LOL. Well, to be brutally honest, I’ve never liked Pianoteq. Even if they wanted to sponsor my content and pay for product placement, I still wouldn’t use it 😂. Simply put, it sounds like a digital keyboard. Whereas I don’t think the Garritan CFX, the offerings from VI Labs, and Noire sound fake… they sound quite real to me. The Garritan product turned 10 years old this year. I think the last update it got was in 2017. Noise reduction has come a long way in that time, but it’s still really tricky to do well. VI Labs employs their own proprietary noise reduction in the libraries they create to make great sustain and pure resonance while still keeping noise at near 0 during the entirety of playback. But the exact reason I love the Garritan (the distance of the piano from the mics) is the same reason they probably can’t do any further management of the noise floor without introducing artifacts that ruin the room tone. Any time you record with a real instrument and with real equipment, you’ll get some sort of very low level noise floor. Even on some of my recent recordings with just 2 mics open, when I want to boost the super high end by 10 or 20 db, I end up “bringing up” the noise level quite significantly in order to balance the tone of the piano to what I want. Add my compression and limiting to that, and I probably “increase” the noise floor of my own recordings by something like 40 db between raw and finished master. When it starts at something like -100 or -90db, it’s still very manageable and nearly inaudible if it ends up being -60 on the final master. That’s still quieter than tape. In both of my upcoming releases, I went through and did my own series of noise reduction on all of my tracks to keep the silence very nearly true silent. I don’t layer patches from various libraries, but I do mix mic positions within libraries occasionally. Sometimes with various libraries, the instruments aren’t tuned exactly the same way, so layering would be impossible.

@@PianistAcademy1 And still, unlike other libraries, most of the big piano brands allow Pianoteq to use their names (not M&H though 🙂). Could it be only marketing? I find Pianoteq convenient as a base to experiment, at my unprofessional level, since it is Linux native and does not require a gazillion GB or HD space. Since you mention tuning, I was wondering if you had to modify the temperament of your Kawai after the upgrade. Some day, perhaps, I might buy a baby grand and, knowing myself, I'd most likely want to tune it, so I have been reading a bit on the subject. Matter of fact, I think you owe your hardcore followers a video about your Kawai transformation.

@@antoniomaccagnan7200 Pianoteq has a massive following and, like I mentioned on the stream, there are a whole bunch of professional players that love it for a variety of reasons. I do know that the major companies have gotten Pianoteq their instruments to model directly so I don’t think it’s just marketing, but there is definitely an element of truth in the “modeling” of the instruments they say. Between the small footprint, that its very reliable, and also you get a massive number of tones for a very reasonable price, it’s quite the package… I know plenty of studio and live gigging players that love it for those reasons. I still have a bunch of videos I took during the Kawai transformation!

It’s hard to limit the list! Just about any piece of repertoire you can think of you could apply this. The shortest and most concise example might be Burgmuller’s Op 100 No 2, which follows an almost literal representation of the motion presented here. But truly, wrist circles can be applied to Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and more. Instead of thinking where can these exercises (from the book in its entirety) apply, you might instead think, which of these motions best suits the phrase in question. I’d venture to say that 99% of time, you’ll find your answer within one of the gestures in the book.

@@PianistAcademy1 Thank you!

Almost always, any lifting of the finger results in the hand and tendons controlling the fingers fighting against themselves. There are occasionally professional pianists who make that technique work, but many of them also suffer injuries because of it. A preparatory motion is always necessary, which is why the argument for “lift” happened in the first place. My philosophy is to make the preparatory motion as efficient, small, and healthy as possible (usually more with wrist than finger) to allow the actual motion we play with (down) to work as best and as predictably as possible. The faster you need to play, the more all motion needs to be minimized and made more efficient. But there’s also the question of finger engagement to consider. A teacher might ask for more lift simply to try and engage the fingers more on the downward motion. We can’t replace finger engagement with wrist movement, they both need to work in conjunction with one another, but even so, I tend to teach engagement without lift as much as possible.

Thanks for watching!

Congrats on the new buds! I love my AirPod pros.

