deal with this be stretching the octave, so that the piano sounds in tune even though it kind of isn't. Having a super long bass string instead of a short double-wound bass string probably behaves more like an ideal string (with harmonics that are closer to whole-number multiples of the fundamental), so it should sound like it has a more definite pitch and less like a gong. Interestingly, we don't really perceive the fundamental frequencies of the low notes in a piano much at all in the first place. If you filter them out, the notes will sound about the same -- we take most of our perceptual cues from the higher harmonics, and our brain just inserts the implied bass fundamental. In the same way, playing a major chord sort of implies a bass note a couple octaves below the root of the chord -- if all the harmonics are there, then we expect it to be there.
- LanceH 5y agoThank you.
- LeonB 5y ago“playing a major chord sort of implies a bass note a couple octaves below the root of the chord” Wow! Of course! Lightbulb moment. This isn’t something that occurred to me independently but makes so much sense I wonder how it hadn’t, and it explains a lot of what chords are really all about.
- elihu 5y agoYeah, chords are interesting. Major triads are basically a 4:5:6 ratio, which is the 4th, 5th, and 6th harmonic of some low bass note. (Different inversions get you 2:3:5 or 3:4:5 or whatever.) A dominant 7th chord gets you one more step in the harmonic series: 4:5:6:7. That 7th harmonic is way out of tune in 12-tone equal temperament, though. Minor chords are a 10:12:15 ratio, which kind of looks like a bunch of arbitrary chosen numbers, but we could rewrite that as 60/6 : 60/5 : 60/4 and then it sort of make sense that minor would be a sort of mathematical reciprocal of the major. Minor chords can be interpreted either as the 10th, 12th, and 15th harmonics of some bass note or as the first three prime subharmonics that are integer divisions of the fundamental note. Subharmonics don't really occur in nature, though.
- mrob 5y ago>That 7th harmonic is way out of tune in 12-tone equal temperament You can sing in any tuning though. If you want to hear just-intonation 4:5:6:7 chords, listen to barbershop music, where this chord is a defining part of the style. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_seventh_chord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_seventh_chord
- elihu 5y agoYep. It's also possible to re-tune a piano to a 7-limit just intonation scale that makes use of that 7th harmonic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4oKzSRs3sA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4oKzSRs3sA
- retrac 5y agoInharmonicity is when the overtones (frequency multiples) are not whole number multiples of the fundamental frequency. It sounds bad. Discordant, like playing two notes directly next to each other on the keyboard. When designing a string or percussion instrument (or any resonator, in general, I suppose) one of the challenges is ensuring that you aren't creating undesired harmonics. With something like a piano with hundreds or thousands of strings that might be induced to resonate undesirably if even slightly out, or whose own movement might alter other parts and affect them, it becomes a significant challenge.
- duskwuff 5y agoIt's very good. Normally, the lowest few octaves on a piano all sound a little weird; the individual notes are a little hard to tell apart and multiple low notes played together often blend into a rumbly mess. This is because the strings for those notes are shorter than they should be for their frequencies -- they're artificially made to vibrate at a lower frequency by making the strings heavier. This effect seems to be significantly reduced on the Alexander piano.
- atwebb 5y agoThanks for the explanation! Is it noticeable at this time stamp? https://youtu.be/nj4fhdiXy48?t=178 https://youtu.be/nj4fhdiXy48?t=178 I feel like the lower notes are much more distinct and separate but might just be imagining it.
- kmill 5y agoThose bass notes are noticeably clearer there! The sound of inharmonicity comes from dispersion -- different frequencies travel through the string at different velocities. The lower the frequency, the less the wave notices the stiffness of the string, so to speak, and the stiffer the string the quicker a wave will travel through it. If you've ever tapped on a wire fence or played with a slinky, you'll be familiar with the "pew" sound. A pure impulse consists of all frequencies at once, but when it's traveled through the fence, bounced off a post, and come back, you hear the high frequencies first, which is why the "pew" descends in frequency. Anyway, I've found that you can notice this on the attacks of bass notes on pianos. Only the very lowest notes of the Alexander piano seem to really have it audible, and even then it's much more slight.
- mrob 5y agoI thought the cause of inharmonicity was that higher frequencies cause steeper bending of the string at the attachment points, which makes the effective length of the string shorter. Sound on Sound's article on synthesizing guitar sounds (which have the same problem) has a good diagram explaining it (see figure 12): https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/final-attempt-synthesize-guitars https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/final-attempt-synthe... And this model explains why the inharmonicity is higher on the attacks (higher vibration amplitude increases bending of the string).
