Varispeed and recording an out-of-tune piano on a DAW

[-]

I'm going to be recording a piano part this weekend, and I have a feeling that this particular piano is out of tune (i.e. A does not equal 440) but it's in tune with itself. My question is, what is the best way to attack this from a DAW perspective? I could... 1) Record the piano normally, then use a pitch shifter to move the pitch of the piano to concert pitch. The problem with this is that none of my outboard gear nor plugins are great at pitch shifting, and would probably result in a much uglier sound than I'd like. 2) Record the piano normally, but then tune all of the subsequent instruments in the production to the same key as the piano. (This is not practical, though -- the piano is for one part of a song where the previous parts are in concert pitch.) 3) Hire a piano tuner to put the dang piano back into concert pitch! [img]http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img] I just might do this, depending on how far gone the pitch is... I'm going to have the owner of the piano play me some notes over the phone tomorrow and see where things are at. Still, it seems like overkill for what's going to be about one minute of music. On the other hand, it's very possible I'll be using piano on future songs, so I might as well do it right. 4) Use my sampler for a piano sound instead. Er... The piano sounds I have are fine, but I prefer the idiosyncracies of micing a real piano. What I probably need is a piece of software which will let me do a varispeed thing like I could do with analog tape -- so I could shift the pitch up or down of the whole mix and then record the piano where the rest of the mix is pitchwise. In Cubase, there's a few preset sample rates but nothing I could use as a pseudo varispeed. Any ideas on Windows software that will let you record/play WAV files with varispeed? Is there maybe a reasonably-priced application out there which will let you record tracks at different speeds like you would on an analog multitrack? (It'd be a cool thing to have for other applications, like lightning-fast Les Paul-like guitar solos or strange-sounding vocals.) The more I think about this, the more I think calling the piano tuner is gonna be the best way to go, but I figured I'd ask if there are other ideas on how to tackle this piano problem or ways to do varispeed with a DAW. This message has been edited by popmusic on 08-29-2001 at 11:18 PM

[Bonafide]

#2 or #4 My DAW has pitch control but it really sucks with piano unless the pitch is just slighty off.If you have to actually vari the speed by a 1/2 note, it will probably sound very un-natural. Using your keyboard or samples seems easiest.

[-]

[quote]Originally posted by Bonafide: [b]My DAW has pitch control but it really sucks with piano unless the pitch is just slighty off.If you have to actually vari the speed by a 1/2 note, it will probably sound very un-natural. [/b][/quote] Which DAW do you use? I know the piano is not *really* out of tune (if it's out, it's probably less than a quarter tone), so I wouldn't be using any kind of wild pitch changes. (Although, it'd be cool to be able to record wild pitch changes in other situations as a special effect.)

[gtrmac]

Seems like it will be a pain for the piano player to play with a track that the piano is not in tune with, even if you are going to pitch it up or down later. I recommend having the piano tuned just for the piano player's sake. I use Wavelab to pitch shift .wav files by the way. It does a pretty good job of keeping the quality of the instrument intact unless you really shift it a lot. ------------------ Mac Bowne G-Clef Acoustics Ltd. Osaka, Japan My Music: [url=http://www.javamusic.com/freedomland]www.javamusic.com/freedomland[/url]

[masternfool]

SEKD, free tryout,PC compatible great varispeed,not pitch shifting.It will actually speed up or slow down the track. Great for getting those wild endings that speed up constantly or slow down to nothing.. my 2 cents Harry

[-]

[quote]Originally posted by masternfool: [b]SEKD, free tryout,PC compatible great varispeed,not pitch shifting.It will actually speed up or slow down the track. Great for getting those wild endings that speed up constantly or slow down to nothing.. my 2 cents Harry[/b][/quote] Which product of SEKD does this? Is it Sequoia? I checked out their web site at [url=http://www.sekd.com]www.sekd.com[/url] but wasn't sure which product you meant.

[Anderton]

I vote for tuning the piano. It's not that big a deal! If you want to use varispeed, programs like Sound Forge can shift pitch. If you do this instead of time-stretching, the file will be slightly shorter if you speed it up, and slightly longer if you slow it down. But the quality of the sound for SMALL shifts will be much better than an algorithm that changes pitch but keeps duration constant. As long as the piano is going down first, this approach will work. Just have the pianist play the part a little slower or faster to compensate for the changes caused by pitch-shifting. Better yet, tune the damn thing!

[Calfee Jones]

I vote for #4 - using the samples. UNLESS of course, you enjoy the challenge of getting a good miked piano sound [img]http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/cool.gif[/img] !

[-]

[quote]Originally posted by Calfee Jones: [b]I vote for #4 - using the samples. UNLESS of course, you enjoy the challenge of getting a good miked piano sound [img]http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/cool.gif[/img] ![/b][/quote] A sampled piano would be cool if I were going for a polished/commercial sound, but I'm not... I'd like to deliberately pick up the idiosyncracies that go with playing a real, mic'ed piano over a sampled one. IMO, this particular song calls for it. Craig -- I agree... I'm most likely going to call a tuner if it's not in concert pitch. But I am still interested in using the occasional varispeed trick for other applications, meaning I'd like to record at either a higher or lower sampling rate that 44.1 and then play the track back at 44.1. I could kinda pull this off by making a rough mix of the song out of Cubase and then using CoolEdit to pitch shift it (affecting both tempo and pitch), then import that track back into Cubase, record a new track using the CoolEdit track as a reference, then importing the new track into CoolEdit and pitch shift it so it would fit with the original tracks... But that seems like a lot of work if I just want to test out something quickly to see if varispeed is gonna be the trick I'd like to use. Maybe the question I should really ask is, which multitrack DAW programs allow you to simply adjust the "speed" of the audio tracks (i.e. adjust the rate that everything is recording and playing at) on the fly? In other words, which DAW programs treat varispeed in essentially the same way as an analog multitrack? Or is this technically impossible being that audio card drivers seem to have have fixed input sample rates?

[masternfool]

sorry, it's now supported by magix..It "samplitude master".2 track mastering software,but i'm sure all of their multi-track software should do it..Harry

[robsmusic]

A couple of thoughts: Can you pitch shift the other tracks to match the piano? Many instruments are more forgiving of minor pitch shifts than the piano. Do you have access to the piano so that you can pitch shift the other tracks ahead of time, so the pianist can play along with the newly pitched tracks? -Rob