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First Virtual Piano Competition
bluegreenone writes: "The New York Times has an article on what may be the first 'virtual' piano competition. One of the judges for the contest being held in St. Paul will actually be in Japan. He will evaluate the performances as relayed by Yamaha's Disklavier system. This has some interest from a technical standpoint, and also raises new questions about what a "live" performance is."
Has anyone ever questioned whether a "live" broadcast is live? I thought the difference between live and non live was the venue, live is all performed in front of an audience with no retries, non live is studio recorded material with editing/mastering etc inbetween the performance/performances and the final recording.
I'll admit I simplified it a lot, but I don't see how this stands to change the definition of live.
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I haven't actually read the article (New York Times Free bla bla - I don't feel like registering), but I don't see why a piano performance can't be accurately reproduced. It would be easier than a lot of other instruments (like a violin or trumpet, for example).
You've got 88 keys plus 3 pedals that are hit and released at precise times with a given force. The number of variables is limited and pretty straightforward. A sensor under each key could record the performance accurately, and a regular piano with a bunch of robotic plungers could play it back.
The amount of data is pretty limited as well. Figure 120 samples per second should be adequate, and 256 states for each sample * (88+3=91) data points. Uncompressed, that's 10kB/s, 600kB/m. Given the fact that most piansist's only have 10 fingers you could get that down to 75kB/m even before compression.
Or am I missing something?
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There are a few things that might not be captured, such as the speed at which a damper is replaced on the strings when a note or the pedal is released. I don't know if the system accurately reproduces this. Certainly MIDI wouldn't.
I suspect the main difference between a live performance and a performance from a Disklavier is that a live performer is constantly adjusting his touch to account for the individual characteristics of the piano, whereas IFAIK the Disklavier system does not have this feedback loop.
So it would only sound exactly the same if the piano used to play back the performance was identical in touch and tone to the piano that recorded the performance.
Mind you, I doubt if I or many others would notice the difference.
In the case of the other piano, elsewhere in the world, there will be subtle differences in the instrument itself. Even if you can (and this is arguable) reproduce 99% of the nuance of the actual key velocity, you're not taking into account the fact that the musician is feeling and reacting to a separate instrument with a key action which must be different, affecting his touch, and with possible harmonic and amplitude differences across the piano keyboard range even given the same key velocity.
But first and foremost this is most certainly NOT live music. It's reproduced mechanically, and that is no different from playing a CD (reproduced optically). Just because it's a real piano you're hearing, it's not the same piano the artist was playing. And he/she's not even there.
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...let's see you try that with (say) a trumpet. Or, even worse, a violin (or any bowed instrument) or EVEN worse, with the electric guitar where each virtuoso tries new ways to produce sounds off of it (two words: Makita Cordless. Yeah, that's an extreme example.).
This VirtualClavier is just some way to show off r&d for something that needs not r&d (at least that's my opinion, i know it sounds very short-sighted...) (others have done various similar stuff).
live performance is just when the performer is using the instrument *now* to produce sound. This thing is not. This, might be a live performance, but not a live performance of a piano. It is a live performance of a VirtualClavier (wasn't midi fully capable of emulating the piano? what's this for!?)
I salute them for their "silent" series. Not eletric not acoustic, yet electric and acoustic...
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My point is that a pianist will play differently on different pianos. So if you take his/her performance on one piano and transcribe it (no matter how accurately) onto a different piano, you *won't* get the same performance since you won't hear the nuances the pianist is getting from the piano they're physically sitting at.
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...in Player Piano, in 1955 or so. A recording, no matter how faithful, is a recording, it captures a performance, not a performer. The Disklavier is a player piano, a really good one. It makes the hammers hit the strings in (insert meaningless technical quibble here) the same way the pianist's fingers did. But until it captures Glenn Gould's humming, Stevie Wonder's head-bobbing, or Tori Amos' (essentially) fucking the piano stool, I will not be fooled into thinking that I am experiencing a live performance.
(Been playing since I was four, and I prefer Steinways to Yamahas, but that's another matter.)
I think what Huge Pi Removal is saying probably has to be correct. If you hooked up some sort of motion-detector arm-thingie to Picasso's arm and paintbrush, and got a robot arm to recreate the motions, would it paint a Picasso? No. It would paint something very much like a Picasso. (never mind that Picasso is dead.)
Why does it matter how close it is to the real thing? I want to see live musicians performing live, not some recording of The Best Musician Ever being played by a robot piano. Have you people ever heard of innovation?
Another thing...how different will this year's virtuoso performace be from one we get in 50 years? Myabe A will have gone up a few more cents by then, which will completely change the sound of the whole piano. What is up with this bizarre desire to capture perfection and store it in a bottle? It seems pretty much the antithesis of music to me.
Reproducing the same notes on another piano is interesting, but by no means the same thing as a truly "physically-present" performance. There's a lot more depth to a piano than you're allowing. Even two pianos from the same manufacturer have a slightly different tone/tuning.
As a(n amateur) pianist myself, nothing beats my grand at home; during a performance on another piano there's just something "wrong" about it. Maybe it's a little psychological; but other pianists agree with my comments ("the treble is dead" etc...) I find that my chords don't ring out in the same way that I'm used to and, consequently, I'm not as happy with the performance.
Glenn Gould used to go around piano shops and try each piano and then he'd pick not one, but several. He'd say "this one is perfect for that Polonaise" and another was good for his Prelude and Fugue. Different pianos, as with pretty much any natural instrument, are distinctive; most professionals know this.
Besides the technical coolness of this competition I'm surprised that the contestants and the judges would consider this a "live performance." I certainly wouldn't.
In the MIDI specification, it's a 7 bit number, which means 0-127 in decimal
I bet that a human has more tha 127 levels of how hard they hit the keys. If guys like Creskin can tell you how many cards from a deck of cards they're holding in their hands just by touch, then I would have to think that a concert pianist has better than 7-bit resolution. It might not be a linear response either, maybe there's enhanced detail towards the very soft or very loud.
The article states pretty clearly that 7 of the judges for the competition will be watching the performances live. It is only the 8th judge who will be judging the Disklavier performance. This isn't a competition where people send in an audition tape (or in this case, a floppy disk) to represent them. The performance will be LIVE for 7 of the 8 judges, so I doubt there will be any cheating.
In my mind, it isn't much different from submitting audition tapes vs. auditioning live, and audition tapes are a widely accepted practice.
My father is a Yamaha Concert Artist and owns two Yahaha pianos (neither Disklavier-equipped), on one of which I completed most of my piano studies before the age of 14. I also own a non-Disklavier Yamaha piano, and I like it. I sang professionally for eight years and have significant experience with the playback capability of the Yamaha Disklavier system.
I have yet to hear a Disklavier performance that I was able to distinguish from the original performance. The critical difference from most other forms of reproduced music is that an actual piano is reproducing the performance, not a system of amplified loudspeakers. Although no one has produced evidence for this instance in support or detraction, I imagine it would be very much in Yamaha's interests to ensure the performing and judging pianos were quite close to one another in timbric character. I know from personal experience that Yamaha have the resources and dedication to match the pianos to below human interpretive tolerance, if they believed doing so were to their corporate benefit.
That said, I prefer live performances myself, and no, I don't know exactly why. I like seeing the performer, breathing the same air, hearing the notes ring out at the same instant the performer is hearing them.
An objective, professional judge with years more education and years more experience than I might have a different opinion. Evidently this judge in question has. I defer to his/er professionalism, and I further have the temerity to suggest many of us would do well to follow suit.
So there.