- hug 5y agoThe harmonic series is a really neat thing to learn about -- one of those "art is math" kind of moments. This video does a good job of explaining it in a relatively short and simple way, but goes in-depth enough that even people with an understanding of music might learn something: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx_kugSemfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx_kugSemfY
- CarVac 5y agoIt's good. Due to the stiffness of real strings, the overtones do not occur at even multiples of the fundamental frequency. This means that when tuning a piano, you need to compromise between tuning so that the fundamentals are in tune with distant notes but having the overtones sound discordant with nearby notes, or having sweet overtone matching with nearby notes, causing notes to be very far off when harmonizing at longer distances across the keyboard. With my upright, I've had more success tuning more based on the fundamental than on the overtones, because it has enough inharmonicity that tuning to the overtones causes right-hand-to-left-hand harmonies to sound noticeably off. But this makes single-hand chords sound messier. A piano with looooooooooooooooong bass strings can have skinnier strings that are flexible and behave closer to ideal, so you don't have to compromise as much when tuning.
- leephillips 5y agoExcellent explanation. We can get a little quantitative if we remember that the fundamental frequency of a vibrating string is sqrt(T/μ)/(2L), where T is the tension, μ is the linear density, and L is the length. So if we make the string twice as long, (T/μ) has to be increased by a factor of four; if we keep the tension the same we can use a string with 1/4 the linear density, which I guess would decrease the inharmonicity significantly. The square root magnifies the effect of increasing the length, so you get a lot from making the piano a bit longer. The project is a wonderful idea.
- munificent 5y agoFor anyone curious, the name for this tuning technique is "stretch": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_tuning#Stretch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_tuning#Stretch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stretched_tuning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stretched_tuning Software synthesized pianos implement this too because it's part of how we expect piano-based instruments to sound.
- elihu 5y agoI think the low strings usually get tuned about half a semitone or more lower just to sound in tune with the rest of the instrument. It'd be interesting to know what the railsback curve looks like for this long piano; I'd expect it to be a lot flatter. I imagine you could also flatten out the curve on the treble end by using thinner gauge wire, but I suppose there's probably a trade-off in terms of volume or durability, otherwise all pianos would use thin wire for the treble strings. (I think most pianos use wire that's a little thinner in the treble, but not by much. I might be wrong about that, though.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_acoustics#The_Railsback_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_acoustics#The_Railsback_...
- prvc 5y agoYet the timbre on this is quite different from that of an ordinary piano. Which make the experiment worth doing on its own (and successful)!
- nyanpasu64 5y agoChrono Trigger is a SNES game with short samples. Normally that would result in significant quality degradation, but one interesting side effect is that its short looped low piano sample (found in songs like Lavos's Theme[1]) has no inharmonicity. When the attack ends and the sample loops, it almost sounds like the harmonics go a bit flat. [1]: https://fi.zophar.net/soundfiles/nintendo-snes-spc/chrono-trigger/205%20Lavos%27%20Theme%20%28Extended%29.mp3 https://fi.zophar.net/soundfiles/nintendo-snes-spc/chrono-tr...
- marcan_42 5y agoThis is why I love Pianoteq. It's a plug-in that virtually models a piano, so if you want 10 meter long strings, you can have that. Or you can go crazy with other parameters and get very strange pianos. As someone who enjoys playing piano but doesn't have the space nor acoustic insulation for a real one, it's great being able to not just get the sound of different pianos whenever I want, but also virtually design my own. Modeling technology has really come a long way. That's not to say that if I ever own a large enough house I wouldn't want an acoustic piano :-)
- HPsquared 5y agoI searched this thread to see if anyone mentioned Pianoteq. :) It's also fun to play around with alternative tuning systems, try different hammers, soundboard characteristics, etc etc.
- yboris 5y agoI second Pianoteq as a recommendation. It can run on Linux, so I have it on a Raspberry Pi attached to my digital piano. As a bonus, it also drives some addressable (programmable) LEDs: https://github.com/whyboris/Digital-Piano-LED https://github.com/whyboris/Digital-Piano-LED To install Pianoteq on a Raspberry Pi, it's a single script that sets everything up: https://github.com/youfou/pianoteq-pi https://github.com/youfou/pianoteq-pi
- myself248 5y agoThank you! Reading the original article, I was wondering if exactly this sort of physical modeling was possible or being done yet. I'm still not sure what _sort_ of modeling it's doing (surely not full FEA of the entire vibrating system), but I'm sure we'll get there in another few years of GPGPU...
