I suppose by professional standards your playing might not be impressive, but it sure sounded great to me! It was also nice to hear you play (and discuss) ragtime. I was not expecting that at all!
I'm not a professional, but I have studied as an undergrad for 5 years now. And he sounds pretty good to me. I suck at piano, it's not my primary instrument. Music theory helped me cheat my way through piano class.
Well, that’s how piano training works. When you’ve finished a music school, If you want to play something, you learn it, practice and than play it. Pros do that on a daily basis, amateurs do that just for fun, so yes, pros will learn faster, play sturdier, faster etc, art masters will also include their own touch and feel, but basically any person well trained music can play a piano piece with some preparations and the guy does that real good.
The fact his definition of "no effort" still creates a product as engaging as his other videos is astounding! This video was incredibly interesting all throughout its duration
Can we normalize youtubers making videos about their hobbies at the end of the year for tax write-offs? I'm sorry Mr. Government, I HAD to buy the keyboard for my JOB.
"I just bought this new keytar, it's a keyboard and guitar, I don't really need this shit, I just really wanted it." Damn it, that freaking song had to pop back into my head
Careful doing something like this. Brandon just hired 87,000 new IRS agents to catch people who do this. And you all thought he was just going to tax the rich more to offset his administration's insane spending...
I had the privilege of meeting Vocaloid's engineer at an anime convention and discovered to not much surprise that this other Yamaha product was also a sound sample bank that prided itself on smoothly ligaturing various combinations of phonemes (a task which isn't as difficult in Japanese where the entire language consists of 45 syllables using only 5 vowels with no dipthongs). Once they started making voices for Korean and English singing characters, it became more complex. After the presentation was over I asked the question "Japan's already started work on mechanical voiceboxes, why don't you just transition to synthesizing speech directly through vocal physics models" and his answer (plus your displeasure with the sustain pedal) makes it clear Yamaha's digital instrumentation division is happier massaging samples than reproducing what the original instrument's mechanisms *do*.(that, and the fact Vocaloid was demo technology never intended for distribution until the public demanded it).
I wanted the vocaloid software so badly when i was a bit younger (okay, like over a decade ago), but it was $300+ for i think just a voicebank and i didn't have the money or the computer to make it work so i never got it. Sometimes i still listen to the songs i had gotten from youtube and am still surprised at the rapid changes in sound. Like original miku versus vy2 or even gakupo vs gakupo whisper. I think it was yohio and his vocaloid that had a song that made it nearly impossible to tell which was singing (without wings?) To this day, i'm still fascinated by it all
From my understanding they did eventually switch to a different model instead of just using voice samples but it was mostly, if not entirely, due to fear from the original voice sources that their unique voices would be entirely reproducible thus making them obsolete (they were afraid they wouldn't be able to find work since people could just buy their voices without having to pay them per job).
i mean i guess japanese has diphthongs (basically one) but in the best (?) way. like theres “ai” which sounds like the name of the english ‘i’ character, and sounds like a diphthong but isn’t different enough mechanically to need more complexity
Quick FYI from the music nerd gallery: the piano-forte (modern piano) and fortepiano are in fact different instruments. The older fortepiano has a leather-wrapped hammer and (most often) single action keys, whereas the newer piano has felt hammers and double action keys. And, if you were making a subtle joke that went right by me, please excuse the interruption.
I need weighted keys for the ergonomics. Semi-weighted keys hurt my fingers. Your body also develops muscle-memory that intuits a pitch-to-weight gradient connection.
It has always amazed me how you can be so pedantic about such a wide range of things. Keyboards to can openers, and laserdiscs to heat pumps, it’s absolutely amazing. This is a great place for people who appreciate the finer details.
"In a nutshell, it just makes the piano a bit quieter when it's depressed." That's good. There's nothing worse than your piano being loud while it's sad.
Or on a more serious note, I think it actually moves the hammers closer to the strings. But I may be mistaken or there are different ways to achieve it, as I also have seen pianos where a strip of felt was mechanically placed in between.
I bought my wife a $700 Yamaha keyboard for Christmas a few years ago and it's great. She wanted a real piano, but after playing it for a little while, she fell in love with it. I've been binge-watching your videos for a couple of weeks. They're all great. And, you can play the piano!
Professional piano player here: I'm officially impressed with your piano playing ability and would indeed say you need no qualification around "I can play piano".
Your playing was fine! I’m glad you mentioned the issue of tempo at 4:10. For me as a composer, hearing a work performed too quickly is like wolfing down a delicious meal without taking the time to savor every bite.
Man, I've been bingeing old TC videos recently, and I remember this one coming out at a really, REALLY dark time for me. Hard to believe it's almost a year old already. Looking forward to this year's NEN. However big or small the magnitude, thanks for helping me through some tough times.
Relatedly, the place I work used to have a wide format printer that only had two buttons on it. One of which controlled the power. To configure said printer, you'd hold the power button until it would print out a scantron form. You would then need to find a #2 pencil, because you were expected to fill in the bubbles for the options you wanted and then you'd feed the paper back into the printer for it to scan in. Weird times.
Last time I was at a yamaha store looking at pianos, they had one hybrid which actually had strings. They had a digital pad for the hammers to hit and a mechanism to get it out of the way and allow the hammers to hit the strings It didn't had a speaker. The salesperson pitched it as a way to make it quiet for nighttime study using the audio output from a 1/4' headphone jack
Great modern keyboards have a LOAD of normal, lighted, blinking and colored lighted switches, faders and buttons. This design is really great for people who like oldschool design.
On the subject of touch sensitivity. Wendy Carlos had Bob Moog make a touch-sensitive keyboard for her synthesizer in 1967, it was used for Switched-On Bach. It has both depth and velocity sensitivity and controls both the ADSR envelope generator and the low/high pass filters. She shows an example of Bach with and without touch sensitivity on the album "Secrets Of Synthesis".
MPE Midi keyboards are amazing, and I hope they get cheaper- I enjoy using my Microfreak as a midi MPE controller in ableton and long for a keyboard like the Lumi Keys.
Don't overlook the jankiness of the Una Corda (left) pedal! What it really does in a grand piano is shift all of the hammers to the right so that instead of hitting three strings (tre corda) it hits one (una corda). While this does change the overall volume of the piano, it more importantly makes the tone more delicate and muted. Digital pianos only ever focus on the volume part making it essentially another special volume doohicky to make it quieter, but it does a lot more on its acoustic counterpart!
To be exact, the una corda shifts the entire action, so even the keyboard shifts. On uprights, the pedal moves the hammers closer, so they have less distance to travel and consequently hit the strings with less force; while there are probably subtle differences, it basically makes it as if you are pressing the keys more softly. It also, of course, doesn't shift the keyboard (although on the antique upright in my house, pressing the pedal too sharply causes the hammers to hit the strings randomly, and the keys to depress a bit). The digital version could be said to be more like the upright version in these ways (though considering other things are mimicking grand pianos, that is a bit odd).
@@fllthdcrb I had thought about that, but when you have the freedom that the digital piano offers its a shame that manufacturers always go for the sound of the upright rather than the grand out of I can only assume convenience. The upright piano is just a condensed grand and with that trade for smaller size comes a few downgrades in features and the effect of the una corda is the one that always bothers me the most along with the richness of the lower strings.
Don't say "only ever." The ones I developed for had separate sample banks and configurations for una corda. Basically, two separate digital pianos, with a pedal to toggle which one the keyboard was connected to. The sustain pedal worked the same way, switching sample banks in addition to changing the release behavior. (I'm not sure how Yamaha got that one wrong...) So we got relatively natural sympathetic resonance. At least at the time I was there, we didn't try to model sympathy between keys being held down at the same time, though. No idea if they do that now, but it wouldn't surprise me if they still didn't bother.
In my (quite old and somewhat cheapish) upright piano it puts a piece of felt right in between the hammers and the strings, wich gives it a really muffled sound. Almost as if you are listening to a piano played in another room.
Thank you so much for this video. I have a secondhand Korg weighted keyboard that did not come with the manual and never thought that perhaps it would have additional functions, now I know how to make much better use of it!
There's potential for collaboration with other creators too, much of the synth community is very interested and involved with obsolete and obscure music technology
I never tire of your sense of humor. The variety of subjects and consistency of entertainment and enrichment found in your content is nothing short of remarkable! Keep up the great work.
As long as we’re talking about Ragtime, it’s a little known fact Scott Joplin actually wrote an Opera as well. His Elite Syncopations is always my favourite.
