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mezzopiano

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About mezzopiano

  • Birthday 11/30/1999
  1. I just wanted to add that I managed to get hold of a Fatar Studiologic VMK-161! I'd never thought I'd find one for sale. I suppose I'll have to pass on Liszt and Rachmaninov and concentrate on some Bach and Haydn, instead...
  2. I noticed a small mistake in the first histogram (Grand Total, i.e., all composers) of the graph with the piano ranges above: the scale of the horizontal axis is not the same as for the other graphs, so that F1 was excluded. Here is the corrected graph:
  3. OK. I did the last piece of the analysis and managed to convince myself that what I've codenamed the "Mozart++68" range (F1-C7) is preferable to the "Dexibell68" range (A1-E7). I've gone through my MIDI files and checked what percentage of them I'd be able to play with either range. I then also plotted the difference. With a few exceptions, F1-C7 covers more pieces than A1-E7. It would be interesting to run this analysis on larger collections. In case you have large collections of MIDI files for piano and you'd like to contribute, please contact me via PM.
  4. I ran some stats on the MIDI collections, this time looking at the frequency distribution of the lowest and highest notes. In other words, for each piece, I determined the lowest and highest note, and then plotted how often they appear. I've done this for all about 2000 pieces, and hand-picked some composers for which I had at least about 25-30 pieces. The results are summarised in the graph below. Click on the image for a full-size, readable image. According to these stats, and for what it's worth, there are more piano pieces that use F1-G#1 as lowest notes than C#7-E7 as highest notes, so I might opt for the lower range.
  5. Thanks for the advice: that would be certainly the most sensible solution. However, when I'm going on vacation with my family, I need all the seats, so the roof box is presently the only solution. A Studiologic 73 does not fit only for a few cm, unfortunately. Also, the custom controller has become a sort of DIY project: I plan to build in speakers, an amplifier, and a battery pack, together with a dock for an iPhone (playing the soundfonts), so I can use it as stage piano.
  6. Just personal preference or any particular reasons? Besides, I've downloaded some MIDI collections of classical piano pieces and ran some stats on it, to see which notes are more frequently used. Overall (over 2200 pieces and 9 million notes), the lower range F1-G#1 is used more frequently than the higher range C#7-E7 by about 2-3 times, depending on the collection. It then also depends on the composer. A few examples: - Mozart, whose piano had the F1-F6 range, obviously only used the F1-G#1 notes (about 30 times out of 135000) - Beethoven and Chopin also used the lower range more than the higher. - Albeniz and Czerny used the higher range more.
  7. Mike, it's www.keyboardmanufaktur.de They don't chop _my_ controller, but you can order a controller with a custom-chopped Fatar keybed. Let me know by PM in case you need more info (the site is mostly in German).
  8. Yes, that's what I'm doing now (see my previous posts). However, this costs me about $200 in extra fuel per year, so I'm not sure it's cheaper in the long run. Besides, a car with a roof box screams "tourist", and there's places where I'd prefer the car to go unnoticed.
  9. Thanks for suggesting the Dexibell S1, but it's too long (39.5" is a hard limit; I already have a Yamaha P-121 which is 43" and does not fit into my car) and semi-weighted is a compromise I cannot live with. But I'll consider the A1-E7 range. (there are so many note names: in this notation middle C is C4). So now the question is: what keys are more important? 1) F1 and G1 (Contra octave); or 2) D7 and E7 (4-Line octave)
  10. Update: I've bought, and resold, a used Go:Piano. I didn't like the action at all, and the velocity curves also felt weird. I realised I definitely need a hammer action keyboard. So I've decided to ask a specialist to manufacture my own custom MIDI controller by cutting a Fatar TP/40GH keybed. It can be up to 68 keys long, resulting in a total length of 98 cm. My question is now, which 68 (consecutive) keys should I choose? I will be playing mostly classical music. Mozart's own piano had 5 octaves and ranged from F1 to F6. Most 5 octaves pianos tend to be preset to C2 to C7. So I feel that F1 to C7 might be a sensible choice. Besides, this was the standard range in 1800, before 6-octaves pianos became common. Any thoughts? Thanks!
  11. @Randelph: thanks for the suggestion. The Yamaha PSR E463 sounds like fun, but I really just need one good acoustic piano sound. How are the pianos on the Yamaha?
  12. ...I realised that 49 keys are indeed not ideal. Since I travel by car, I can fit 61 or 64 keys. So I dropped the idea of getting a hammer-action 88-keys controller (such as Studiologic SL-990) and modding it to only use the 48-keys part (they comprise a left part with 40 keys and a right part with 48 keys). I could of course use more keys, but I haven't found any sensor boards (switchboard) for individual octaves. I truly wish Studiologic made a SL 61 or SL 64 (with Fatar TP100LR action, which seems to be a good compromise between portability and feel. But speaking about real products, my favorite choice would be getting a used VMK-161 (or a RD-64, which I'd have to try to re-package in a shorter case), as these seem to be the only options with weighted keys. But these units are rare and I've haven't been able to find one so far). So, unless I'm lucky, it has to be semi-weighted 61 keys. Roland Go:Piano seems to be a good choice, but I never played one, so I'll have to see whether I can test one in a shop. I'm quite happy with the Yamaha C5 and other free Soundfonts on my iPhone, played back trough bismark bs-16i, so the alternative would be getting a semi-weighted 61 keys controller instead of my current 49 keys, but those with decent action do not come cheap, and even those seem to be quite distant from a real piano feel. In the meantime, I also got two Fatar 61 TP/9S cheap on eBay ($10 each). I'm thinking of pairing one of them with suitable electronics. So far I've found the FatarScan2 board, and the MKE (Universal Midi Keyboard Electronics) board. The latter has MIDI out and the velocity curves have been "optimised for the Fatar keybed 61 TP/9", so that one should be ideally suited. I'm not thrilled by the action of the TP/9, but apparently it does not get much better than this. Can anyone compare the action of the Go:Piano to the TP/9?
  13. Small clarification: I only considered the options shorter than 1m , see the ones with blue background in this new image.
  14. I made an infographics that shows the relative size and weight of the various options I've considered:
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