Thanks. It was in my plan to hit them as light as possible but it came out a bit to harsh anyway. Unless I get another idea of interpretation, I leave it like this.

Hello Robert,

You do a fine job of piano playing. Bravo to you!

Let's see if we can do something to help with the sound your Edirol is producing, shall we?


Regardless of how realistic sounding any piano module is, there is a characteristic (un)quality that is an obvious "tip off" to its electronic origin. Do you know what that is? It is the manner in which the lowest notes are panned towards the left channel and the high notes are panned towards the right channel.

Of course, that is the characteristic quality the pianist hears when he/she sits down at the keyboard and begins to play. However, when grand pianos are recorded in a concert venue, their keyboards are turned perpendicular to the audience!

The audience members NEVER hear the high notes of a concert grand piano originating from stage right! (That is to say, not unless they are unfortunately seated in the very first row at the far LEFT of the auditorium!) In fact, the characteristic grand piano's shape of its case forces the shorter strings to speak from the left of center, as perceived by the audience.

In addition, electronic pianos' sounds are panned to the extremes -- hard left to hard right, with the image of the sound varying according to key position. This extreme amount of panning simply does not exist in the concert venue. If you have mixing capabilities, it is better to reverse the panning, and keep the overall level of panning closer to the middle, with the high notes going somewhat to the left, and the lowest notes going somewhat to the right.


The second characteristic that wrecks the sound of a recorded electronic piano/module is the nature of the reverberation pattern. Cheap pianos have cheap reverb add-ons! Now, what do I mean by this? Cheap reverb units allow for zero time to accrue before the reverberation pattern begins to commence. Restated, the recorded sound would have to travel FASTER than the speed of sound to achieve what you are hearing from these units.

A certain amount of time must transpire for the original sound to travel to the walls, ceiling, floor, etc, -- BEFORE their reflections can bounce into the listeners' ears. Rather, cheap reverb units have instantaneous echo -- and plenty of it!! Many cheap reverbs make no corrections for sound absorption versus distance, versus wood/cloth/concrete reflecting surfaces.

If you wish to provide palpable hall or room sound to your recordings, try to see if there is an adjustable time delay from the onset of the sound until the reverb kicks in. The better units have a certain amount of "bloom" to their reverberation tails. Best yet, are the new convolution reverbs that are available as plug-ins to computer programs. They are very CPU intensive, however, but can generate a far more palpable sound to your finished product.

Enough of my rambling on this subject. I hope you found it somewhat enlightening.

Cheers,

Joe <jcfeli>

Hello Robert,

I mistakenly assumed the Edirol unit you used was an electronic piano module rather than a recording device. My apologies to you; pleas pardon my faux pas. The comments I made in my 28th August thread are still valid for electronic/sampled pianos regarding panning and reverberation.

Sincerely,

Joe <jcfeli>

No problems. I never saw the other post as the stupid double login behvaiour in this forum prevents me from see new posts. I really must look into this problem.

So, now I have finally re-recorded all recordings. I actually put up a new with Peterson-Berger teh 22:th but forgot to post anything about it . Last (couple of minutes ago), I put up a new version of the Rach prelude.

Wow! I just listened to the Rach. Great job. Much better on the top notes.

Yes both are definitely better now.

The P-B sounds more relaxed than the previous. Only thing is the two rirtardandi before the main theme resumes, these seem a bit peculiar the way you distribute the note values. But perhaps it's written like that, I do not know the piece.

The Rach is also more convincing than before. But you know I am a nitpicker. I spotted some reading mistakes and set out to note them all down:

bar 6 LH chord on 2nd beat: d should be d# (same miostake
bar 6 RH chord on 2nd half of 3rd beat d# should be c#
bar 12 last LH chord is wrong

But stopped doing that in the Agitato and afterwards, too many dodgy notes of which I am unsure whether they are slips or reading mistakes. The big climax in bars 37-44 is better than the previous, but still sounds a but underpowered. The chords that connect to the reprise (bars 44-45) are played too fast, I think these should have a rit. leading to the Tempo I. There seem to be many wrong notes in the chords in the final page, it still sounds a bit sloppy.

My overall impression is you need to be more patient with the music - use more flexible tempi, and take your time over important transitions and climaxes. Even from the start, it sounds a bit hurried (more like Andante than Lento).

I tried to accent them better this time. Thanks.

I re-read the score and yes, it is.

I know you are and that is why you run the Music Board and doing it great as well .

And I pretty much was sure this was coming as the bar 6 differes between editions. Just look at the sheetmusicarchive.net and you will probably notice differences between editions. Not only these bars but look at the bass chords at the repeating A-part. In one of the editions, it is played with 4-finger chords on both hands (like I believe it should) while in the other edition, it is straigt octaves with both hands.

But back to bar 6. I tried to listen to what Rachmaninov himself does on this bar and it is not easy to hear. Listen to his version at an mp3 from http://classic.chubrik.ru/Rachmaninov/ (blackest site on the net). I am not sure whether he is flatening the d:s (four of them, two in each hand) or playing them sharp. One of the versions at SMA flatens the d:s and I also consulted my piano teacher who said he always played them flat.

About bar 12 LH. It is a slip, I know it should be D#-F#-B#.


I slip a lot there.

I noticed when I got the time that my version is fast. Only 3:30 (3:13 from first to last chord). Ashkenazy's is 4:30 (too slow in my opinion) but Rachmaninov's himself is 3:38 (3:30 from first to last chord) so we play them a bit alike at least while his Agitato is very fast. The repeating A-part is also a LOT faster than the beginning. Also, he plays the last chord very fast after the second last. Didn't notice that until now.

The last part is rather sloppy but this version was still the best of my takes. Cannot make too many as I get rather tired playing it. I will try to improve as time goes. Could be a nice piece to throw off sometime and I know it more or less by heart already.
Thanks for taking the time!

Ah right. I have an old Augener edition which is probably not very authoritative, it says "Revised, phrased and fingered by O. Thümer". But, I compared with the sheetmusicarchive.net version, and they seem exactly the same, certainly so in bar 6. So if that is what you are using, you still may want to look into that.

Interesting about the bass chords in the reprise. Surely only the first in each bar should be a 4-finger chords and the other two straight octaves ? Or do you refer specifically to bar 52 ?