I would like to complain that this was most definitely NOT 'No Effort November'. You've put in many years worth of effort to get your piano playing that effortless. :P
4:33 I love the little messages you leave in the Closed Captioning sometimes. I also love that you actually do Closed Captioning, unlike 99.99% of Youbers. I'm not deaf, but I do have a slight loss in both ears technically, but I just hate if I can't hear a word or two. I don't have to rewind, just look down. Although you talk much, much, much, much, more clearly than most Youbers. YES! Youbers. It was a typo, but I like it since it's shorter to type over You Tu...
really liked your point of "engineering for nostalgia" because the ENTIRE music gear industry is built upon that philosophy for the most part, for example all our digital guitar amps can theoretically be made to be very distinct from tube amps yet most of them developed are simply emulations of classic guitar amps
While true, what would you want a guitar amp to sound like? They were originally intended to be fairly faithful to the sound of the instrument (perhaps coloring slightly in order to fix some of the limitations), but their inability to do that at volume is what led to the sounds we think of today. We could build amps that distort in different ways, but amps that do so are generally found to be unpleasant to listen to. Other manners of modifying the signal absolutely exist in the realm of digital effects, but you're no longer talking about what an amplifier does. And there are digital amps that allow you to combine the different types of amplifier distortions in unique ways. (Positive Grid's Bias Amp is the first place I saw this, but I'm sure it exists elsewhere.) Ultimately, I'm not sure what we'd choose to do differently.
@@wbfaulk not saying I don't agree w the philosophy, music is super tied to culture so it would be crazy to just reinvent the guitar like that out of nowhere, I don't know where I'd start I love my tube amps and tube amp emulators :)
Don't mix up "the entire music gear industry" with "the traditional music industry"... There are digital pedals that come from another dimension nowadays, and I own a modular synth with a digital granulizer on it and no keyboard... But then I have a keyboard synth with pretty much the same signal chain as the first Minimoogs and Odysseys from more than half a century ago. People just like familiarity, but nowadays there's many corners to dig up weird stuff.
@@headspacetheace No problem man, I'm just sunk deep into weird music stuff and I wanted to preach the good word of the quirky gear, for people who think there's nothing unique or weird out there to try. There is, and for the appropiate people it could be incredible fun. Also applicable to the digital VST realm.
Says his skills aren't worthy of a more expensive piano, then proceeds to flex on all of us. I've gained a whole new level of respect for you after this video. And the jokes are hilarious too. 😆
I just watched your video with fascination as I am the church organist playing what would be called a Rolands organ. Much more complex with hundreds of voices and combos etc. but still with the underlying theme that you portray in your video, i.e., the changes that one can make in the almost endless combinations of sounds. I been playing the organ at the church now for over 35 years and I still have not come close to finding all the combinations that are available. Music is a fascinating wonderful thing. I enjoyed your video very much.
I remember getting my first yamaha clavinova in 2010 and having a blast with its hybrid system and button based interface. You would mix sounds together by pressing two instrument buttons at the same time and had a way better metronome interface that you adjusted with the up and down button beside it and it had a segment lcd screen with the tempo. It was really fun until you had to take the whole thing apart to replace the pads where the keys strike the sensor. I loved my 100 lbs brown brick that sounded like a piano.
You'd find my piano very interesting: it's a regular piano with a "silent function" that keeps the hammers from hitting the strings and uses an actual laser underneath the keys to detect what you're playing. It's also got all the regular digital piano functions, like instruments and recording plus a midi output.
When you were talking about toasters and swamp coolers I had to just trust that you'd done your research and were telling truths. But I always feared that someday you'd step into my wheelhouse and I'd be horrified to find that you were a fraud. I'm happy to report that you nailed this one and that makes me feel a lot more confident about my knowledge of toasters and swamp coolers.
What confirmed it for me was the talk of sympathetic vibrations. The other information was all very detailed and accurate, but sympathetic vibration is a particularly niché topic that not even a lot of pianists talk about/ are aware of. This channel continues to please and prove to be a great source of accurate information!
As someone coming from an engineering background, I've also found these videos to be very well done. It's easy to oversimplify a subject to the point of misrepresenting nuances, but Alec really does a fantastic job of avoiding those pitfalls.
@@btat16 Pianists not aware of sympathetic vibrations? Now that is surprising to hear. Pun intended. Even just playing around on a grand piano, not being a pianist, you can hear the sympathetic vibrations and the distinct sound they make. It's cool stuff. Not the dark-art that is piano-tuning, though, that is... a land no one speaks of.
@@Jackpkmn Of course, and I didn't know its name either. I wasn't talking about the jargon or word but rather the concept or sound of it. But you're right unless you have to take music theory or spend time just really focused on listening it'd be easy to miss. Cool point.
This is so funny! I actually work for Yamaha, I'm in the commercial audio department, but our philosophy does tend to be to use computers to trick you into thinking you're using the analog equivalent. We also do tend to like to build tricks into our stuff when we can, not surprised the engineers decided to use the keys that way. Great stuff, always enjoy your videos, even the no effort ones!
And yet there are those of us who tend to think YM3812 when we hear your employer's name, and get warm fuzzy feelings thinking of the sound produced by said chip.
I once read about someone in the military ordering a piano (real one, with strings) for the officers mess, describing it as a 'digital audio-frequency generator' to fool the boss. Not lying, either: it was 'digital', as in 'you play it with your fingers...'
At work we have a pair of Steinway D concert grand pianos. They are tuned every day, sometimes more than once. Each one weighs three quarters of a Great British ton, and costs about £200k. This is why electric pianos are so fantastic for use everywhere even on a concert hall stage. At home and in the studio they are lighter and cheaper and they have MIDI. Many real parlour pianos are de tuned slightly to keep them in tune for longer. Keeping a piano at concert A 440Hz is quite hard in a house with heating and cooling. You might think an electric piano would be relatively lightweight. They are nothing like as heavy as a real piano but beware of cheap keyboards. All those weighted keys that Alec loves are one reason, but the main one is the huge steel beam that keeps the span of the keyboard rigid and straight - it prevents a banana shaped keyboard with keys that stick together. Always move a piano with two people. Never pull a Steinway D, if the leg comes off it will kill you.
The user interface on those Yamaha digital pianos is definitely designed with visual aesthetics first and foremost. They're making something for traditionally-trained piano players, so it's as familiar and "classic" as possible. And it looks like a "serious" instrument, sitting there in the living room. It makes for an interesting contrast with keyboards that are unapologetically synthesizers, which tend to have *a lot* of explicit controls, because radically changing the timbre of the instrument while playing is an essential part of modern synthesizer playing.
Unapologetically? As if synthesizers had to apologize for being a different instrument. I really don't know what do you mean by serious instrument but if you look at synthesizers in the same price range as quality pianos, you'll see a lot of serious instruments that you can't just turn on and play, they need these controls. I believe you either refer to cheap keyboards with "999 in 1" sounds or to arranging stations, which are kind of one-man-band instruments for event entertainers. But synthesizers are just a different thing.
Those controls do make sense. You end up playing the grand piano sound 95% of the time and just use one or two favourite voices 99% of the remaining 5% that you'll set without looking. Why ruin looks with buttons and make the price less competitive in the process?
It is YAMAHA not Yamaha Pay attention to detail. They sound the same but they are NOT the same. When you look at something be sure you see what it is you are actually looking at. Learn that all CORPORATE names are in ALL CAPS Only the living soul has a name in Mixed Case Letters. was it a dog school you attended?
I’m surprised you didn’t mention one more specific advantage of a digital piano over a traditional piano: When your kids are practicing the same song for the 1,000th time, they have to use the headphones!!! 🎼🎶🎵🎶 🎧 😅
I can't believe I missed this video back when it came out. I'm impressed that you brought up the point about sympathetic vibrations. I haven't kept up with electronic piano tech, but I'm not aware of any electronic pianos that do a good job on that.
Reverb effect helps. A reverb that only turns on, when you press the sustain pedal, would be great. The latest models, also have the mechanical sound, of the pedal being released.
Despite not really having any prior interest in looking into digital pianos, as I am not a pianist current or aspiring, nor do digital instruments tend to have the kind of mechanical nuance that makes me fixate on other instruments, I did actually know about this kind of key shift-function control scheme before and knew what the video would be about before clicking! It’s because my favorite synth (technically two) (also haven’t played either of these but they’re a dream of mine) is the Moog Matriarch, the scaled-up successor to Moog’s previous Grandmother monosynth. The way I see it, these two machines are practically as analog as you can get without going back to one of the giant Moog modular cabinets of old. They’re honestly pretty distinctly analog *even compared to the rest of Moog’s lineup,* and that’s with the knowledge that Moog’s history is *rooted* in analog synths. Neither the GM nor the Matriarch have any preset menu, or computer-handled modulation matrices, or even just a settings screen. No presets because the whole thing is semi-modular old-style patching done with cables, same for no mod matrix, all of it is just cable connections. Aside from its admittedly digital and updatable firmware, this architecture is entirely knobs, switches, and patch points. Anyways, getting around to the actual point: Of course, Moog’s engineers didn’t leave the user in the dark regarding settings that are more complex than front-panel controls. Through a series of manual-instructed commands on the Lefthand Controller buttons, the synth’s firmware operates exactly like the surface premise described in this video, and the settings are selected by their respectively assigned piano key! Just thought I’d share. I really like analog synths, and as said before the Matriarch is a number-one dream synth of mine.
