Had an opportunity to record on a disklavier so I damn well took it!

Got a few hours of use with a nearby university's Yamaha. I basically had to schedule like a month ahead of time, but it was worth it. I wrote a few piano bits in a sampler ahead of time and ended up recording them, two of them came out well, the others either had various issues and I want to re-record them in a month or two or three. Though by then hopefully I'll have better compositions to record.



A NEW DISKLAVIER TRACK:

https://soundcloud.com/evoava/nostalgian-bungalow

A friend came with me and helped set up mics ( I have no clue how to set them up optimally, heh.)


https://soundcloud.com/evoava/black-and-white

The disk has a small latency issue, which can be both a good thing or bad thing depending on when it crops up. Because of this, I actually recorded this track using a few different 'takes' of different sections and edited them together.

Here's another one that came out alright, check out the other two first!:

https://soundcloud.com/evoava/moving-out-of-orbit

Lovely stuff! I really like the second piece, though the first has some really nice parts too, especially the little trills. Nice job on the recording too, so nice and warm sounding, great for solo piano.

It's making me want to play a real piano again, argh!

Black & White sounds just like Avril 14th remapped to a different scale !

  On 11/5/2015 at 12:16 PM, modey said:

Lovely stuff! I really like the second piece, though the first has some really nice parts too, especially the little trills. Nice job on the recording too, so nice and warm sounding, great for solo piano.

 

It's making me want to play a real piano again, argh!

Yeah man I'd rather be able to play a piano than use a disklavier, but I don't mind.

Yeah, there's really no reason to use the disk for anything but a solo project.

You should get back into piano. I'd like to hear more piano from WATMM!

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Black & White sounds just like Avril 14th remapped to a different scale !

lel I can't tell if this is a compliment.. heh

Obviously it's a big influence in general though, but it's unintentional. I've been purposely not listening to it while making the piano tracks. Oh yes, and with such simplicity I'm sure there are similar interval changes at some point or another.

Neither are bad but they both sound too much like you're trying to copy Phex's piano stuff even if you tried to avoid doing that.

The thing is they're very simple and pretty which is part of the issue. I have been listening to Debussy and Erik Satie and I can't help but write simple piano melodies. I'm not interested in elaboration at the moment. Anything that sounds like can be compared to Satie or Aphex.

I'm hesitant to say aphex, he's only release a handful of piano songs.

these are great. thanks for posting. it still sounds like you mic'd the room rather than the instrument. god knows how afx got that intimacy. i've read somewhere that he basically disassembled the disklavier to stick microphones in strange places. that's how you hear those inner workings and are reminded that those things really are percussion instruments.

that second one is very satie to my ears. v nice.

These are quality, nice one.

Doesn't sound like Satie or Debussy to me.

Compositionally they remind me of Ayfex's piano works and I guess that it's done on a Disklavier and you've attempted to record it in a fashion similar to he does only adds to that feeling.

It's an observation not a criticism, they're both pretty.

im impressed by your restraint, if i had access to a disklavier i wouldn't be able to resist churning out some unlistenable nancarrow-esque shit

  On 11/5/2015 at 3:55 PM, coolandfrank said:

these are great. thanks for posting. it still sounds like you mic'd the room rather than the instrument. god knows how afx got that intimacy. i've read somewhere that he basically disassembled the disklavier to stick microphones in strange places. that's how you hear those inner workings and are reminded that those things really are percussion instruments.

 

that second one is very satie to my ears. v nice.

Yeah, I simply couldn't figure out how to mic the thing for more percussion action, though I did get a little bit of it without sacrificing much else. I think that Aphex had one of the disklaviers where you could turn the strings 'off' basically' and just play the hammers. That would make sense with the level of detail he got.

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Doesn't sound like Satie or Debussy to me.

 

Compositionally they remind me of Ayfex's piano works and I guess that it's done on a Disklavier and you've attempted to record it in a fashion similar to he does only adds to that feeling.

 

It's an observation not a criticism, they're both pretty.

 

That's fine. To me the only bit that reminds me of Aphex is the 'happier'part on Black and White. Even then it doesn't feel much like it, like there's a different color to it... if that even makes sense. That is just my opinion though.

black and white are very jazz and soul affects, overall high quality sounding! what technique (mic,preamps) you use to record yamaha piano.

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black and white are very jazz and soul affects, overall high quality sounding! what technique (mic,preamps) you use to record yamaha piano.

I wish I could answer this fully. My friend set things up, 4 different mics recorded from different angles to get the best recording (of the bunch). I have all the recordings and I'm pretty sure it's the one with the mic right over the open top.

The mics were 'cheapish' ones I think. Samson... something . Mics tend to record well imo so cheap ones sound fine.

Part of why it sounds so clean I think is also me getting rid of the background noise as much as I could without sacrificing much hammer action using noise removal.

Great tone, n I like the timing in the 2nd piece especially.

Agreed on the jazz feeling of the first one, it has a lot of soul. Got to admit I don't hear the Aphex comparison at all but what do I know. The recording quality is very good, clean and feels close. I'd like to hear the 2nd one again if you had more time to record, it sounds a little rushed (great piece but personally I'd like to hear it slower :))

Your obviously a skilled player so I've got nothing to recommend but keep writing and adding the piano tracks when you can!

  On 11/7/2015 at 4:49 PM, th555 said:

Great tone, n I like the timing in the 2nd piece especially.

oh yes, the tempo is being 'automated' in the second one to 'simulate' playing by feeling. I kind of wish it was easy to do this in my DAW with electronic music, but I don't wanna use midi for everything!