@PianistAcademy1 oh yeah did you find out the beethoven swing sonata?

@@RhodesyYT I looked it up and do know/recognize that spot, yes... I've honestly never thought about it as in swing! I still don't think I would because I don't think it would lend itself to quite the right emotion, but I definitely hear the resemblance.

Thank you!

A G F# D E

C# D

Thank you, Giuseppe!

Thanks so much for watching, and I'm so glad to hear you enjoy playing my arrangements! I hope you'll share some videos of yourself performing them sometime as well!

Thanks, Antonio!

100% yes. This principle is especially true in contrapuntal work. But if I’m honest, even teachers that will typically stress this in Bach seem to miss a multi-voice approach to learning and understanding other repertoire.

You have a perfect spot to begin applying this in the piu mosso of op 27 no 1 😉 you might not need to separate out the voices more than once or twice given your current level of preparation, but you will phrase those bars differently through this lens.

@@PianistAcademy1 indeed! Now is the time to start polishing

Hand separate is most beneficial for learning chords with pedal in the left hand. This really helped me as I am not great with pedal.

I'm glad to hear, Michael! Thanks for stopping by the channel and I hope to see you again in the comments!

Thank you, Antonio! I tried some Yamahas, Casios, Kawais, whatever was in the Sam Ash showroom at the time, and really liked the touch of the Roland RP107 (same keyboard, with a different case than the F107, with a more traditional music stand). My current piano is an Alesis Concert, 88 semi-weighted keys. It sounds okay through headphones, but not great through its speakers. We have a Guitar Center store nearby, which has more options in its piano room, so I'll keep trying keyboards.

@@Wootwootwooton I like the Yamaha sound much more than Roland. I agree about the RP107 action, it's good and also allows you to increase/decrease the touch sensitivity according to your progress. I also like the RP107 traditional cabinetry better than the folding over kind. You might want to try Korg DPs too, especially the LP380U and G1 Air. I consider Korg top quality. Although these models have been around for a while, they offer a lot of value for the price.

You are very kind, Antonio! Thanks for being such an active member of the community here!

Thanks, Francisco!

Thanks! It's always nice to hear when someone else also pays attention to all of those little details that, I think, most people would never think about! Hope you're well!

Do you think I should do more annotated interpretation videos? Thanks for always watching everything I release!

@@PianistAcademy1 yes definitely

Thank you so much for the super, Merrick! I'm glad you found this video helpful!

Beautiful piece, keep up the great work Nancy, and sometime we must hear you play on one of the livestreams!

Thanks for watching! If you have an acoustic grand, you can take advantage of key let off... the point near the bottom of the key depression where there's a little "bump." If we depress 5th finger very slowly we can find that point. It takes very little energy to push the key beyond, but we get a tiny bit of feedback here through the finger. Try keeping the 5th finger right at that bump, no further depressed (not a full depression of the key) but also not released. Doing this can help alleviate tension from too firm a 5th finger that continues to push into the key after it's job is done. If this is too difficult to start with, just place your 5th finger on the key surface, don't press at all, and rotate toward it, then back toward the other fingers, playing/striking notes with fingers 1 through 4, but never with finger 5. This will also give a similar sensation. How it feels to do both of these variations should be very close to the correct feeling of the actual exercise. Then we need to pair the relaxed feel of the hand when 5 doesn't have to engage with a comfortable hold of the key when we do use 5 to play. Let me know if these help!

@@PianistAcademy1 Thank you for your detailed response, I will take all of your points into consideration.

You'll get there! Just keep up the practice 🙂

🤣😂

Thanks, Louise! I know you've been waiting for this one for quite some time!

Thanks so much, Vanessa! And congrats on being the first comment on this video!

Thanks for watching, Paul! I'm glad you found them helpful!

We are moved in! I've had a few teaching days out of the new place so far. There are still things that are a work in progress and I'm sure some will be for some time, but it's well on the way to being home!

@@PianistAcademy1 saWEET! Or, musically-speaking ... SUITE! Looking forward to the next live - hope I can make it. Take care and enjoy your new digs !