Alec: You can then have it read back to you the set speed. Piano: 69 Alec: Nice. Oh Alec, you just couldn't resist setting it to that speed for that reason! The way you said it so casually too just destroyed me!
I'm a recording engineer that often records bands on very tight budgets. When someone wants piano and we don't have access to one that's appropriate/in tune, we'll just run midi out of my digital piano into a virtual instrument plugin. The more recent ones use ridiculously heavy layered sample sets and it's honestly hard to tell it's not real. Another advantage is you can dial up whatever style of piano that works best. When you're working with acoustic pianos sometimes you don't realize you're using the wrong piano for the job until after you've already taken the time to set up and start recording.
It has become the same with amp emulators for guitar. If people doesn't know you'll never hear the difference because things have gotten so good. It is way easier and more flexible to record MIDI and DIs instead of fucking about with tonnes of gear on the spot. In the end it is the final product that matters, not the way it was made. Tech har evolved for a reason.
@@TheToillMainn I like that sentiment. Yet we still have plenty elitists running around hating electronic music because it wasn't produced 'played on an instrument'. I suppose they find that the years of practice, dedication and dexterity it takes to be able to master an instrument is somehow 'vital' to their ability to appreciate a piece of music.. which I find odd. All those years of practice are only to facilitate the artist's ability to produce the song they have in their head out in to the real world. You'd think we should consider it progress when we've been able to take away all those extra hurdles... yet I suppose they find more value in the effort expended than the actual musical piece, or at the very least they consider it a deal-breaking affair. Music isn't a physical sport. It isn't about the mastery of one's body.. at least not to me. I can imagine getting mad at a runner that beats world records because he has electrically driven legs. The sport of running after all is about honing ones own body. Music is not that, at least not ONLY that.
@@ayporos some people just put more value in virtuosity than the music itself, and i don't necessarily think that's a wrong thing, it's just a different set of priorities. there will always be an interest in things produced wholly by humans. it's why you can still pay a person to physically construct a chair, despite having factories that can churn out a thousand identical chairs in a fraction of the time.
My Roland KR-177 is more than 20 years old. It can do everything except the dishes! It has a 3.5" floppy drive that added additional music 'styles' and additional 'voices' to the already plentiful ones hardwired. All of the controls are on the piano itself which, although more convenient than a function key and a printed legend, makes for a crowded layout. Sadly the floppy drive broke about 15 years ago but the piano and all the sounds, styles and other features still work great.
You had me in stitches of laughter when you played the Windows XP startup jingle and the iPhone opening ringtone, absolute classic, I love it. I wish you'd ended the video by playing the Windows XP shut down theme.
I use a midi controller with Addictive Keys on my computer, and there's one thing that they got veeeery right. If you hit a note with the sustain pedal depressed, other strings within that note's harmonic sequence will resonate and vibrate sympathetically, making the sound thiccer than it would be just holding down that note by itself. They baked this into the sound engine and it makes such an enormous difference in realism.
I'm glad to have lived to see thiccnees as a concept applied to the mechanics (or electronics) of sound. I hope it will continue to prove versatile in increasingly numerous fields where thiccness can be quantified.
I probably shouldn't be surprised that you are a decent piano player at this point...but I am! Very impressive. I learned all that stuff a long time ago while in the professional music world. I never suspected that someone would search out that information on their own just for fun! You continue to amaze.
I have a Kawai SX-240 that uses the keys as alphanumeric input for naming sounds. It was a pretty novel idea as nearly all my other vintage synthesizers use a dial wheel to call in a character, or use a computer keyboard...or even an external computer to name them. Nearly every 80s synth has that generic "synthesized piano" preset. Those sounds weren't always a great demonstration of the synthesizer hardware. Also, the Korg M1 had kind of a flat lo-fi piano sample. While not very impressive on its own, it was put in nearly every dance track from the early 1990s lol. I always enjoy keyboard tech, although my area is sampling and synthesis, this video was still very cool!
Great video! Two things immediately strike me: One, what constitutes "no effort" for you results in a much better final product than 99.999% of RUclips stuff. Two: Of COURSE you're a guy who enjoys playing ragtime piano! Love it.
0:10 : "I'm no professional pianist..." 0:23 : "...my level of piano proficiency would waste such an instrument." 4:15 , 4:25 : *Proceeds to play VERY well* HMMMMMMM Really puts a new meaning into "No effort November" eh? (Excellent playing, Alec)
Just want to say thank you for being so inclusive and including amazingly detailled Closed Caption on all of your videos. It's so important to me and many other people and it enriched the experience for so many. Great work, love your videos!
My introduction to ragtime came when I was in the U.S. Navy being trained to become an E.T. This was in 1962 at Treasure Island in San Francisco bay. I joined the little theater group and another member was both a pianist and a magician of some repute locally. We were the principal set builders for the production along with being cast members, so I got to hear him play a little Scott Joplin whenever the opportunity arose during that work. A school ended and i did not meet with him again, but the love of ragtime his playing induced did endure. As you say the popularity of that genre tends to come and go over the years. Fast forward to about 25 years ago, as I recall and along with other vinyl versions of ragtime in my collection I found that he had published a box collection of the entire works of Scott Joplin. SO that is a long way of stating that indeed I have heard the more solemn and lovely pieces in his collected works.
The video was already playing for a while when the realization came to me you've played the WinXP startup sound.. then I paused and bursted out laughing. I think I'll go and get another coffee. This video could lead into a series about MIDI, just saying :)
I would love him to get into midi, especially diving into black midi. Also, for anyone curious and who knows about gaming keyboards (the kind for a pc) polyphony in electronic piano keyboards is equivalent to n-key rollover, meaning it's basically how many sounds can be processed at the same time.
Yes! MIDI was such an important step in modern musical tech. And such a brilliant design that it was nearly 40 years before the specs were upgraded. That's practically a geological age in the tech world.
I'd love a video series about MIDI and its history, as well as any previous formats (and why not talk about the history of synthesizers while we're at it?). to sum it up the MIDI standard was invented by Roland and Dave Smith/Sequential to unify the different standards of electronic instrument control at the time. Thus, the firs ever known MIDI messages were sent between a Roland synth and a Sequential synth. A mention of Black Midi wouldn't hurt tho. It helps understand how the meaning of the word MIDI has gotten all around the place nowadays since its inception.
I have a CLP585. The main usage of that big box that "pretends" to be the string box ... is that Yamaha has set an arrangement of speakers throughout, aimed at making it sound better. And it really really does.
Is that the grand piano looking one? Don't those even adapt the sound depending on how far you open the lid, just like a real grand piano? I think those things are great like for certain places (school classrooms) where there may not the space for a grand piano and not as stable an environment to keep everything in tuning. Plus saving the schools money they don't have on tuning. And that is only one example. Of course it is not a grand piano, and of course there is no comparison with a hughe Steinway grand piano for example. But does everyone who wants a nice and especially uncomplicated piano one of those? Another plus if living in an apartment with neighbors who don't appreciate piano music, they usually can be played with headphones if it gets late in the evening
@@alexanderkupke920 The 585 is the most kitted out of the upright style ones. They have a bunch of speakers and a few amplifiers arranged throughout the box with the goal of using it to make it sound like it's supposed to. And it works. That whole box is basically speakers, resonance, and echoes. Also, the CLP series is the more basic piano line, and the CVP series is the one with all the shiny extra stuff. And yes, being able to plug headphones into it is a great feature. I can also take midi out, if I were to get lost into synths, or take line outs into a behringer audio box that I also have, which then lets me record over USB on a computer.
The lack of sympathetic resonance is one of the reasons I switched from using the built in sounds of my digital piano to software instruments on a computer. There have been incredible strides made in physical modelling over the last 10 years or so, to the point that there is virtually no need for huge sample libraries any more.
Love the intro troll lol You are FANTASTIC playing the piano so entertaining! And the subject was fascinating! I can only play single handed by ear because my family couldnt afford lessons and now i dont have access to one to learn with an app. But ive always been drawn to pianos (and guitars). Loved this please do more!
A tree falling in the forest creates timber. A piano key falling produces timbre (/ˈtambər/). Jokes on pronunciation pedantry aside, it takes crazy guts for a non-professional musician to share music online. Well done, and as always thank you for taking the time to document the interesting techy things that catch your fancy.
