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Concert to be Performed from Beyond the Grave
rtphokie writes "Raleigh, NC based Zenph Studios is hosting a live concert performed by two piano virtuosi long since dead. Zenph developed software which digitally transcribes performances even from the scratchy recordings. A more faithful transcription of timing, key and pedal pressure is achieved using Yamaha's high resolution version of MIDI."
The day MIDI can duplicate Elvis's unique voice is the day they find a way to electrically control the spinal columns of about 10,000 people in Vegas.
Coupling a performance like this with a 3D Projected likeness of the artist would be mindblowing. The projection wouldn't even have to be very good.. but being able to visualize the person while hearing the digital "passion" in their notes.. live.. would be something amazing.
I thought this was going to be about dead musicians coming back from the grave to kill those who use their music as ring tones. Still cool though.
Unfortunately insiders acknowledged that it would be impossible to bring Michael Jackson's mucis back from the dead.
Glen Gould is alive in my heart.
The Custom Mary
... not that I'm surprised by a Slashdot (or submitted article) being misleading, but there's not much to crow about here.
We're talking about a slightly more modern idea of the old player pianos. Stuff that matters indeed..
Part of the charm of Glenn Gould's recordings stems from the fact that you can hear him humming along with the music if you listen carefully. I guess he drove recording techs nuts.
They're creepy and they're kooky,
Mysterious and spooky,
They're all together ooky,
The Addams Family.
da da da da. tum tum.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/articles/zenph/ index.html
Agile Artisans
And the CD sounds pretty darned good. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 005J1I/103-9970286-1975026?v=glance
Is a (not-so-) live concert by the legendary Hotblack Desiato.
Unfortunately, he's spending a year dead for tax purposes, but hey, we can't but hope, eh?
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Maybe they can rent the space to parents who want to take pictures of their 2 mo playing the piano. Even better, take videos of this, and send it to all your relatives, just to show that your smoking during your pregency DID NOT affect your child at all.
Velocity is a standard part of the MIDI protocol...
There are a few MIDI things related to volume -
Channel volume and Key velocity are the most common used.
Volume just being the output volume.
Velocity is usually used to affect both volume and timbre.
There's also Chanel aftertouch and Key aftertouch, which depending on the instrument may affect volume, timbre, pitch, or nothing at all.
Controller 11 - Expression is often volume related, and there's also the Breath controler (I don't know the number off the top of my head) which can also be used to affect volume and / or timbre, pitch or whatever...
There's plenty of room in standard MIDI for a wide range of expressiveness, it's usually the instrument that falls short, not the protocol.
Advanced users are users too!
That's incorrect. Velocity is sent as part of a Note On event in General MIDI 1.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Exactly. These are famous last words, but: "how hard can it be?"
You have the exact musical score, and that as a first-guess MIDI file should be pretty good (but will lack "feeling")... then you have an algorithm (genetic algorithm maybe?) that varies the exact timing and release of keys and stuff, until it best approximates the original recording. Since you're starting with the real musical score, getting the notes right shouldn't be the hard part... the rest of it should be the hard part.
In fact, you can always ask a music expert what notes are being played, and guide the algorithm appropriately. Any human composer can tell you what notes are supposed to be played... the hard part is specifying microsecond timing of how the keys/pedals are pressed and released.
Now, IANAM (musician), but I have programmed fitting routines many times... so what am I missing?
Nice post, but just a small remark - sometimes the score won't be available, since for example Fugues (which Glenn Gould liked to play) involve some improvisation, and I bet that even in other places he would improvise some times.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Gives a whole new perspective on the term 'de-composing'
Zenph Studios, a software company based in Raleigh, North Carolina, claims that it has found a solution to the problem, although it refuses to say how for commercial reasons.
There have been attempts at music transcription software since the 1970's. For some obscure reason, many of the people who tried didn't seem to think of the fact that classical music comes with a score.
So, the "solution" to the problem is simple: use the known score to get the notes and polyphony, and use the recording primarily to infer the performance parameters. It's not a very complicated problem, actually. I suspect the main reason why you haven't seen this before is because it is of fairly little commercial interest.
Who gets the royalties?
Gould's reputation was built on improvisation. His 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations became an instant best seller and was one of, or, possibly, the first classical best seller. His refusal to play Legato (smoothly) upset the status quo of the classical music world. Leonard Berstein, legendary conductor of the New York Philarmonic, deferred to Gould's quirky redition of a work, suggesting that genius of Gould's level should be allowed leeway.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
The "high def" MIDI the slashblurb refers to is probably what yamaha calls "Yamaha XP MIDI".
I can't find a technical spec on this right now, but its mostly backwards-compatible with MIDI plus the addition of a few extra details about the piano performance, e.g. key stroke depth, using the MIDI controller extensions. (However I'd be really suprised if it it was actually possible to determine key stroke depth from signal analysis of an old recording).
If they did their homework it would should also have a higher clockrate. MIDI is notorious for its poor time resolution with a clock of only 1khz -- and studies have shown that virtuoso pianists can control timing down to the sub msec range, so this is essential.
The article also beats around the bush on the polyphonic transcription issue -- but since these are classical pieces, score following seems like an obvious if not relatively easy way to do it.
No this is wrong. Yamaha has a form of high def MIDI for recording grand pianos. They abandoned 7-bit MIDI because it couldn't reproduce all the nuances they wanted to capture. This is the data that is captured. However, there is no such this as high-def MIDI really, it's an analogy (which is strange for a digital idea).
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
An acoustic piano doesn't have a volume control. The only control over the volume is the key velocity, as a performer has almost no control over the sound after a key has been hit.