- marcan_42 5y agoIf I had to guess, they probably have a fairly accurate single-string model and then model energy coupling across strings. Another neat thing it does is it lets you position virtual microphones around the piano (and open and close the lid), so they definitely have full-instrument spatial awareness in their modeling. One curious thing I noticed from the (simpler) string modeling synth in my keyboard is that if you up the dispersion it starts sounding like a bell... and indeed Pianoteq also has a very nice tubular bells patch. Explains what that's doing in a piano synth :)
- Synaesthesia 5y agoI once pitched up a sample of a very low note plated on piano, it sounds so weird! The inharmonicity manifests as all kinds of weird whistling sounds.
- mastazi 5y agoSome other unconventional Pianos: https://klavins-pianos.com/products/model-450i/ https://klavins-pianos.com/products/model-450i/ https://klavins-pianos.com/products/una-corda/ https://klavins-pianos.com/products/una-corda/
- alanbernstein 5y agoHere's a ring piano: https://pianoarc.com/about/ https://pianoarc.com/about/
- quadrangle 5y agonot to be negative, but various shaped controllers that are electronic, there's tons of those. That's not interesting in the same sort of way as an acoustically-distinct sound-production device
- Synaesthesia 5y agoI think that's a very rock and roll controller. Picture Elton John in the middle of that.
- spopejoy 5y agoJean Michelle Jarre had a marimba-like version of this in his early-80s concerts, along with a laser-light keyboard https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hRzzF-WObYE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hRzzF-WObYE
- schwartzworld 5y agoAh, the Zorak model
- squeaky-clean 5y agoFor anyone into VST's, Native Instruments has a great sampled instrument of Una Corda. And their instrument "The Giant" is based on the Klavins model 370i. The product page for the 370i is blank, but it seems like the Model 450i is their new version of the same concept. I hope that one day I'll be able to play one of the real models, but until then The Giant is my favorite virtual piano because of how massive it sounds.
- csours 5y ago"I didn't know how hard it would be" - man I wish I had that. I feel like I know exactly how hard everything will be.
- xaduha 5y agoAre you good at estimating how long things would take?
- csours 5y agoI'm good at estimating what parts of a task will take a long time.
- monsieurbanana 5y agoFor any task? That's simply not possible.
- Intermernet 5y agoI estimate that the time estimate for any part of any task can be calculated in approximately the time it would take to complete that task.
- csours 5y ago> I'm good at estimating what parts of a task will take a long time. I think it's trivial. I didn't say I can estimate how long the hard parts will take, just what the hard parts will be. If I don't understand something, I estimate that it will take a long time.
- bitexploder 5y agoHard things can only be hard. The rest is a function of time :)
- hkt 5y agoI can't find it now, but you've reminded me of the description for an experimental optimiser flag on a perl compiler from what must have been 15 years or more ago. It promised it would always deliver a working binary that was functionally identical to the original script, but that it may not do so in finite amounts of time.
- noduerme 5y agoOkay, this is just straight up awesome. I've played piano for 37 years. I've built things all my life. But I never even considered the possibility of building a piano from the ground up. Let alone the difficulty of engineering an instrument that defied all the normal parameters. This is real world hacking at its finest. Not to mention it sounds great.
- Loic 5y agoYes and incredibly well balanced, listen to the Funérailles von Liszt recording if you want to get the bass sounds. You get both really nice bass with clear high tones. Chapeau.
- stinos 5y agoCame here to mention this. I'm not exactly a connoisseur when it comes to classical music, but if there's one thing I like it is Liszt, and I haven't heard it like this before. I mean this bass reminds me of 'proper' bass in electronic music (synth or guitar), unheard for a piano in my limited experience.
- rattray 5y agoDirect link: https://youtu.be/sOILiAIwwFM https://youtu.be/sOILiAIwwFM It is a great showcase of the instrument
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- ksec 5y agoYes, which makes me wonder why hasn't this been done before? How were the standard length in today's piano determined in the first place? The piano making history and a whole loads of questions unanswered and need time to dig deeper.
- randyrand 5y agothere certainly are pianos that are incredibly long for this reason.
- geocrasher 5y agoIt's amazing what can be accomplished when you don't have anyone telling you it's impossible.
- hexa22 5y agoAlso how much time can be wasted by not being alerted of the common pitfalls.
- bityard 5y agoIt seems strange to think that there would be common pitfalls for a project so uncommon as this.
