How playable is Pianoteq 8? (Exploiting the Physical Model)

I recently saw ⁠@haniaranimusic perform Hawaii Oslo, where she had one hand on the keys and another constantly messing with the soundboard — muting the sound in varying degrees, pressing her hands into the strings, moving the felt around, and inserting fingers between the hammers and strings, etc. She ran this through a delay pedal and a looper to create an evolving pedal tone to improvise over.

I thought it would be fun to try something similar on a virtual piano, so let’s give this a whirl in Pianoteq 8!

I’m using 4 pedals, a mod strip, aftertouch, a macro, and some automation to constantly modulate various parameters of the piano model in real-time. This level of playability is something uniquely possible with physical modeling synthesis, and it’s a lot of fun to experiment with!

Hope you enjoy!

Hania’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?vkFRdoYfZYUY

Also, I’ve been asked for the FXPs (Pianoteq presets), which I’m happy to provide. To be clear, you could make these types of sounds with any of the pianos — just start with classical presets and change the pedal assignments as shown in the video, use controllersmacros and/or automation to manipulate Q factor and impedance, and set your aftertouch curve to a slope that feels good to you if you want string bends. That’s all I did inside Pianoteq.

The first track was sent through Panflow (free plugin) to pan it slowly back and forth, and Deelay (also free) to create a single ping-pong echo. Both pianos were then sent through Valhalla Shimmer (default preset), and the mix was automated to shift between 0 and 0.1 (10% wet), and finally through Eventide Blackhole on the Blackhole preset, 21% wet. You can get a similar sound using free plugins as shown here: https://youtu.be/W62mxYSNpg4?t510

Muted loop FXP (Ant. Petrof): https://forum.modartt.com/file/3oz5tk1t
Improv FXP (NY Steinway D): https://forum.modartt.com/file/b1dawws2

0:00 Loop Start
0:22 Felt thickness and string bends
0:51 Buff stop pedal
1:05 Celeste pedal
1:18 Pinch harmonic (flageolet) pedal
1:34 Sustain pedal
1:45 Impedance and Q factor
2:10 Tying it all together

#pianoteq #improvisation #physicalmodeling