"Lo-def"MIDI would include keystrokes with their velocity, key releases, and when the pedal is engaged and released. I believe Yamaha's hi-def MIDI treats the pedals as continuous controllers so every move can be accurately recorded. They probably log the pressure and speed of release of the keys as well, though this would have only a marginal effect on the sound in all but exceptional circumstances.
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
The Rolling Stones are on tour this summer.
I love the idea that they can transcribe polyphonic notes with such clarity. I think that being able to hear these piano masters from a real piano and not just recording would be a great experience, I wish that I could see it live.
One of the huge benefits I see is that now electronic music artists can incorporate classical pieces as done by the actual artist instead of a poor transcription. I don't know if anyone has heard tracks such as Gotti's Revenge, but I find that electronic music that integrates classical or otherwise note heavy songs has a much better sound.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
A few years ago I heard a CD made with this (or a similiar) technology.
The way the technology was described to me was as follows: as you know a piano works by having a small hammer attached to each key. The recording technology has a modified piano where below each hammer is a pool of mercury. When the key is struck the hammer enters the pool, completing an electrical circuit, this causes a line to be drawn (???) on a piece of paper. Another modified piano will read the piece of paper like a player piano.
We listened to music performed by Richard Strauss. It was very cool.
A recording does not contain enough information due to the mechanical limitiations of the technology to enable such a transferance of performance to occur. The dynamic range is too limited, even for just a single note, and the bandwith/resolution does not allow for a workaround. Although it might fool most people, it's NOT a *reproduction* of a performance, but a *facsimile* of one.
Not difficult at all. I got 100% right on the first try. I don't think those midi clips were recorded using a player piano though. They're most likely from a synthesized source, just like your sound blaster's midi synthesizer(maybe a bit better admittedly). You can always tell; the attack, decay, timbre are all wrong. Alternately, you can have a facsimile based on one sampled note, very often C3. To get all the other notes, that sample of c3 is pitched up or down. Again, you can tell it from the real thing because c3 might sound amazing but all the other notes have an odd synthetic timbre to them, getting odder the further away you get from C3. But now if you have an actual MIDI player piano recreating a virtuoso's performance, that would be very hard to tell appart from the real deal.
I got a fever...and the only cure is more cowbell!
Ahhh, tuning. There are subtleties there.
Fans of "Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land" know that a "perfect fifth" interval has two notes, with a 3:2 ratio of frequencies. 1.5000000000000. And a major fourth interval has frequencies with a 4:3 ratio. 1.3333333333333....
Intro to music theory (or a little piano experience) notes that an octave is a doubling in frequency, and contains 12 half steps. A major fourth is five half steps, and a perfect fifth is seven. From an octave (2:1), one can compute the frequency ratio for a half step by solving for x:
x^12 = 2. I get 1.0594630943592952645618252949463
Five of these gets a frequency ratio of 1.3348398541700343648308318811823, not 4/3. A touch sharp. Seven mathematical half-steps yields a frequency ratio of 1.4983070768766814987992807320264, not 1.5. A touch flat.
A piano tuner (or the designer of any instrument) can use the mathematical equal-tempered scale, and have fourth and fifth intervals sound a bit off. Or the tuner can make some, but not all, of the fourth and fifth intervals work perfectly. Choose which ones. Make too many perfect, and the other notes will sound off, and may sound horrible in chords.
It's all about tradeoffs.
First of all, the concert is not only given by 2 dead pianists. I'm the performer of the recital. The 2 dead pianists are present during the middle of the recital where we will demo this new technology.
For all of you who has reservations about the results, i suggest that you come and hear the demo. This is not about getting a piece of music performed the way a composer wants it performed. It is also not about taking an old recording and "cleaning it up". What this technology will do, is completely recreate the original performance. And before we can legitimately question the accuracy of this re-performance, we need to look at the chain that constitutes a recording. In the original recording session, there are the following variables:
1. The performer, who is playing the piece on a piano whichever way they preferred.
2. The actual acoustic recording, going from mics to preamps to tape/dat/cylinder/whatever the method maybe.
3. The acoustics of the hall, room, space that the recording is taking place in.
In the re-performance cycle, there are the following variables:
1.Deciphering the original performance from the other variables, such as recording noise, reverb, out-of-tune notes, etc. However, the original performance's qualities to be preserved include nuances of tone, minute timing changes for every single note, loudness of every single note, pedal usage (including different gradations of pedal), and many other things.
2.Playing back this "essence" of the performance on a Yamaha Disklavier Pro.
3.Accurately matching the Yamaha Disklavier to the sound and tone qualities of the piano used in a recording, and adding whatever acoustic ambience variations to the performance (space, hall, room, etc).
The purpose of the re-performance is to throw out all of the variables during the recording, except for the performer. The ability of the Yamaha disklavier pro to reproduce this is not to be questioned - When it is accurately calibrated, I cannot tell the difference between my own performance and a played back version. In fact, if I were to acoustically record my own performances, and the played-back performances of the Disklavier, i would not be able to distinguish between the two (with a few minor exceptions, at least as far as the Mark III pro is concerned).
What this means, is that there are 2 variables still to be controlled in the playback cycle. The piano and the acoustics, and the actual "decoding" of the performance. The demonstration on May 19th will be about the decoding. All of the other variables, save the piano matching, has been take care of.
It is an amazing piece of technology, and I say this as someone who has critiqued the process every step of the way, and has seen the results firsthand, multiple times. Come on out, enjoy the recital, and see the tech demo. Mei-Ting Sun