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Agreed on the jazz feeling of the first one, it has a lot of soul. Got to admit I don't hear the Aphex comparison at all but what do I know. The recording quality is very good, clean and feels close. I'd like to hear the 2nd one again if you had more time to record, it sounds a little rushed (great piece but personally I'd like to hear it slower :))

 

Your obviously a skilled player so I've got nothing to recommend but keep writing and adding the piano tracks when you can!

thanks mate! Always writing, tho I am having a bit of what's it called... writers block at the moment. I've started like 10 tracks and they're all shite :). One or two small parts of it maybe constitute a good idea? dunno.

nice tunes, especially like the 2nd one, reminds me of Rachel's a bit. neither sound afxy at all to my ears. shame you couldn't get more of the hammer sound in there, maybe try some contact mics the next time.

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nice tunes, especially like the 2nd one, reminds me of Rachel's a bit. neither sound afxy at all to my ears. shame you couldn't get more of the hammer sound in there, maybe try some contact mics the next time.

thax 4 listenennen

Erm, Rachel who?

The contact mics I don't think would work as they would pick up certain hammerings more than others, and it would be nice if the panning was naturally the same as the panning for picking up the piano playing itself. It could work if I like went in and placed the hammerings in manually but I wouldn't be able to make it as good as somehow recording the disk with only the hammers playing in the same position as the keys are originally.

  On 11/13/2015 at 1:26 AM, Brisbot said:

 

  On 11/7/2015 at 4:49 PM, th555 said:

Great tone, n I like the timing in the 2nd piece especially.

oh yes, the tempo is being 'automated' in the second one to 'simulate' playing by feeling. I kind of wish it was easy to do this in my DAW with electronic music, but I don't wanna use midi for everything!

 

 

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Agreed on the jazz feeling of the first one, it has a lot of soul. Got to admit I don't hear the Aphex comparison at all but what do I know. The recording quality is very good, clean and feels close. I'd like to hear the 2nd one again if you had more time to record, it sounds a little rushed (great piece but personally I'd like to hear it slower :))

 

Your obviously a skilled player so I've got nothing to recommend but keep writing and adding the piano tracks when you can!

thanks mate! Always writing, tho I am having a bit of what's it called... writers block at the moment. I've started like 10 tracks and they're all shite :). One or two small parts of it maybe constitute a good idea? dunno.

 

No worries, nice to see some piano stuff on here. I wouldn't call writing 10 tracks writers block ;) Record the bits you like and move on to something else, sometimes it takes time to like a piece.

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No worries, nice to see some piano stuff on here. I wouldn't call writing 10 tracks writers block ;) Record the bits you like and move on to something else, sometimes it takes time to like a piece.

Yeah, I wish more people on WATMM did acoustic based stuff. To me there is significant overlap between electronic and acoustic so it's definitely an avenue worth exploring.

Piano samplers also sound very good these days and are cheap. You can get a quality sample library on kontakt for like 70 bucks and be set.

Heh, my definition of writers block is a bit different than normal. I can write music easily, but for whatever reason the past... 12 tracks now... bleh..have been average to bad. Usually I might go like 4 tracks of crap before I hit a good idea but damn O.o

  On 11/13/2015 at 3:48 PM, Brisbot said:

Erm, Rachel who?

They're a band, confusing name I know:

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  On 11/13/2015 at 6:41 PM, Brisbot said:

 

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No worries, nice to see some piano stuff on here. I wouldn't call writing 10 tracks writers block ;) Record the bits you like and move on to something else, sometimes it takes time to like a piece.

Yeah, I wish more people on WATMM did acoustic based stuff. To me there is significant overlap between electronic and acoustic so it's definitely an avenue worth exploring.

 

Piano samplers also sound very good these days and are cheap. You can get a quality sample library on kontakt for like 70 bucks and be set.

 

Heh, my definition of writers block is a bit different than normal. I can write music easily, but for whatever reason the past... 12 tracks now... bleh..have been average to bad. Usually I might go like 4 tracks of crap before I hit a good idea but damn O.o

 

I'm getting my keyboard piano back next week so will be adding some stuff at some point. I can't play properly like you can but I have half an ear for a melody. I've been listening to a Drukqs/CCAI piano playlist and it's cool that the same person has made such a wide variety of stuff. Properly into Nannou at the moment too.

Haha, I get what you mean on that. Problem is I have low standards so I like most of the stuff I make :)

I recently went back and recorded this track on the disk :). I recorded a few others, they may show.. in time. This one is my favorite though! There is a close second but I haven't mixed it yet, the recording is raw. Downloadable.

I basically make a sampler version of the song first, and then record it live on the disk, and mix it a bit better, some compression, a bit of verb, etc. I also touched up some parts that were lacking, or recorded kinda wonky. But this is mostly natural!

https://soundcloud.com/evoava/nostalgian-bungalow

I just think this is all really beautiful.

Can I assume you've got recorded samples of single notes in a few octaves? You could make a sampled instrument with your best mic samples. It sounds really clean and clear to me however you did it!

Yes I could and have done that before. I've sampled flutes like that before, and I like to just pick the best sample in C and just use that as the whole instrument in any octave. However with piano, unless you're converting it to a pad, it can sound kinda awkward using it as the articulation is the same, and it's very easy to notice. However if you throw some FX on and alter it a bit, it can make for a good pad, or semi-one-hit type thing.

With flutes for whatever reason doing that method sounds much better, probably because the samples are much simpler. So I could do that with more than just flutes, as long as the samples are simple. Actually, the flutes can sound better in some ways if they're sampled like that vs say, using one of my kontakt flute samplers. It ends up sounding 'artificial' in a good way, vs in a bad way like a piano.

Actually the piano might work if I got rid of the hammer sounds.. hmm...

Anyway I'm glad you enjoyed the tracks :)