Soft Pedal Equivalent in Radical Pianos?

[le_coq_codeur]

Hi everyone, does the Radical Pianos module have an option similar to a soft pedal? Thanks!

[bitley]

Several actually. That soft pedal was a gimicky thing when pianos always disturbed neighbors. So it was a mechanical compressor really only allowing a certain velocity. Reason can easily even out velocity by percentage or you can also turn down the sensitivity while lowering the volyme, or you might apply a Scream tape on it to bring down the dynamics; there are literally 100 different possible ways to do this. If you even out the velocity you should probably never allow it to reach above 30 (127 is maximum velocity but on a piano the maximum velocity is realistically probably not higher than 100-110). And I refer to schooled or acquired skills and not hitting the keys with a hammer Anyway, it also depends in what sense you would like this hated-by-pianists-pedal. I assume you want the effect of truly carefully played piano so you can limit the output in so many ways. Radical piano itself has a plethora of settings so begin by turning all of those knobs down, except pitch etc of course, and carefully increase some of them to reach what you want. You can also bring up compression quite high. These are only loose pointers but yes you can emulate it very easily.

[joeyluck]

Do you have an actual soft pedal? I don't think Rad Piano responds to MIDI CC67, but you can achieve the effect like bitley mentions. Luckily Rad Piano has a Velocity Curve setting and adjusting that will help.

If trying to use it with a soft pedal via MIDI, you could put it in a Combinator and then assign a switch or knob to the Velocity Curve and any other settings (so that you can assign negative values for the On position), and then assign the pedal to that Combinator control.

The Character knob can be very useful in the subdued settings, but unfortunately it interrupts the audio when it is changed. If you don't need to change the character of the piano throughout a song (or at least during a phrase) this setting is very helpful.

[huggermugger]

Several actually. That soft pedal was a gimicky thing when pianos always disturbed neighbors. So it was a mechanical compressor really only allowing a certain velocity. Reason can easily even out velocity by percentage or you can also turn down the sensitivity while lowering the volyme, or you might apply a Scream tape on it to bring down the dynamics; there are literally 100 different possible ways to do this. If you even out the velocity you should probably never allow it to reach above 30 (127 is maximum velocity but on a piano the maximum velocity is realistically probably not higher than 100-110). And I refer to schooled or acquired skills and not hitting the keys with a hammer Anyway, it also depends in what sense you would like this hated-by-pianists-pedal. I assume you want the effect of truly carefully played piano so you can limit the output in so many ways. Radical piano itself has a plethora of settings so begin by turning all of those knobs down, except pitch etc of course, and carefully increase some of them to reach what you want. You can also bring up compression quite high. These are only loose pointers but yes you can emulate it very easily.

The soft pedal is not a 'gimicky thing', nor is it 'hated-by-pianists'. It's a standard expression control that was developed along with the grand piano itself in the late 18th / early 19th century. It works by shifting the hammers sideways so that they strike only two of the three strings of each note. This naturally reduces the volume of playing a note, but also changes the timbre because only two strings are sounding and because the hammer is striking with a part of the felt that isn't normally in contact with the strings. A simple velocity reduction will not produce the distinctive sound of the soft pedal.

In an upright piano, you are correct that there's a reduction in velocity. The soft pedal brings the hammers closer to the strings, which reduces the velocity. Only one of the three models in Radical Piano is an upright. The other two are grands, and many (most?) of the piano plugins on the market are based on grand pianos. Some of them even emulate the soft pedal. One in particular, Una Corda from Native Instruments, takes this to the extreme by modeling a piano that has only one string per note. It sound wonderful.

[huggermugger]

Radical Piano has no soft pedal option (aka una corda). PianoTeq does, though, and it has that sound.

[bitley]

I can design a combinator that does it so I will do a few sounds like that in Way Beyond Fairlight X as people requesting sounds are those I serve.

[huggermugger]

I can design a combinator that does it so I will do a few sounds like that in Way Beyond Fairlight X as people requesting sounds are those I serve.

You base your knowledge of pianos on Reddit threads? LMAOOOO!

[bitley]

I've been playing piano since I could reach it so the reddit link was to share what many others thought.