Tune Up: Pianoteq Review

posted in: Features • Reviews & Playlists

One of the most interesting topics in music is synthesis. As technology has developed, people have designed new ways to create music literally from scratch. We’ve given you a quick introduction to synthesis, and now we’d like to review a synthesis product that is simply ahead of its time: Pianoteq.

Pianoteq is is the name of the entire company, which specializes in synthesis software/plug-ins that specifically model piano sounds. Physical modeling synthesis is a branch of synthesis that deals with creating sounds based on the physical characteristics and resonant qualities of a real-life instrument. Please note that this is not sampling; it still uses oscillators to create sounds and filters to shape them, just like any other synthesis method. However, one takes, say, the sound-creation technology of the mouthpiece on a clarinet and the resonant qualities of its body to dictate what frequencies are produced during synthesis.

So what does this all mean for the actual sounds? If we were just going to create a realistic sounding trumpet or piano, it really only saves us some space on audio sample storage. However, physical modeling allows you to create and utilize sounds that are simply not possible in real life (everything from a 1,000-foot piano to a 3-inch clarinet to a sound completely unrelated to instruments). This is where Pianoteq comes in.

Pianoteq have created a physically modeled piano plug-in that sounds extraordinarily accurate to what a given piano would sound like recorded. There’s no more need to fuss with mic’s and storing large audio samples. You can control this plug-in via MIDI and you really can’t tell that it’s synthesized. Check out this video Pianoteq made demonstrating the sounds:

What truly impresses is the flexibility this allows. Say you want a thin-sounding spinet piano for the verse of a song, but you need a really full baby-grand piano with a harder mallet and a harsher attack for the chorus. Simply automate Pianoteq’s settings so that the necessary parameters are changed (hammer hardness, piano length, string thickness/tuning, etc). Everything is adjustable and you can actually get these pianos to gradually morph into each other over time. Amazing, right?

While it’s been out for only a few years, the software is already on its third version and is blowing away a lot of the traditional piano sampling methods. In the latest version, they introduced more mallet/piano-style versions of the same software (including Wurlitzer organs, rock pianos and even mallet percussion). Head over to Pianoteq’s website and download the demo to try for yourself!