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The University of Illinois Willard Martin Harpsichord

Existing and forthcoming Hauptwerk instruments, recommendations, ...
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gblatt

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The University of Illinois Willard Martin Harpsichord

PostWed Aug 11, 2004 12:02 am

It's no organ, but:

What a lovely instrument!!!! When I got the CD, I spent
half of the night playing it by myself and listening to midi files ....
And the price is only $ 45!

Many thanks to Milan Digital Audio.


Guenter
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cdatzko

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Re: The University of Illinois Willard Martin Harpsichord

PostWed Aug 11, 2004 3:40 am

gblatt wrote:It's no organ, but:

What a lovely instrument!!!! When I got the CD, I spent
half of the night playing it by myself and listening to midi files ....
And the price is only $ 45!

Many thanks to Milan Digital Audio.


Guenter


On the website I read, it has two different release samples - how does this work?

Christian.
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gblatt

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Re: The University of Illinois Willard Martin Harpsichord

PostWed Aug 11, 2004 4:24 am

cdatzko wrote:On the website I read, it has two different release samples - how does this work?

Christian.


Hi Christian,
I suppose they mean the special waveform of a harpsichord tone (I looked at one of the samples): the 'normal' decay of each tone is sampled until a lenght of 18 sec's (!!!), then follows start and end of loop, that means if you keep the key pressed you hear the tone decaying for a long time and after that the loop is only silence. Behind the loop is the sound of key release which is very particular on a harpsichord. It looks like this:

\
x\
xx\
xxx\
xxxx\--------------------------------------------------------------|Loop|--|release sound-------

As Hauptwerk V1.xx provides only 1 loop plus 1 release point this is only possible with a 'decaying' instrument, not with an organ.



Guenter
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cdatzko

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Re: The University of Illinois Willard Martin Harpsichord

PostWed Aug 11, 2004 8:57 am

gblatt wrote:
cdatzko wrote:On the website I read, it has two different release samples - how does this work?

Christian.


Hi Christian,
I suppose they mean the special waveform of a harpsichord tone (I looked at one of the samples): the 'normal' decay of each tone is sampled until a lenght of 18 sec's (!!!), then follows start and end of loop, that means if you keep the key pressed you hear the tone decaying for a long time and after that the loop is only silence. Behind the loop is the sound of key release which is very particular on a harpsichord. It looks like this:

\
x\
xx\
xxx\
xxxx\--------------------------------------------------------------|Loop|--|release sound-------

As Hauptwerk V1.xx provides only 1 loop plus 1 release point this is only possible with a 'decaying' instrument, not with an organ.



Guenter


So far so good - but how about two releases? I thought about a similar thing - I suppose the release sounds different if the tone is still vibrating as if it isn't which would make it difficult to sample harpsichords with Hauptwerk.

Christian.
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gblatt

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PostWed Aug 11, 2004 10:39 am

Yes, you're right. I had a closer look (and listen) at the samples. The release does sound different depending of how long you keep the key pressed. If you press the key for more than 1 sec you hear the typical harpsichord noisy release tone plus a reverb of about 1 sec. This part is behind the release mark in the sample.
If you play a short note, you hear the string stop almost without a noise and the same reverb.

In the samples there is another release sound between the loop end and the release mark, but I'm not quite sure if thats the one you hear when playing the short tones.

I do not know how they made it by means of Hauptwerk.

So excuse that I cannot answer your question.

Still, the different releases are parts of the fascinating 'livelyness' of this instrument.
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B. Milan

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PostWed Aug 11, 2004 12:09 pm

Hello and thank you for the compliments on the U of I harpsichord! I'm glad that you are enjoying it.

Regarding the release samples. Only one release is possible in Hauptwerk 1.2. Here is the reason for the two different releases. Due to the nature of the instrument being a percussive one (decaying) the main samples were held to allow the full sustain and decay. The first release sound (not the one used in Hauptwerk) is a very quiet one since the string has very little sound left after the entire note decay. Very little harpsichord music would call for holding a note this long, rather the majority of music for this instrument has much quicker attacks. So the second release (which IS the one used in Hauptwerk) was made by playing a note for about 1-2 seconds then releasing the key. Therefore you have a much louder release sample and it is more suitable to the majority of harpsichord music. In the case that you hold a note for a very long time you would still get this same "louder" release in Hauptwerk, but as mentioned, chances are that you would not do this except for maybe the final sustained chord at the end of a piece of music. This second release was cut as an individual .wav file then pasted into the original sample file and then a release marker added at the release point for that file.

Originally I beleive that Martin was thinking about allowing multiple releases in HW 2. In fact it should be possible using velocity sensitive keyboards and layering of samples. We shall see. It will be possible in HW 2 to have the release dynamics change according to how quickly you play the notes.

I hope this answers your questions. Please let me know if not. Thank you!
Brett Milan
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MILAN DIGITAL AUDIO
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cdatzko

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PostThu Aug 12, 2004 3:08 am

B. Milan wrote:I hope this answers your questions. Please let me know if not. Thank you!


Oh, yes, it does, thank you. Now everything seems to be aligned properly. In this special case of a Harpsichord I would also call for the support of multiple release samples. It will most probably not be very difficult to program.

Christian.
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mdyde

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PostThu Aug 12, 2004 5:01 am

Multiple release samples are possible in the forthcoming version 2.

Martin.

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