- enriquto 5y agoFortunately there's enough people in the world for both things to happen simultaneously in different parts, allowing for a wider and deeper exploration of the problem space.
- aeorgnoieang 5y agoI've found, repeatedly, tho that this is the best way to really understand the common pitfalls without just receiving them as 'holy writ'.
- lowbloodsugar 5y agoSure. For example, everyone knows that it is far too expensive to build an electric car because battery prices are far too high. Don't make that mistake! [1] [1] https://youtu.be/NV3sBlRgzTI?t=55 https://youtu.be/NV3sBlRgzTI?t=55
- FpUser 5y agoThe bass definitely has a character on that piano. I liked it.
- lugged 5y agoYea, but does it play the boogie woogie?
- Pxtl 5y agoSurprised nobody's built such a thing before for eg. churches where a piano or organ will be permanent. Such a beautiful instrument and obvious in hindsight.
- geerlingguy 5y agoThere are many custom-built organs that defy logic. Here in St. Louis, the organ at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis was built over decades, and one of the ranks (sets of pipes) has pipes that are so long, they were formed in a semi-circle so they would fit within the building. One of those pipes (a low note) was stuck on one time, and it caused a bit of a vibration in the whole place, and the organist had to turn off the pipe organ until someone could come fix the broken valve! But it's amazing seeing how there were pipes jammed literally in every nook and cranny and closet in that place—and from what I hear that's not even that massive an installation!
- TaupeRanger 5y agoInteresting rattly/tinny timbre on the low end. I had to re-listen on better speakers to get a sense of how different this sounds from a normal grand piano (and even those can sound very different from each other).
- eplanit 5y agoThe piano is very interesting, and Molly McGee singing "Life on Mars" is fantastic.
- zmix 5y agoNobody mentioning, the guy was 16 when he started the build? Just W.O.W.!
- wucheong 5y agoI was a guitar and bass player. I would like to say, that's the freaking reason that we need fan fret guitar in 8 string guitar. The deep solid low bass!!
- techsurfer 5y agoI transported this piano once when I was a roadie (instrument transporter) for the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra. We had a _long_ day that day!
- throwaway81523 5y agoOh man, it's a normal width keyboard and it's the strings that are long. This is way cool, but I was imagining it to be the other way around, like the 500 seat piano in the fantastic and too-overlooked movie The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T. Pic of the movie piano: http://manapop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/vlcsnap-2014-09-16-15h46m56s95.png http://manapop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/vlcsnap-2014-0...
- jandrese 5y agoDid Dr. T get a good deal on leftover helmets from Nickelodeon's Double Dare?
- danbmil99 5y agoIn case anyone remembers, there was a company called Dr. T's music software, they developed for the Atari and Amiga. I did some work for them in the late 80s
- thewebcount 5y agoI definitely remember! He later worked for BorisFX doing video plug-ins, which is how I met him. Interesting guy!
- danbmil99 5y agoThat would be Emile Tobinfeld?
- thewebcount 5y agoYep!
- pugworthy 5y agoWhat a classic movie - I remember it as being one of those Saturday afternoon movies that came on once.
- asimpletune 5y agoIt honestly sounds fantastic. It's like the most piano sound of any piano I've heard.
- twelvechairs 5y agoThere is a long guitar/lute-like instrument called 'Theorbo' from the renaissance that is a good comparison. It was originally built before they had wound strings (that could produce lower notes). A very good introduction video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48RVcbkhNHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48RVcbkhNHQ
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- Tomminn 5y agoFunnily enough, I feel like Gareth Davies, the presumably semi-amateur player in the video set, is the only one who really gets the piano, and focuses on those unusually melodic bass notes.
- fumeux_fume 5y agoLol, completely agree. Scarlatti?! How silly! I have a very nice tube amp sitting on my desk (#pandemic-hifi) so I thought I'd take your rec and listen to Mr. Davies instead. The long bass strings produce a better sustained note which creates very nice harmonics!
- johncalvinyoung 5y agoHas #pandemicHIFI been a thing? I know I've made a few purchases this year that I probably wouldn't have on my old routine.
- ericbarrett 5y agoAgreed. Hyperion Knight playing Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring (Bach)[0] is also a really good demonstration of the incredible clarity of the bass keys. It's really astonishing to hear. In fact I feel some of the concert pianists playing it are a little sloppy on the low notes—probably because they're not used to being judged on them! My old Wurlitzer upright could never compare :) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPb2hMJ9Ojk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPb2hMJ9Ojk around 3:00
- throw0101a 5y agoListening on headphones is weird: usually, for an instrument, the sound comes from one direction. Here some notes were more in the centre, while others (lower ones) were coming from the left channel.
