To me, rapidly repeated notes, and the resulting amplification of certain resonances, aren’t even anywhere near the biggest obstacle standing in the way of a sampled instrument attempting to pose as a real one. That’s more of a “Ah, yes, that too, of course” sort of problem, I find.
It’s the near-complete absence of living colour, living timbral detail, delicacy, dynamic sculpability and overal dimensionality of the sound that bothers me most. All of this in immense contradistinction with a real piano and the way it deals with the chaotic energy that enters its complex being via the hands of the player, and then responds accordingly. That, and the way a real instrument’s sound takes to, and claims the room. Quite simply: unsampleable.
That absence of chaos and complexity (and these two being replaced with the tedious poverty and predictability of dead sound) are, I feel, the main reasons why virtual pianos — all of them — are but superficial, flat and extremely tiresome substitutes for the real thing.
I can’t stand 5 minutes listening to, let alone playing, a Synchron piano (or any other virtual piano for that matter). It bores me immensely. Playing a virtual instrument, you’ve explored its territory completely within half an hour, you know its idiosyncracies, limitations and its strengths (if there are any) down to the tiniest details, and once all that is established — like I said, usually within half an hour, often much sooner — the instrument will never surprise you again. It can’t, as it’s dead.
A few posts ago it was suggested that the Synchrons are ready to tackle the entire classical repertoire with totally convincing results. How anyone, let alone an accomplished player, can say such a thing is more than I can understand, but I guess we all listen very differently to music, to the way it is performed and to the sounds that carry it into our brains. (And that bizarre, almost religious fanaticism of VSL adepts, the way they are convinced of the infallibility of just about anything that VSL releases, and turn a deaf and acrimonious ear to everything that contradicts it, plays its part in this matter as well, I have a feeling.)
Anyway, below are 10 examples of real piano recordings — and I could easily post days of non-stop music like this — which, in my opinion, no virtual instrument is entirely ready for. I focused with these examples more on the delicate side of the piano, to my ears the side that will instantly reveal how inept virtual instruments still are.
(Synchron pianos, at least the two I own, can be quite satisfactory when rendering the big, bravoura side of a piano. My Roland V-Piano also sounded best everytime I got “medieval on its ass”. A piece like, say, the “Russian Dance” from “Petrushka” is something I imagine a Synchron piano could do quite well.)
A virtual instrument compares to a real one the way I, as a piano player, compare to Martha Argerich. I can play a scale as well as she can. But that's no proof that I’m in Argerich’s league, is it? And it’s the same thing with virtual instruments: a good sampled piano is capable of suggesting a tiny portion of all that a real instrument can be, and do so quite convincingly, sure, but that’s where it ends. Beyond that ‘tiny portion’, there is still an infinite vista of musical life, timbral expression and ultra-precise, context-aware definition and articulation, all of which is the exclusive province of a real instrument and thus totally inaccessible to a virtual instrument.
https://users.telenet.be/re-peat/Pianos/Ravel_Prelude.mp3 (<b>Ravel: Prélude</b>) (Georges Pludermacher)
https://users.telenet.be/re-peat/Pianos/Stravinsky_LHistoire_Fragment.mp3 (<b>Stravinsky: L'Histoire du Soldat</b>) (fragment) (Christopher O'Riley)
https://users.telenet.be/re-peat/Pianos/Dett_Song.mp3 (<b>R. Nathaniel Dett: Song</b>) (Clipper Erickson)
https://users.telenet.be/re-peat/Pianos/Prokofiev_Cinderella.m4a (<b>Prokofiev/Pletnev: Cinderella</b>) (Martha Argerich & Mikhail Pletnev)
https://users.telenet.be/re-peat/Pianos/Debussy_LaDanseDePuck.mp3 (<b>Debussy: La Danse de Puck</b>) (Jean-Efflam Bavouzet)
https://users.telenet.be/re-peat/Pianos/Mendelssohn_LiederOhneWorte_AndanteUnPocoAgitato.mp3 (<b>Mendelssohn: Lieder Ohne Worte, Andante Un Poco Agitato</b>) (Javier Perianes)
https://users.telenet.be/re-peat/Pianos/Beethoven_PianoSonata14Csharpminor_op27_Allegretto.m4a (<b>Beethoven: Piano Sonata Op. 27 nr. 4, Allegretto</b>) (Maria Kodama)
https://users.telenet.be/re-peat/Pianos/Liszt_GrandesEtudesPaganini_Nr4.mp3 (<b>Liszt : Grandes Etudes de Paganini Nr.4 in E major</b>) (Daniil Trifonov)
https://users.telenet.be/re-peat/Pianos/JSBach_CapriccioBVW992_Andante.mp3 (<b>J.S. Bach: Capriccio BWV992, Andante</b>) (Claire-Marie Le Guay)
https://users.telenet.be/re-peat/Pianos/Haydn_PianoSonataEflatMajor_Adagio.mp3 (<b>J. Haydn: Piano Sonata in E-flat major Hob. XVI:52, Adagio</b>) (Rafaël Blechacz)
And then we haven't even discussed jazz piano yet, a field where virtual pianos sound at least as embarrassingly flawed as they do in most classical music.
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