By the way, you underrate your piano skills, they're impressive! And I'd like to add that many digital synthesizers and even MIDI keyboards also use this UX
You kinda missed a very important point: Digital keyboards can interface directly with a computer for sound production. This is especially useful for retro sound emulation where you want voices like pure sine or sawtooth.
there's almost no reason to buy one of these cheap digital pianos for sound production. unless you have some sort of crazy high end digital keyboard(s), synthesizing sounds yourself within the DAW gives you wayyy more control than you'd ever get just from sampling a recording of you playing. even if you don't know sound design, you have a practically infinite amount of sound presets to choose from, if you just look for & download them. especially for simple shit like sines and saws like you said, even the most basic of VSTs can synthesize those sounds, and you can mess about with the oscillator however you'd like to, unlike these pre-baked epiano sounds
I wouldn't say he "missed" it. A) I don't think this particular keyboard doubles as a MIDI controller, but maybe it's got a USB out or something? B) MIDI is a whole can of worms that is probably beyond the intended scope of discussing this particular device with a little background in the general technology behind it. MIDI can be translated to and from basically any input device. You can use a normal computer keyboard to input MIDI, or you can translate MIDI notes to trigger basically any hotkey/script you can think of on a computer. Want to use a gaming controller to manipulate your DAW? Easy. Want to play a secret chord on your MIDI controller to open your private folders? You can do that too. There really isn't a limit on what's possible once you start discussing MIDI beyond it's core basics, but that's many steps beyond the specific device being used here as it's being discussed mainly on it's own rather than as an external device connected to a much, much more complicated machine.
@@BigDaddyWes This keyboard actually doubles as a MIDI controller. It has a USB connection and interface, even cheap keyboards have been able to do this for several years now. It just doesn't have MIDI ports for controlling older sound generators, unfortunately.
@@atl6s Fair but I think it depends on what your background with piano is. If you've been playing for like a decade (or less idk that's not me) and subsequently move to working with a DAW, of course you'd probably like to use those skills, you've been building them for thousands of hours
Rod Miller (Former, famous Coke Corner pianist at Disneyland) was famous for his "off-key" Entertainer rendition where he would miss the last note of the hook by a half-tone. He learned the gag from the original Coke Corner pianist Rudy de la Mor. Rod is the one heard on the DL music albums and CDs playing the Maple Leaf Rag quickly. He started at DL in 1968 and retired in 2005.
I saw this when it came out and thought it was pretty cool. Then recently got myself the casio ct-s1 and wasn't amazed by how many controls it had. Until i realized it uses the same control system for settings! Shout out to engineers designing this. Great way to save to mfg costs and make an amazing board at a great price!
The "tam-ber" pronunciation comes from being an approximation of the pronunciation of the original French word. The "tim-ber" pronunciation obviously comes from reading the word using typical English phonetics, which is what naturally happens to words that are read more often than they are spoken.
Here i am looking for a digital piano for my gf for xmas, and this video comes up, i watch this channel as a way to better understand the world around me, but this video allowed me to bounce questions off of her while it played. I literally know now she wats "the big one" and weighted keys are a thing she knows about. Thank you mr technology, you halped me in the sneakiest of ways.
as a hobby pianist and former piano teacher, I really enjoyed this one a lot. it's rare to hear someone talk about the instrument itself in a way that so thoroughly understands and appreciates all its little niceties.
Наука
"i'm bad at piano" *is great at piano*
Came here to say that lol
We all knew he was being modest.
*ragtimes at mach 3*
You guys have such low standards lmao
@@baileyayyy5085 …“, says the random jerk
"No-Effort-November", now with a skill that took years of effort to develop.
cashing in
No effort what-so-ever *THIS* November.
Any effort put in before not included.
Each sold separately.
So true!
He even took the time to grow Dracula hair before learning to play the harpsichord. This "no effort" video was almost two years in the making.
"It took me 10 years to do it in 5 minutes."
It's a good thing you can't forget your piano playing skills for just for a video :)
I suppose by professional standards your playing might not be impressive, but it sure sounded great to me! It was also nice to hear you play (and discuss) ragtime. I was not expecting that at all!
I've been a professional musician for decades and his piano playing sounded damn great to me! He really knows what he's doing.
I'm not a professional, but I have studied as an undergrad for 5 years now. And he sounds pretty good to me. I suck at piano, it's not my primary instrument. Music theory helped me cheat my way through piano class.
Well, that’s how piano training works. When you’ve finished a music school, If you want to play something, you learn it, practice and than play it. Pros do that on a daily basis, amateurs do that just for fun, so yes, pros will learn faster, play sturdier, faster etc, art masters will also include their own touch and feel, but basically any person well trained music can play a piano piece with some preparations and the guy does that real good.
He is underselling himself quite a bit, mostly because piano players and musicians can at times, be very gatekeeping prone
I’m a piano teacher, and his playing is excellent.
The fact his definition of "no effort" still creates a product as engaging as his other videos is astounding! This video was incredibly interesting all throughout its duration
As a father, I now wish I'd sent my daughters to piano lessons. Electronic pianos have headphones... violas and flutes do not.
Another great plus!
My sister chose the violin. Twenty years later, I still wonder how anyone can stand the sound of that instrument on its own.
There are silent violins available (made by Yamaha for instance)
So do electric guitars...
@@Lttlemoi Could be worse. Imagine offering your kid bagpipes! 😁
Can we normalize youtubers making videos about their hobbies at the end of the year for tax write-offs? I'm sorry Mr. Government, I HAD to buy the keyboard for my JOB.
Question: are we to understand that this Mr. Government was a ward of the state until his 18th birthday?
@@charlesrense5199 or Mrs :P
"I just bought this new keytar, it's a keyboard and guitar, I don't really need this shit, I just really wanted it."
Damn it, that freaking song had to pop back into my head
A flat 10% tax for everyone sounds better to me.
Careful doing something like this. Brandon just hired 87,000 new IRS agents to catch people who do this. And you all thought he was just going to tax the rich more to offset his administration's insane spending...
I had the privilege of meeting Vocaloid's engineer at an anime convention and discovered to not much surprise that this other Yamaha product was also a sound sample bank that prided itself on smoothly ligaturing various combinations of phonemes (a task which isn't as difficult in Japanese where the entire language consists of 45 syllables using only 5 vowels with no dipthongs). Once they started making voices for Korean and English singing characters, it became more complex.
After the presentation was over I asked the question "Japan's already started work on mechanical voiceboxes, why don't you just transition to synthesizing speech directly through vocal physics models" and his answer (plus your displeasure with the sustain pedal) makes it clear Yamaha's digital instrumentation division is happier massaging samples than reproducing what the original instrument's mechanisms *do*.(that, and the fact Vocaloid was demo technology never intended for distribution until the public demanded it).
I wanted the vocaloid software so badly when i was a bit younger (okay, like over a decade ago), but it was $300+ for i think just a voicebank and i didn't have the money or the computer to make it work so i never got it.
Sometimes i still listen to the songs i had gotten from youtube and am still surprised at the rapid changes in sound. Like original miku versus vy2 or even gakupo vs gakupo whisper. I think it was yohio and his vocaloid that had a song that made it nearly impossible to tell which was singing (without wings?)
To this day, i'm still fascinated by it all
From my understanding they did eventually switch to a different model instead of just using voice samples but it was mostly, if not entirely, due to fear from the original voice sources that their unique voices would be entirely reproducible thus making them obsolete (they were afraid they wouldn't be able to find work since people could just buy their voices without having to pay them per job).
Japanese does have diphthongs.
i mean i guess japanese has diphthongs (basically one) but in the best (?) way. like theres “ai” which sounds like the name of the english ‘i’ character, and sounds like a diphthong but isn’t different enough mechanically to need more complexity
i was hoping there would be a vocaloid comment somewhere knowing yamaha was mentioned, but i had to scroll kinda far for it haha
Quick FYI from the music nerd gallery: the piano-forte (modern piano) and fortepiano are in fact different instruments. The older fortepiano has a leather-wrapped hammer and (most often) single action keys, whereas the newer piano has felt hammers and double action keys. And, if you were making a subtle joke that went right by me, please excuse the interruption.
I know a lot of digital pianos today, at least high end ones, will use samples from both, but it's not always clear what they're using, when, and how.
I believe that leather wrapped one was called "Hammerklavier"?
And before that you had a bunch of tongue instruments, clavecimble, harpsicord etc.
I need weighted keys for the ergonomics. Semi-weighted keys hurt my fingers. Your body also develops muscle-memory that intuits a pitch-to-weight gradient connection.
Hi Tay!
If you prefer the weighted keys that means you most likely weren’t trained on an organ!
The fact that Tay is just casually weighing in on a technology connections video is sending me rn😂 2 legends. Thank you for your music 💝
i have always preferred weightless keys, especially for rapid playing.
@@Draftmission hi Tay! 🌈
"You can then have it read back to you the set speed"
"sixty-nine"
"nice"
the way he just casually said that just broke me
05:39
In tears - didn't expect it at all
I was eating! there's now pasta sauce on my screen and I nearly choked
Inhaled my drink at that point. Damn you Alec, you're awesome!
Why is that funny?
@@Petertronic the internet can be a fun, seedy place
As someone who always watches with subtitles on, I always appreciate your little subhumor you insert. Great work!
It has always amazed me how you can be so pedantic about such a wide range of things. Keyboards to can openers, and laserdiscs to heat pumps, it’s absolutely amazing. This is a great place for people who appreciate the finer details.