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- Donckele 5y agoThanks for that and keep it going. “I think because I was so young I absolutely knew it was totally possible to do, I was fully determined and without consulting any professionals I had no barrier stopping me.”
- jkepler 5y agoI wonder also if he had the constraints of traditional obligatory schooling, or if he had the freedom of home education to pursue his incredible interest and self-education in piano crafting and entrepreneurial activity?
- dumpsterdiver 5y ago> I think because I was so young I absolutely knew it was totally possible to do, I was fully determined and without consulting any professionals I had no barrier stopping me. IMO, this is the mindset of greatness to come. So many who have failed before us are quick to proclaim the impossible. Time and time again humans have displayed that the impossible may in fact be nothing more than a lack of imagination.
- ianlevesque 5y agoYeah it's a really interesting human trait. There's clearly hazard in falling prey to the sunk costs fallacy and spinning your wheels forever, but naive determination is an integral part of the human success story.
- Shish2k 5y agoI miss having this attitude - as a teenager, I created a two minute long animation with ~200 bytes of code and ~1700 bytes of data (demoscene-style). Now as a professional software engineer if you asked me to do that, I’d say “it’s impossible - the unit tests alone would break the 2KB limit!” :(
- rmetzler 5y agoUnit Tests don’t count against the byte limit. ;-)
- heavenlyblue 5y agoI would also assume it’s compiled code too, not source code?
- rmetzler 5y agoDepends on the language though as there are JavaScript compos nowadays.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
- jollybean 5y agoDoes someone knowledgeable want to comment on the actual sound please? Thanks.
- Synaesthesia 5y agoVery clean sounding low end, otherwise sounds like a good piano. The problem with piano IMO is the lowest notes are often kinda muddy sounding. This doesn't have that issue.
- jll29 5y agoIt's delightful to see that musicians have their own geeks just like computer science has. Their advantage is the execution of their code is universally understood by all of humanity.
- ygra 5y agoAnother one that fits that description would be Martin Molin of Wintergatan, who's currently on a multi-year quest to build a concert-suitable programmable marble music instrument. He's been detailing the build and concept process on YouTube.
- dmurray 5y agoI thought this was going to be an instrument made entirely out of marble, and wondered what it could be. I thought maybe a cymbal but settled on it being most likely a flute or recorder of some sort. Which certainly seems like it could be made from marble, but I don't know enough about sculpture to know how plausible that is. Turns out it's played with marbles instead, which is just as cool.
- retzkek 5y agoInspired, I presume, by those awesome ray-traced animations from the early oughts? I had started sketching ideas on how to make that a reality (pneumatics and magnets mainly) but never got beyond concept. Specifically this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCIpKAIFyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCIpKAIFyo
- fiftyacorn 5y agoIt would be an interesting computer model to simulate an infinitely long string
- alexdong 5y agoFun story: four years ago, I hired Adrian to move a second-hand piano into our house. We lived on a very steep area with a narrow elbow driveway. Adrian has this incredible spatial memory and fine motor control that I still find it hard to believe how he did it. He loaded the piano in his trailer and basically backed his BMW all the way up with half meter at most on each side, slowly through that elbow bend and parked the trailer's door right on where we planned to unload the piano. Maybe 2cm away from where he intended to land it.
- soperj 5y agoIf you tell me that you live on Baldwin st, it's gonna blow my mind.
- mullikine 5y agoAside from being a local celebrity, Alex services pianos around Dunedin. Who better to ask to tune my piano than Alex. And he blessed me with a tour of his piano shop and a concert on the long piano. He is the coolest guy ever. I asked him about the possibility of making a piano which two people could play -- in the same key and he entertained the idea. He is so passionate. Such a cool person!
- drcongo 5y agoThis is my favourite kind of content on the web, it always makes my day when something like this pops up on HN.
- throwaway287391 5y agoI only see one mention of a year towards the end -- 4 April 2009, the date of the first concert -- and the only other date I see is that construction began the 24th of October (with no year). Am I missing something or should I assume he built an amazing sounding piano, like no other piano in the world, with no prior experience, in <6 months?! Unbelievable.
- johncalvinyoung 5y agoI thought it (or someone here) said he started when he was 16, and finished at 20, or thereabouts.
