Akos Janca wrote: RR, if you want real ppp on a (real) piano then you need a REAL piano - not surprising. No software can help that. What's your aim?
Well Akos, actually Pianoteq helps a lot (I know, here he goes again!)
Some background:
I make my living primarily by teaching piano performance to children and teenagers, and by providing music therapy for individuals with special needs. A large number of these special individuals are autistic adults (and quite amazing in their musical capabilities).
I have been teaching for over thirty years, and took up music therapy about ten years ago. My teaching is done on-site at my main downtown studio (as downtown as it gets in a small town north of Toronto) and in my home studio. Most of the therapy work I do is conducted in the downtown location. However, some clients have mobility issues, so to assist these people I travel either to their homes or to service providers and agencies within the community.
To pass time enjoyably when I’m not working, I do solo piano gigs with a Tom Waits slant, and play piano in a roots rock group. Although I majored in piano performance in university, I’m no concert pianist. Still, I am a pianist, and I need a stable of good pianos - real and next-best-thing - for the work I do.
For teaching, I work with a 6’ Petrof grand, a Samick studio upright and Pianoteq. The real pianos are the workhorses, but I find that Pianoteq is a very useful tool for helping students listen to, analyze and improve their performances. In my opinion, Pianoteq comes as close as it is currently possible to capturing and reproducing the subtle physical gestures we humans output when we sit down at our instruments and express ourselves.
Using Logic as a host, I will frequently record student lessons using Pianoteq. At points along the way, we can stop and check aspects of the student’s performance, from gross motor issues such as timing right down to the subtlest nuances of dynamics and tone. Logic’s notation output lays the mechanics of the performance straight out in black and white, while Pianoteq captures (and reproduces) the tone and dynamics of the performance in brilliant colour, thanks to an amazing series of calculations performed in real time that result in a brilliant range of silky smooth, dynamic amplitude and frequency range transitions that Ivory and similar sample-based piano emulations simply cannot match.
I could go on. But anyway, when the day's "work" is done, and I'm jammin' into the wee hours juzt 'cuz, it's me and my guitars and Pianoteq K1 or Pleyel because they get what I'm sayin' and retell it like it is.
So to answer you question about my aim: I aim to keep doing what I’m doing with the best tools I can find for the job
Thank you.