An apt description of this guy.
"In a nutshell, it just makes the piano a bit quieter when it's depressed."
That's good. There's nothing worse than your piano being loud while it's sad.
Be a good blues piano?
@@GarysPauny 😂
Badum tiss
Or on a more serious note, I think it actually moves the hammers closer to the strings. But I may be mistaken or there are different ways to achieve it, as I also have seen pianos where a strip of felt was mechanically placed in between.
@@alexanderkupke920 I used to have a piano with the felt option. And it was pretty useless, I never used the pedal.
"I'm not that proficient at piano"
>Proceeds to belt out one banger after the next
This video has made me suddenly realize how mechanically complicated 'real' pianos must be. Wow.
I bought my wife a $700 Yamaha keyboard for Christmas a few years ago and it's great. She wanted a real piano, but after playing it for a little while, she fell in love with it. I've been binge-watching your videos for a couple of weeks. They're all great. And, you can play the piano!
Professional piano player here: I'm officially impressed with your piano playing ability and would indeed say you need no qualification around "I can play piano".
You're not Professional
Pretty basic reason: if you underplay a ability people maybe impressed. If you boast about it, people look for flaws.
@@gregmize01 Ok, Greg.
@@5Andysalive very true
@@gregmize01 Cool beans
"It makes the piano quieter when it's depressed."
Bruh, same...
:'(
Them feels tho...
Your playing was fine! I’m glad you mentioned the issue of tempo at 4:10. For me as a composer, hearing a work performed too quickly is like wolfing down a delicious meal without taking the time to savor every bite.
I loved the Windows XP intro! LOL Your piano prowess is actually very impressive!
Iwanna know what the Yamaha model number is.
OF COURSE Alec knows how to play ringtones on a piano.
I was half expecting him to play floaters during the Patreon credits and bloopers but alas that never came.
With bonus annoyed look while he does it. The man is a national treasure.
And that glorious XP startup sound
Because of course he does
And he sets his metronome to 69. Comedy
That "it even has a manual transmission, as you can see by the presence of a clutch pedal" literally had me laughing out loud 🤣🤣🤣
Save the manuals!
😂
I own a Honda Accord with a manual!😎
time to attach a stick shift to the piano
TC is elite confirmed
Gifted pianist you are! You deserve an old fashioned real acoustic one…
Man, I've been bingeing old TC videos recently, and I remember this one coming out at a really, REALLY dark time for me. Hard to believe it's almost a year old already. Looking forward to this year's NEN. However big or small the magnitude, thanks for helping me through some tough times.
"Thats confusing so I'm not gonna touch it"
Bless No Effort Novemb
That said, I'd love a vide on it anyway, lol.
er
@@callmeperch He's taking LEN to such an extent that he couldn't even be bothered to finish the word. Though I made up an initialism, so...
Relatedly, the place I work used to have a wide format printer that only had two buttons on it. One of which controlled the power.
To configure said printer, you'd hold the power button until it would print out a scantron form. You would then need to find a #2 pencil, because you were expected to fill in the bubbles for the options you wanted and then you'd feed the paper back into the printer for it to scan in.
Weird times.
That has got to be one of the strangest user interfaces I've ever heard of!
anything to waste more ink
and here i thought computers move past punch cards like half a century ago
Well, at least that's one practical use of all those times we spent with standardized tests...
ACT flashbacks...
Last time I was at a yamaha store looking at pianos, they had one hybrid which actually had strings. They had a digital pad for the hammers to hit and a mechanism to get it out of the way and allow the hammers to hit the strings
It didn't had a speaker. The salesperson pitched it as a way to make it quiet for nighttime study using the audio output from a 1/4' headphone jack
That's one damn big headphone jack!
@@snakedoktor6020 it's standard size for musical equipment
@@loganricherson3749 actually it's not. If you pay attention to the notation, he writes 1/4 foot, not inch. So, 3" is one damn big jack!😄
@@snakedoktor6020 oh, damn, didn't notice that
Very interesting thanks
Great modern keyboards have a LOAD of normal, lighted, blinking and colored lighted switches, faders and buttons.
This design is really great for people who like oldschool design.
You know he's a true pianist because he makes funny faces when he plays
I was going to say similar. Musicians feel the music. No matter how good a musician one is.
But he always makes funny faces, which is part of the reason we all love him
Seth everman?
You're not a real pianist until you make weird vocalizations like Keith Jarrett
1:18 Definitely channeling Lord Vinheteiro
Alec's "no effort November", is better than most channel's full effort December
I've been researching digital pianos to purchase lately and love your deep dives into topics, please keep this one going!
On the subject of touch sensitivity. Wendy Carlos had Bob Moog make a touch-sensitive keyboard for her synthesizer in 1967, it was used for Switched-On Bach. It has both depth and velocity sensitivity and controls both the ADSR envelope generator and the low/high pass filters. She shows an example of Bach with and without touch sensitivity on the album "Secrets Of Synthesis".
MPE Midi keyboards are amazing, and I hope they get cheaper- I enjoy using my Microfreak as a midi MPE controller in ableton and long for a keyboard like the Lumi Keys.
Thanks for the info. I did not know that. Love Wendy Carlos synth music
@@shocktnc Love the MicroFreak, have two of them 🎶🎹😁🎹🎶
"I'm no professional pianist"......says as he plays a PERFECT rendition of THAT ringtone :))
while dead-ass staring right at us, lol
Vinheteiro impression
He even makes obligatory musician faces when playing.
Don't overlook the jankiness of the Una Corda (left) pedal! What it really does in a grand piano is shift all of the hammers to the right so that instead of hitting three strings (tre corda) it hits one (una corda). While this does change the overall volume of the piano, it more importantly makes the tone more delicate and muted. Digital pianos only ever focus on the volume part making it essentially another special volume doohicky to make it quieter, but it does a lot more on its acoustic counterpart!
To be exact, the una corda shifts the entire action, so even the keyboard shifts.
On uprights, the pedal moves the hammers closer, so they have less distance to travel and consequently hit the strings with less force; while there are probably subtle differences, it basically makes it as if you are pressing the keys more softly. It also, of course, doesn't shift the keyboard (although on the antique upright in my house, pressing the pedal too sharply causes the hammers to hit the strings randomly, and the keys to depress a bit). The digital version could be said to be more like the upright version in these ways (though considering other things are mimicking grand pianos, that is a bit odd).
@@fllthdcrb I had thought about that, but when you have the freedom that the digital piano offers its a shame that manufacturers always go for the sound of the upright rather than the grand out of I can only assume convenience. The upright piano is just a condensed grand and with that trade for smaller size comes a few downgrades in features and the effect of the una corda is the one that always bothers me the most along with the richness of the lower strings.
Don't say "only ever." The ones I developed for had separate sample banks and configurations for una corda. Basically, two separate digital pianos, with a pedal to toggle which one the keyboard was connected to.
The sustain pedal worked the same way, switching sample banks in addition to changing the release behavior. (I'm not sure how Yamaha got that one wrong...) So we got relatively natural sympathetic resonance.
At least at the time I was there, we didn't try to model sympathy between keys being held down at the same time, though. No idea if they do that now, but it wouldn't surprise me if they still didn't bother.
In my (quite old and somewhat cheapish) upright piano it puts a piece of felt right in between the hammers and the strings, wich gives it a really muffled sound. Almost as if you are listening to a piano played in another room.
Pedantic language note:
The piano was invented in Italy. Three strings should be "tre corde". Sorry. Thanks.
Thank you so much for this video. I have a secondhand Korg weighted keyboard that did not come with the manual and never thought that perhaps it would have additional functions, now I know how to make much better use of it!
Hell of a great pianist! And "Solace" was beautiful! My favorite piece.
Of COURSE Alec can play the Windows start up theme and the iPhone ringtone 😂
I thought it was the nokia ring tone?
@@recklessroges it was definitely a nokia one)
@@recklessroges nah, it's an iphone ringtone
@@bamberghh1691 agreed, iPhone!
@@europeantechnic Nokia ring tone my friend .. I had like 6 of them during my life.
Watched for years and didn't know you were a musician, would love to see more technical music content. Thank you this was fun!
Oh yes, it was.
misread that and thought you said more techno music content.
@@davidball8370 i love techno too lol
There's potential for collaboration with other creators too, much of the synth community is very interested and involved with obsolete and obscure music technology
Sigh...he's not playing. That's why he hid the keyboard.
I never tire of your sense of humor. The variety of subjects and consistency of entertainment and enrichment found in your content is nothing short of remarkable! Keep up the great work.
Ive been a fan for a while but I just went back and I have a new found respect for your "content" Nice.
As long as we’re talking about Ragtime, it’s a little known fact Scott Joplin actually wrote an Opera as well.
His Elite Syncopations is always my favourite.
Every time you think you know a composer, turns out they did opera, too.
I wonder, if Beethoven get's a hard time because "For Elise" is (apparently) so simple....
