keyboards and velocity
The first keyboards weren't sensitive to how hard or soft you struck them. They played one note, and played it at one volume. To get louder, you could add more notes, or get two or three or several sets of pipes or strings to be triggered by the same key. But timidly pressing down an organ or harpsichord note doesn't make it softer, and slamming it with a hammer doesn't make it louder.
Those George Crumb recitals always give good value, though.
Then they started making keyboards that directly responded to how hard you struck the key. A player could go from piano to forte, just like a guitarist or horn player. They called the first ones fortepianos for that reason, then they started calling the next generation pianofortes. Then just pianos, because I guess we always shorten words for things we like and use a lot.
"Horseless Carriage? Tee-hee! Oh, Papa, someday we shall call this a 'riage."
People who first played them must've felt like it was weird, like a car — sorry, horseless carriage — that goes up and down based on your posture. For a few generations, players liked the evenness of a harpsichord or organ, and saved the force-sensitive instruments (like clavichord) for home.
Now we're in the age of digital instruments. Though I count myself fortunate that a number of clubs and venues I perform in have nice pianos, that's something of an anomaly. Most towns are full of places that expect keyboardists to tote their own electronic instruments around and set them up for the night. (This is entirely the fault of keyboardists, who in the 70s and 80s began showing they'd rather haul around an electric piano or digital keyboard than play the perfectly good one the club provided... till clubs took the hint and stopped bothering.)
Thank you, fellow musician, for literally turning your back on a grand piano that won't be there next year.
The thing is that keyboards, even when set to a piano or EP sound, aren't triggered by force. They're triggered by velocity, which is different. They can only measure how fast the key gets pressed down, and not how hard or soft the pressure is. Over the years there've been some abortive tries, but nothing convincing or lasting. Velocity is it.
The fact that digital keyboards don't have any way to respond to force has always been a sore spot for musicians accustomed to real pianos, which of course do respond to force as well as velocity. The different finger-strokes that classical musicians learn can't pull anything meaningful out of a digital keyboard, even now.
On a piano, when you strike a key harder, it doesn't just sound louder: the tone becomes edgier. The hammer, which is wood covered in felt, acts differently when it strikes with different force. Just think of how Silly Putty behaves: you can pull two pieces apart gently, drawing out a taffy wingspan, or you can abruptly pull, and break it in two. So the chemistry of wood and felt and metal wire acts differently, too, when it all comes together softly or quickly or slowly or forcibly or some combination.
In the digital olden days (by which I mean more than a decade ago), when processing power and memory were limited, they just filtered the sound on a curve tied to velocity — muffling a softer note, and making it brighter when it's louder — so you're just using one (single) sample. In fact, in the 80s and 90s, they used one sample for several notes, simply because they couldn't fit more samples on the computer. When you play a C, then, it's a digital recording of a real piano playing a C, but then they use the same sample slowed down a bit to create a B and a B-flat and an A, and sped up to create a C-sharp, D, and D-sharp. That way you only need several samples for an entire piano patch. If you listen closely to a Korg M1, for instance, you can hear the break between the (slightly midgety) high note of the sample's range and the (slightly sludgy) sound of the next note, which is the low note of the next sample's range.
Now that things are more powerful, they use not one but several samples for each note — recordings of a real piano played soft or hard — which can give the nuanced sound of each of several attacks. Then they just blend between them to create a smooth continuum.
And now you know about keyboards and velocity.
Those George Crumb recitals always give good value, though.
Then they started making keyboards that directly responded to how hard you struck the key. A player could go from piano to forte, just like a guitarist or horn player. They called the first ones fortepianos for that reason, then they started calling the next generation pianofortes. Then just pianos, because I guess we always shorten words for things we like and use a lot.
"Horseless Carriage? Tee-hee! Oh, Papa, someday we shall call this a 'riage."
People who first played them must've felt like it was weird, like a car — sorry, horseless carriage — that goes up and down based on your posture. For a few generations, players liked the evenness of a harpsichord or organ, and saved the force-sensitive instruments (like clavichord) for home.
Now we're in the age of digital instruments. Though I count myself fortunate that a number of clubs and venues I perform in have nice pianos, that's something of an anomaly. Most towns are full of places that expect keyboardists to tote their own electronic instruments around and set them up for the night. (This is entirely the fault of keyboardists, who in the 70s and 80s began showing they'd rather haul around an electric piano or digital keyboard than play the perfectly good one the club provided... till clubs took the hint and stopped bothering.)
Thank you, fellow musician, for literally turning your back on a grand piano that won't be there next year.
The thing is that keyboards, even when set to a piano or EP sound, aren't triggered by force. They're triggered by velocity, which is different. They can only measure how fast the key gets pressed down, and not how hard or soft the pressure is. Over the years there've been some abortive tries, but nothing convincing or lasting. Velocity is it.
The fact that digital keyboards don't have any way to respond to force has always been a sore spot for musicians accustomed to real pianos, which of course do respond to force as well as velocity. The different finger-strokes that classical musicians learn can't pull anything meaningful out of a digital keyboard, even now.
On a piano, when you strike a key harder, it doesn't just sound louder: the tone becomes edgier. The hammer, which is wood covered in felt, acts differently when it strikes with different force. Just think of how Silly Putty behaves: you can pull two pieces apart gently, drawing out a taffy wingspan, or you can abruptly pull, and break it in two. So the chemistry of wood and felt and metal wire acts differently, too, when it all comes together softly or quickly or slowly or forcibly or some combination.
In the digital olden days (by which I mean more than a decade ago), when processing power and memory were limited, they just filtered the sound on a curve tied to velocity — muffling a softer note, and making it brighter when it's louder — so you're just using one (single) sample. In fact, in the 80s and 90s, they used one sample for several notes, simply because they couldn't fit more samples on the computer. When you play a C, then, it's a digital recording of a real piano playing a C, but then they use the same sample slowed down a bit to create a B and a B-flat and an A, and sped up to create a C-sharp, D, and D-sharp. That way you only need several samples for an entire piano patch. If you listen closely to a Korg M1, for instance, you can hear the break between the (slightly midgety) high note of the sample's range and the (slightly sludgy) sound of the next note, which is the low note of the next sample's range.
Now that things are more powerful, they use not one but several samples for each note — recordings of a real piano played soft or hard — which can give the nuanced sound of each of several attacks. Then they just blend between them to create a smooth continuum.
And now you know about keyboards and velocity.
Comments