NEMESYS - Sound Libraries

ABOUT THE GIGAPIANO

Words from the designers of this legendary instrument...

The GigaPiano is the world's first gigabyte-sized instrument designed specifically for the NemeSys GigaSampler and ships for free with the GigaSampler Full Edition.

Wink's piano, (at Austin Recording Studio) is a Yamaha Concert Series Grand with real ivory keys. Yamaha stopped using real ivory a few years ago when they realized that the world's population of elephants was not reproducing themselves fast enough to keep up with the demands for Yamaha pianos.

I really like the sound of this Yamaha... It's very smooth and consistent from low range to high range with a very even sounding midrange.

The piano is about 15 years old and Wink keeps it very well maintained in its own room. I've told Wink many times that no matter what, I get first dibs on that piano when and if he ever sells it (probably never).

Some of the Artists who have made popular records with this piano include:

Asleep At The Wheel, winner of 3 Grammy Awards (Tribute To The Music Of Bob Wills, Western Standard Time, 10), George Strait... Triple platinum RIAA Award winner (Big Balls In Cowtown), Dr. John's Production of Marcia Ball, Angela Streili, and Sarah Brown (trio), Dolly Parton (Wild Texas Wind Soundtrack - made for TV movie). Many other solo piano projects we can't remember.

I've sampled the piano a few times before... but not to the extent that was done for THIS recording. Back then, I did not have the luxury of a gig's worth of RAM... so as a compromise, I settled for just 12 notes (yeah, I know it wasn't much, but for back then it sounded pretty darn good). However, this recording takes a GIANT LEAP over what was done then. One of the great things about this piano is how it resonates when the damper pedal is down. To me, it sounds like free spirits in ethereal clouds.

The mics that were used to record the Piano were (2) Audio Technica AT-4033 condensers connected to Canare Star Quad mic cable (with Neutrik Gold Connectors) into a pair of Jensen Twin Servo Mic Pre's. The pre's output was then sent to a set of 20 bit Philips A/D converters though additional Canare Star Quad cable. The 20 bit digital was sent to an AdB Multi Wave Pro 24 bit transfer card to the computer's hard disk. Dave Govett did all the edits using the 20bit original source to produce the files to be imported into the sample editor (the GigaSampler Instrument Designer).

There was also an additional stereo mic placed a bit farther away from the piano for a little bit different sound perspective. This mic (an AMS SoundField Mark V) was recorded directly into it's own Philips 20 bit converter through a pair of Sontec Mic Pre's and is phase coherent to the primary mics.

- Larry Seyer

Dave here.

I received all the piano samples on TWENTY or so 1 gig Iomega Jaz disks in 20 bit format (from a tattered, red-eyed person who came crawling out of the studio). After editing out all the non-keeper takes (except for Elysia's rendition of 'Girl from Ipanema') in Steinberg Wavelab they were normalized (in 20-bit) followed by a pass or two of Sonic Foundry noise reduction (on the soft velocities) then finally dithered to 16 bit. The wave files at this point were very long with several notes each so I ran them through Jim's almost flawless "split wave" program (from the infamous sleaze-ware series) that split the takes into individual .wav files with the unity note embedded in the sample chunk of the wav. In the end there were 8 folders full of 88 wave files for 4 velocities pedal up and down.

After, we simply dragged them into the GigaSampler editor and the wizard automatically maps every sound out by unity note. Done! (OK, so we DID play with the release times a little bit) As of this writing we are working on the sample release so that staccato samples will ring like the real piano by triggering a staccato sample release if the note is released quickly.

- Dave Govett

gpiano_small.jpg (17565 bytes) This piano represents a big step in sampling - with over a gigabyte of stereo samples, no loops, rich resonant pedal down samples, release-triggered soundboard resonance that varies over time (great staccato playing), and wide dynamic timbre. But it all comes down to the instrument - who's true character is captured in much greater detail than that attainable by previous technology. Wehope that all of the World's finest piano's will become available in this new format (such as those recently announced by East West) to finally fulfill the logistical impossibility of bringing the world's top instruments into your studio - without any loss of creative options or sonic integrity.

As you might imagine, even after the sampling session was done for the Yamaha, there was a big technological problem - how does a person build an instrument with close to a thousand left+right non-looped samples and edit the tens of thousands of individual parameters that GigaSampler gives you? Previous methodologies (mapping by hand and tweaking every parameter individually) were just not practical - given the enormous amount of data. The answer came in the development of GigaSampler's sample editor - the Instrument Builder.

The basic concept of 'grouping' like sample types - in this case the multiple velocities, pedal up/pedal down, Short Staccato vs. full decay, and so forth together into their own folders, then just dropping the folders into the Grouping window - was created. One group (in a folder), for instance would be all the mezzoForte/pedal up/full decay versions of all the notes. This is how you would normally take the samples in the studio anyway - with one preamp setting and performance style at a time. Thus, all of the notes in the group can be edited together or the 'Wizard' can be run to map and assign the parameter foundation of the entire instrument automatically.

How does it do this?

First of all, the root note for each sample is inherited from the .wav sample itself (many .wav editors support this capability as does the included Sample Wrench XE). Then, the Wizard's intelligent mapper finds the closest sample on both sides - and maps the samples accordingly. Finally, all parameters are setup to 'useful' values which can be easily edited in singular or group fashion. The tool has various selection modes which let you get down to the finest detail (up to one of 32 waveforms per each chromatic note), whole regions (up to all 32 in a region at once), or groups of regions (up to every waveform on each of up to 128 regions and their underlying 32 sub-regions each - That's up to 128 X 32 = 4,096 waveforms and their many dozens of parameters EACH!)

You will probably want to start out sampling instruments that are a little more simple - in dozens of stereo samples with the ENTIRE natural decay, but we hope it won't be long before you see the vast new unexplored territory of what you can do with this breakthrough technology - and scope projects with gigabytes of sampling. Gone are the days of least common denominator sampling - it's amazing to see the future when it hits you in the face. Enjoy!

- Jim Van Buskirk