Then i guess his other works are somewhat less ignored.
I would like to complain that this was most definitely NOT 'No Effort November'. You've put in many years worth of effort to get your piano playing that effortless. :P
But did he do that in november?
@V E T A 📽️ How youtube didn't automatically remove your comment is a mystery.
@@nelsonahlvik6650 was it spam?
go through his previous "no effort" videos. Very few of them are.
@@oxybrightdark8765 Yes
My big sis plays the piano. Did that a lot when we were kids/young. It's the sound of my life. I was always amazed at her skill.
4:33 I love the little messages you leave in the Closed Captioning sometimes.
I also love that you actually do Closed Captioning, unlike 99.99% of Youbers.
I'm not deaf, but I do have a slight loss in both ears technically, but I just hate if I can't hear a word or two. I don't have to rewind, just look down.
Although you talk much, much, much, much, more clearly than most Youbers.
YES! Youbers. It was a typo, but I like it since it's shorter to type over You Tu...
really liked your point of "engineering for nostalgia" because the ENTIRE music gear industry is built upon that philosophy for the most part, for example all our digital guitar amps can theoretically be made to be very distinct from tube amps yet most of them developed are simply emulations of classic guitar amps
While true, what would you want a guitar amp to sound like? They were originally intended to be fairly faithful to the sound of the instrument (perhaps coloring slightly in order to fix some of the limitations), but their inability to do that at volume is what led to the sounds we think of today. We could build amps that distort in different ways, but amps that do so are generally found to be unpleasant to listen to. Other manners of modifying the signal absolutely exist in the realm of digital effects, but you're no longer talking about what an amplifier does. And there are digital amps that allow you to combine the different types of amplifier distortions in unique ways. (Positive Grid's Bias Amp is the first place I saw this, but I'm sure it exists elsewhere.)
Ultimately, I'm not sure what we'd choose to do differently.
@@wbfaulk not saying I don't agree w the philosophy, music is super tied to culture so it would be crazy to just reinvent the guitar like that out of nowhere, I don't know where I'd start I love my tube amps and tube amp emulators :)
Don't mix up "the entire music gear industry" with "the traditional music industry"... There are digital pedals that come from another dimension nowadays, and I own a modular synth with a digital granulizer on it and no keyboard... But then I have a keyboard synth with pretty much the same signal chain as the first Minimoogs and Odysseys from more than half a century ago. People just like familiarity, but nowadays there's many corners to dig up weird stuff.
@@jonpatchmodular you right Im too hyperbolic sometimes sorry :)
@@headspacetheace No problem man, I'm just sunk deep into weird music stuff and I wanted to preach the good word of the quirky gear, for people who think there's nothing unique or weird out there to try. There is, and for the appropiate people it could be incredible fun. Also applicable to the digital VST realm.
Says his skills aren't worthy of a more expensive piano, then proceeds to flex on all of us. I've gained a whole new level of respect for you after this video. And the jokes are hilarious too. 😆
I just watched your video with fascination as I am the church organist playing what would be called a Rolands organ. Much more complex with hundreds of voices and combos etc. but still with the underlying theme that you portray in your video, i.e., the changes that one can make in the almost endless combinations of sounds. I been playing the organ at the church now for over 35 years and I still have not come close to finding all the combinations that are available. Music is a fascinating wonderful thing. I enjoyed your video very much.
I remember getting my first yamaha clavinova in 2010 and having a blast with its hybrid system and button based interface. You would mix sounds together by pressing two instrument buttons at the same time and had a way better metronome interface that you adjusted with the up and down button beside it and it had a segment lcd screen with the tempo. It was really fun until you had to take the whole thing apart to replace the pads where the keys strike the sensor. I loved my 100 lbs brown brick that sounded like a piano.
You'd find my piano very interesting: it's a regular piano with a "silent function" that keeps the hammers from hitting the strings and uses an actual laser underneath the keys to detect what you're playing. It's also got all the regular digital piano functions, like instruments and recording plus a midi output.
Why a laser and not some cheaper movement sensor? Sounds gimmicky to me, although I'm fully aware of the benefits of the other listed features.
that’s so cool! does the piano like…. physically move the hammer mechanism back? do you know how it works?
So it's not a digital piano emulating a real one, but a real piano emulating a digital one! 🤯
@@johndododoe1411 probably because its a piano that can be used to directly record digital tracks instead of needing to pickup the audio somehow
How rich are you!?
*OF* _course_ you're a musician. I haven't traversed your entire catalogue so this is the first I've seen of that talent. Delightful installment.
You sure it's TC and not SethEverman? I mean, look at 1:21
This video is amazing and brought me genuine joy
I. Love. This. Video.
Thank you for sharing your talent
When you were talking about toasters and swamp coolers I had to just trust that you'd done your research and were telling truths. But I always feared that someday you'd step into my wheelhouse and I'd be horrified to find that you were a fraud.
I'm happy to report that you nailed this one and that makes me feel a lot more confident about my knowledge of toasters and swamp coolers.
What confirmed it for me was the talk of sympathetic vibrations. The other information was all very detailed and accurate, but sympathetic vibration is a particularly niché topic that not even a lot of pianists talk about/ are aware of. This channel continues to please and prove to be a great source of accurate information!
As someone coming from an engineering background, I've also found these videos to be very well done. It's easy to oversimplify a subject to the point of misrepresenting nuances, but Alec really does a fantastic job of avoiding those pitfalls.
@@btat16 Pianists not aware of sympathetic vibrations? Now that is surprising to hear. Pun intended. Even just playing around on a grand piano, not being a pianist, you can hear the sympathetic vibrations and the distinct sound they make. It's cool stuff. Not the dark-art that is piano-tuning, though, that is... a land no one speaks of.
@@x--. You don't really have to be aware of the reason something happens or even what its named to make it make the sound you want for your music.
@@Jackpkmn Of course, and I didn't know its name either. I wasn't talking about the jargon or word but rather the concept or sound of it.
But you're right unless you have to take music theory or spend time just really focused on listening it'd be easy to miss. Cool point.
This is so funny! I actually work for Yamaha, I'm in the commercial audio department, but our philosophy does tend to be to use computers to trick you into thinking you're using the analog equivalent. We also do tend to like to build tricks into our stuff when we can, not surprised the engineers decided to use the keys that way. Great stuff, always enjoy your videos, even the no effort ones!
And yet there are those of us who tend to think YM3812 when we hear your employer's name, and get warm fuzzy feelings thinking of the sound produced by said chip.
Yes I definitely think of the keyboard my mother had growing up. Guess it is a different kind of nostalgia there
@@Roxor128 *shudders in OPL3*
@@kjrehberg Guess I've found the one person who used the YM3812's Composite Sine Modelling mode that was removed in the OPL3.
@@Roxor128 And the YM2151
I once read about someone in the military ordering a piano (real one, with strings) for the officers mess, describing it as a 'digital audio-frequency generator' to fool the boss. Not lying, either: it was 'digital', as in 'you play it with your fingers...'
At work we have a pair of Steinway D concert grand pianos. They are tuned every day, sometimes more than once. Each one weighs three quarters of a Great British ton, and costs about £200k. This is why electric pianos are so fantastic for use everywhere even on a concert hall stage. At home and in the studio they are lighter and cheaper and they have MIDI.
Many real parlour pianos are de tuned slightly to keep them in tune for longer. Keeping a piano at concert A 440Hz is quite hard in a house with heating and cooling.
You might think an electric piano would be relatively lightweight. They are nothing like as heavy as a real piano but beware of cheap keyboards. All those weighted keys that Alec loves are one reason, but the main one is the huge steel beam that keeps the span of the keyboard rigid and straight - it prevents a banana shaped keyboard with keys that stick together.
Always move a piano with two people. Never pull a Steinway D, if the leg comes off it will kill you.
Hey, hand me that piano...!
The user interface on those Yamaha digital pianos is definitely designed with visual aesthetics first and foremost. They're making something for traditionally-trained piano players, so it's as familiar and "classic" as possible. And it looks like a "serious" instrument, sitting there in the living room.
It makes for an interesting contrast with keyboards that are unapologetically synthesizers, which tend to have *a lot* of explicit controls, because radically changing the timbre of the instrument while playing is an essential part of modern synthesizer playing.
Yeah but some people will never touch those 120 setting, having them hidden can be a nice touch.
Unapologetically? As if synthesizers had to apologize for being a different instrument. I really don't know what do you mean by serious instrument but if you look at synthesizers in the same price range as quality pianos, you'll see a lot of serious instruments that you can't just turn on and play, they need these controls. I believe you either refer to cheap keyboards with "999 in 1" sounds or to arranging stations, which are kind of one-man-band instruments for event entertainers. But synthesizers are just a different thing.
Those controls do make sense. You end up playing the grand piano sound 95% of the time and just use one or two favourite voices 99% of the remaining 5% that you'll set without looking. Why ruin looks with buttons and make the price less competitive in the process?