- jacobolus 5y agoHe said in a talk that the project took 4.5 years to finish.
- devnull255 5y agoWow. Build a beautiful, long piano and they will come!
- travisjungroth 5y agoI'm not into pianos, but this hit me right in the "old internet" nostalgia. Anyone who wasn't there for an internet before Facebook and Amazon, there was a time when the whole internet was like this (and science research and porn and other stuff, but I was a kid and looked at this kinda thing). Just someone who is obviously an amazing person writing about something they know or did on their own website. Pure HTML with some photos dropped in along the way. Would have been 30 seconds MP3 downloads instead of YouTube videos, though. So maybe a site like this is the best of both worlds.
- telesilla 5y agoBeautiful work, I am a little disappointed not to find a video or recording demonstrating the tonality in a dedicated listening setting: I'm curious to hear how it really sounds but perhaps it can only be done in person. The best of the youtube collection he shares seems to be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k54XzhuACrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k54XzhuACrg for judging the quality of the piano - I hear what seems to be a longer than usual reverb on the lower strings but possibly I'm just imagining it: could be the space itself or I'm just paying particular attention to it as a pianist, to compare to my own. Oh, and this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPb2hMJ9Ojk&t=186s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPb2hMJ9Ojk&t=186s
- z3t4 5y agoI was expecting a badass base, but it sounds like a piano
- pohl 5y agoThis is fantastic! Most of the videos, unfortunately, are of pieces that avoid the lowest register of the piano. The video of the Liszt Funerailles performance towards the bottom was the only one I found that demonstrates what makes this instrument unique.
- aerovistae 5y agoWow, I really wish he included details of how he shaped the metal parts and how he made the curved wood portions. Seems like highly specialized techniques or skills would be needed for much of this, often requiring equipment that can only be found in well-stocked university/craftsman workshops. Did he hand-make the action, for instance? That seems impossible.
- munificent 5y agoGod, those bass notes sound divine. So clear, punchy, and in tune.
- bmitc 5y agoI love the simplicity of “I just wanted to see what a long bass string sounded like”.
- darylteo 5y agoSpruiking another channel on YouTube (but more on the memeish side of things), Matthias modifies old pianos in amusing ways. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEgm-3RvRn4nCR-fGGVsfdQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEgm-3RvRn4nCR-fGGVsfdQ Most recently, he replaced the hammers on the piano with real hammers, with interesting results. In the past he also replaced the piano strings with bass guitar strings.
- exabrial 5y agoThis is sort of the motivation behind fanned fret electric bass guitars. The low b string on a fanned fret can gain 2-3" of extra length which makes quite the difference in string tension. It's no where near the fundamental note like the piano but increases the playability
- lhousa 5y agoDeepest Piano?
- cesaref 5y agoWell that's an amazing instrument, i presume it's straight strung? I didn't see any clear images of the inside of the piano, how the harp was constructed etc. For the rest of us who want to play around with piano lengths, there is an awesome physically modelled piano software plugin called Pianoteq by modartt (https://www.modartt.com/ https://www.modartt.com/). This is a virtual instrument, but rather than taking the conventional approach of sampling a real instrument, instead this is a model of strings, hammers, sound board etc. This means that the model can be modified to produce a synthetic instrument with different properties. There is a 'length' parameter which allows you to modify the model to be up to 10m long if I remember. There are lots of cool and subtle effects to be had from altering how the hammers behave (how hard they are, the overtones they produce, where on the string they strike etc) to how the piano is tuned (how the unison strings are detuned, how stretched the octaves are etc).
- hyperpallium2 5y agoWhat's the piece in the first video (I think it starts properly at about 1:00) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dmH5maOUeHc&t=1m0s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dmH5maOUeHc&t=1m0s A youtube comment asks if it is "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini" by Rachmaninoff, but no answer.
- flandolfi 5y agoYes, but it's only the 18th variation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koqOEd10GdI&t=899s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koqOEd10GdI&t=899s It's a piece for piano and orchestra, but you can find transcriptions for solo piano (e.g., in IMSLP https://imslp.hk/files/imglnks/euimg/2/20/IMSLP329319-PMLP05874-loveridge_rachmaninoff.pdf https://imslp.hk/files/imglnks/euimg/2/20/IMSLP329319-PMLP05... )
- hyperpallium2 5y agoThanks so much!
- xyzzy21 5y agoI'd need to hear it A-B because I couldn't detect a significant advantage from the videos of playing. Admittedly my ears aren't what they used to be.