It is YAMAHA not Yamaha
Pay attention to detail.
They sound the same but they are NOT the same.
When you look at something be sure you see what it is you are actually looking at.
Learn that all CORPORATE names are in ALL CAPS
Only the living soul has a name in Mixed Case Letters.
was it a dog school you attended?
The idea of serious instruments is a problem in a way of thinking imo
I’m surprised you didn’t mention one more specific advantage of a digital piano over a traditional piano: When your kids are practicing the same song for the 1,000th time, they have to use the headphones!!!
🎼🎶🎵🎶 🎧 😅
As someone who *was* that kid..... YES. Definitely a plus xD
I have a feeling you would do anything to delete "When the Saints Go Marching In" entirely from your memory
Now, if there is a way to digitalise wind instruments, especially bagpipes...
My kids' piano teacher nixxed that idea. We got a real piano instead, but I thought the Korg sounded fine.
I can't believe I missed this video back when it came out.
I'm impressed that you brought up the point about sympathetic vibrations. I haven't kept up with electronic piano tech, but I'm not aware of any electronic pianos that do a good job on that.
Reverb effect helps.
A reverb that only turns on, when you press the sustain pedal, would be great.
The latest models, also have the mechanical sound, of the pedal being released.
Despite not really having any prior interest in looking into digital pianos, as I am not a pianist current or aspiring, nor do digital instruments tend to have the kind of mechanical nuance that makes me fixate on other instruments, I did actually know about this kind of key shift-function control scheme before and knew what the video would be about before clicking!
It’s because my favorite synth (technically two) (also haven’t played either of these but they’re a dream of mine) is the Moog Matriarch, the scaled-up successor to Moog’s previous Grandmother monosynth. The way I see it, these two machines are practically as analog as you can get without going back to one of the giant Moog modular cabinets of old. They’re honestly pretty distinctly analog *even compared to the rest of Moog’s lineup,* and that’s with the knowledge that Moog’s history is *rooted* in analog synths.
Neither the GM nor the Matriarch have any preset menu, or computer-handled modulation matrices, or even just a settings screen. No presets because the whole thing is semi-modular old-style patching done with cables, same for no mod matrix, all of it is just cable connections. Aside from its admittedly digital and updatable firmware, this architecture is entirely knobs, switches, and patch points.
Anyways, getting around to the actual point: Of course, Moog’s engineers didn’t leave the user in the dark regarding settings that are more complex than front-panel controls. Through a series of manual-instructed commands on the Lefthand Controller buttons, the synth’s firmware operates exactly like the surface premise described in this video, and the settings are selected by their respectively assigned piano key!
Just thought I’d share. I really like analog synths, and as said before the Matriarch is a number-one dream synth of mine.
Alec: You can then have it read back to you the set speed.
Piano: 69
Alec: Nice.
Oh Alec, you just couldn't resist setting it to that speed for that reason! The way you said it so casually too just destroyed me!
XD
I thought I was watching one of the Linus Tech Tips channels at that moment.
Yup, that's when I said this video gets a like
LOL
Came here to say just that!!! 😂😂😂
I'm a recording engineer that often records bands on very tight budgets. When someone wants piano and we don't have access to one that's appropriate/in tune, we'll just run midi out of my digital piano into a virtual instrument plugin. The more recent ones use ridiculously heavy layered sample sets and it's honestly hard to tell it's not real. Another advantage is you can dial up whatever style of piano that works best. When you're working with acoustic pianos sometimes you don't realize you're using the wrong piano for the job until after you've already taken the time to set up and start recording.
IK its consumer but Keyscapes is godlike
It has become the same with amp emulators for guitar. If people doesn't know you'll never hear the difference because things have gotten so good. It is way easier and more flexible to record MIDI and DIs instead of fucking about with tonnes of gear on the spot. In the end it is the final product that matters, not the way it was made. Tech har evolved for a reason.
@@TheToillMainn I like that sentiment.
Yet we still have plenty elitists running around hating electronic music because it wasn't produced 'played on an instrument'.
I suppose they find that the years of practice, dedication and dexterity it takes to be able to master an instrument is somehow 'vital' to their ability to appreciate a piece of music.. which I find odd. All those years of practice are only to facilitate the artist's ability to produce the song they have in their head out in to the real world.
You'd think we should consider it progress when we've been able to take away all those extra hurdles... yet I suppose they find more value in the effort expended than the actual musical piece, or at the very least they consider it a deal-breaking affair.
Music isn't a physical sport. It isn't about the mastery of one's body.. at least not to me. I can imagine getting mad at a runner that beats world records because he has electrically driven legs. The sport of running after all is about honing ones own body. Music is not that, at least not ONLY that.
@@ayporos you can also correct a note if you make a mistake ;) - or just quantize the whole song if you're just a rubbish 😂
@@ayporos some people just put more value in virtuosity than the music itself, and i don't necessarily think that's a wrong thing, it's just a different set of priorities.
there will always be an interest in things produced wholly by humans. it's why you can still pay a person to physically construct a chair, despite having factories that can churn out a thousand identical chairs in a fraction of the time.
Hi TC-- A nicely noteworthy rabbit hole. Thank you so much
My Roland KR-177 is more than 20 years old. It can do everything except the dishes! It has a 3.5" floppy drive that added additional music 'styles' and additional 'voices' to the already plentiful ones hardwired. All of the controls are on the piano itself which, although more convenient than a function key and a printed legend, makes for a crowded layout. Sadly the floppy drive broke about 15 years ago but the piano and all the sounds, styles and other features still work great.
You had me in stitches of laughter when you played the Windows XP startup jingle and the iPhone opening ringtone, absolute classic, I love it. I wish you'd ended the video by playing the Windows XP shut down theme.
That would have been perfect! 😂
Or some smooth jazz.
It hurts that as soon as I read the words “windows xp shut down theme” it played in my head
@@russellg1473 My sleepy brain first saw that as "Windows XP shut up theme"
I had to scroll too far down to find someone else that appreciated this. ^_^
I use a midi controller with Addictive Keys on my computer, and there's one thing that they got veeeery right. If you hit a note with the sustain pedal depressed, other strings within that note's harmonic sequence will resonate and vibrate sympathetically, making the sound thiccer than it would be just holding down that note by itself. They baked this into the sound engine and it makes such an enormous difference in realism.
And that's why addictive keys > kontakt
I'm glad to have lived to see thiccnees as a concept applied to the mechanics (or electronics) of sound. I hope it will continue to prove versatile in increasingly numerous fields where thiccness can be quantified.
remember, kids: thicc harmonics save realisms (?)
Roland products, and Korg Flagship Workstations will also do this. Any keyboard instrument that uses “Modeling” technology will do that
I probably shouldn't be surprised that you are a decent piano player at this point...but I am! Very impressive.
I learned all that stuff a long time ago while in the professional music world. I never suspected that someone would search out that information on their own just for fun! You continue to amaze.
I have a Kawai SX-240 that uses the keys as alphanumeric input for naming sounds. It was a pretty novel idea as nearly all my other vintage synthesizers use a dial wheel to call in a character, or use a computer keyboard...or even an external computer to name them. Nearly every 80s synth has that generic "synthesized piano" preset. Those sounds weren't always a great demonstration of the synthesizer hardware. Also, the Korg M1 had kind of a flat lo-fi piano sample. While not very impressive on its own, it was put in nearly every dance track from the early 1990s lol. I always enjoy keyboard tech, although my area is sampling and synthesis, this video was still very cool!
Great video! Two things immediately strike me: One, what constitutes "no effort" for you results in a much better final product than 99.999% of RUclips stuff. Two: Of COURSE you're a guy who enjoys playing ragtime piano! Love it.
Ikr? I didn't expect anything else but Ragtime
0:10 : "I'm no professional pianist..."
0:23 : "...my level of piano proficiency would waste such an instrument."
4:15 , 4:25 : *Proceeds to play VERY well*
HMMMMMMM
Really puts a new meaning into "No effort November" eh? (Excellent playing, Alec)
Could also be multiple takes of songs that are well known.
Like the cell phone ring tone.
Thank you -- I've seen a couple of explanations of sostenuto that I didn't understand, but that was instantly clear.
(Although I was deeply disappointed by the lack of ragtime outro.)
Loved this!!! You're an amazing player and an awesome creator!!
Just want to say thank you for being so inclusive and including amazingly detailled Closed Caption on all of your videos. It's so important to me and many other people and it enriched the experience for so many. Great work, love your videos!
Right? The captions even include the jokes and have puns of their own. It's fantastic.
"Oh, but on that note!"
*doot*
Fucking God damnit, my humor is broken and that just killed me lmao
What a fun episode. I loved the humor in this one especially, like the Seth Everman parody bit. Would not mind more music content!
My introduction to ragtime came when I was in the U.S. Navy being trained to become an E.T. This was in 1962 at Treasure Island in San Francisco bay. I joined the little theater group and another member was both a pianist and a magician of some repute locally. We were the principal set builders for the production along with being cast members, so I got to hear him play a little Scott Joplin whenever the opportunity arose during that work. A school ended and i did not meet with him again, but the love of ragtime his playing induced did endure.
As you say the popularity of that genre tends to come and go over the years. Fast forward to about 25 years ago, as I recall and along with other vinyl versions of ragtime in my collection I found that he had published a box collection of the entire works of Scott Joplin. SO that is a long way of stating that indeed I have heard the more solemn and lovely pieces in his collected works.
The video was already playing for a while when the realization came to me you've played the WinXP startup sound.. then I paused and bursted out laughing. I think I'll go and get another coffee.
This video could lead into a series about MIDI, just saying :)
I would love him to get into midi, especially diving into black midi. Also, for anyone curious and who knows about gaming keyboards (the kind for a pc) polyphony in electronic piano keyboards is equivalent to n-key rollover, meaning it's basically how many sounds can be processed at the same time.
Yes! MIDI was such an important step in modern musical tech. And such a brilliant design that it was nearly 40 years before the specs were upgraded. That's practically a geological age in the tech world.
I'd love a video series about MIDI and its history, as well as any previous formats (and why not talk about the history of synthesizers while we're at it?). to sum it up the MIDI standard was invented by Roland and Dave Smith/Sequential to unify the different standards of electronic instrument control at the time. Thus, the firs ever known MIDI messages were sent between a Roland synth and a Sequential synth.
A mention of Black Midi wouldn't hurt tho. It helps understand how the meaning of the word MIDI has gotten all around the place nowadays since its inception.
Excellent piano playing!
I Love pianos and keys... this video was fun.
Great content!
I have a CLP585. The main usage of that big box that "pretends" to be the string box ... is that Yamaha has set an arrangement of speakers throughout, aimed at making it sound better. And it really really does.
Is that the grand piano looking one? Don't those even adapt the sound depending on how far you open the lid, just like a real grand piano?
I think those things are great like for certain places (school classrooms) where there may not the space for a grand piano and not as stable an environment to keep everything in tuning. Plus saving the schools money they don't have on tuning.
And that is only one example.
Of course it is not a grand piano, and of course there is no comparison with a hughe Steinway grand piano for example. But does everyone who wants a nice and especially uncomplicated piano one of those?
Another plus if living in an apartment with neighbors who don't appreciate piano music, they usually can be played with headphones if it gets late in the evening
My local hospital lobby has a similar instrument. It sounds perfect.
@@alexanderkupke920 The 585 is the most kitted out of the upright style ones. They have a bunch of speakers and a few amplifiers arranged throughout the box with the goal of using it to make it sound like it's supposed to. And it works. That whole box is basically speakers, resonance, and echoes. Also, the CLP series is the more basic piano line, and the CVP series is the one with all the shiny extra stuff. And yes, being able to plug headphones into it is a great feature. I can also take midi out, if I were to get lost into synths, or take line outs into a behringer audio box that I also have, which then lets me record over USB on a computer.
Piano: *Synthetically spoken numbers*
TC: “Nice.”
Best YT recommendation ever.
I love your knowledgeable videos and great sense of humor 💯 ❤️ 🔥
As a few others have already said, I'd love to see more videos from you about digital music technology. Other instruments, samplers etc.
The ''on that note'' joke just made my day haha! Thank you for showing us so many interesting things every week! Greetings from Germany
The lack of sympathetic resonance is one of the reasons I switched from using the built in sounds of my digital piano to software instruments on a computer. There have been incredible strides made in physical modelling over the last 10 years or so, to the point that there is virtually no need for huge sample libraries any more.
The Giant!! By native instruments. Sexy sexy plugin.
Pianoteq is awesome!
Pianoteq FTW!
embrace the synthwave.
pianoteq is nucking futs
Love the intro troll lol
You are FANTASTIC playing the piano so entertaining!
And the subject was fascinating! I can only play single handed by ear because my family couldnt afford lessons and now i dont have access to one to learn with an app. But ive always been drawn to pianos (and guitars). Loved this please do more!
I can't stop binging this channel. I love learning so much about obsolete technology.
A tree falling in the forest creates timber. A piano key falling produces timbre (/ˈtambər/).
Jokes on pronunciation pedantry aside, it takes crazy guts for a non-professional musician to share music online. Well done, and as always thank you for taking the time to document the interesting techy things that catch your fancy.
No it doesn't, it produces /tambrᵊ/. Just kidding, it produces /tɛ̃bʁ/! Wait that's wrong too, it... Get my point?
By the way, you underrate your piano skills, they're impressive! And I'd like to add that many digital synthesizers and even MIDI keyboards also use this UX
"Side note/node" killed me! Love your sense of humor, also cool video about unusual interfaces :)
that detuned dual voice or "parlor sound" is what I would describe how all upright pianos sound to me. very distinctive & distinguishable from a grand
You kinda missed a very important point:
Digital keyboards can interface directly with a computer for sound production.
This is especially useful for retro sound emulation where you want voices like pure sine or sawtooth.
there's almost no reason to buy one of these cheap digital pianos for sound production. unless you have some sort of crazy high end digital keyboard(s), synthesizing sounds yourself within the DAW gives you wayyy more control than you'd ever get just from sampling a recording of you playing. even if you don't know sound design, you have a practically infinite amount of sound presets to choose from, if you just look for & download them. especially for simple shit like sines and saws like you said, even the most basic of VSTs can synthesize those sounds, and you can mess about with the oscillator however you'd like to, unlike these pre-baked epiano sounds
@@atl6s It is about having a natural interface with keys and producing naturally imperfect timing.
I wouldn't say he "missed" it. A) I don't think this particular keyboard doubles as a MIDI controller, but maybe it's got a USB out or something? B) MIDI is a whole can of worms that is probably beyond the intended scope of discussing this particular device with a little background in the general technology behind it.
MIDI can be translated to and from basically any input device. You can use a normal computer keyboard to input MIDI, or you can translate MIDI notes to trigger basically any hotkey/script you can think of on a computer. Want to use a gaming controller to manipulate your DAW? Easy. Want to play a secret chord on your MIDI controller to open your private folders? You can do that too. There really isn't a limit on what's possible once you start discussing MIDI beyond it's core basics, but that's many steps beyond the specific device being used here as it's being discussed mainly on it's own rather than as an external device connected to a much, much more complicated machine.
@@BigDaddyWes This keyboard actually doubles as a MIDI controller. It has a USB connection and interface, even cheap keyboards have been able to do this for several years now. It just doesn't have MIDI ports for controlling older sound generators, unfortunately.
@@atl6s Fair but I think it depends on what your background with piano is. If you've been playing for like a decade (or less idk that's not me) and subsequently move to working with a DAW, of course you'd probably like to use those skills, you've been building them for thousands of hours
"The Entertainer", Played as intended is STILL one of my ALL-TIME favorite tunes!
Rod Miller (Former, famous Coke Corner pianist at Disneyland) was famous for his "off-key" Entertainer rendition where he would miss the last note of the hook by a half-tone. He learned the gag from the original Coke Corner pianist Rudy de la Mor. Rod is the one heard on the DL music albums and CDs playing the Maple Leaf Rag quickly. He started at DL in 1968 and retired in 2005.
I saw this when it came out and thought it was pretty cool. Then recently got myself the casio ct-s1 and wasn't amazed by how many controls it had. Until i realized it uses the same control system for settings! Shout out to engineers designing this. Great way to save to mfg costs and make an amazing board at a great price!
Thank you for the subtitles, as a non native speaker these are life saving
"No Effort November"
4:25 - Tongue of concentration engaged. Hardcore mode activated. >D
Timbre is pronounced “tamber”. Idk why, probably a translation thing, but that’s one of the few things I remember from my 3 years of music theory lol.
That's what they want you to think.
"timber" is an acceptable pronunciation too in US English (according to Webster), but "tambre" is more common
@@TechnologyConnections It’s a conspiracy…I sense a spin-off series. 😉😂
The "tam-ber" pronunciation comes from being an approximation of the pronunciation of the original French word. The "tim-ber" pronunciation obviously comes from reading the word using typical English phonetics, which is what naturally happens to words that are read more often than they are spoken.
@@TechnologyConnections The piano reminds me of 5000 Fingers of Dr.T which is a very old movie in where there is a massive row of piano keys.
Here i am looking for a digital piano for my gf for xmas, and this video comes up, i watch this channel as a way to better understand the world around me, but this video allowed me to bounce questions off of her while it played. I literally know now she wats "the big one" and weighted keys are a thing she knows about. Thank you mr technology, you halped me in the sneakiest of ways.
Great video, I learned A LOT. Thank you.
as a hobby pianist and former piano teacher, I really enjoyed this one a lot. it's rare to hear someone talk about the instrument itself in a way that so thoroughly understands and appreciates all its little niceties.