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manual abstract
Chris Elcombe plays the V-Piano T T he V-Piano represents a fundamental shi in the way digital pianos work and in what they oer the performer. It is not an upgrade but a dierent beast altogether – the rst digital piano to use modelling technology rather than sampling. To date, digital pianos have used recorded samples of acoustic pianos – audio snapshots that to the hammer and string type, as a single entity. ese can be dressed up in dierent ways – such as by adding reverb etc – but are essentially xed. Most instruments on the current market have four samples per note, to allow for a degree of touch-sensitive playing by a range of sounds dependent on the aack. Modelling technology, on the other hand, models the sound as you play. Roland have meas constituent parts – all the bits that a sample captures together – and reproduced this electronically. So, the inside of the V-Piano is not a bank of pre-existing sounds waiting to be accessed, but an electronic operating system that can not only be set up to mimic any individual acoustic piano down to the nest detail, but responds to the performer far more realistically than any selection of samples can. capture everything from the aack and resonance ured the workings of the piano’s interior in its lassical 36 1 August 2009 MUSIC ROLAND VPIANO It has taken Roland ten years to develop this technology, and the rm’s aim, as senior product manager Sean Montgomery told me, was ‘to be able to oer the technology to pianists to create any piano of their choice’. If the evolution of the acoustic piano is considered to be near its end, as Roland argues, then the V-Piano oers composers and performers looking to push the boundaries the opportunity to explore new ‘acoustic’ sounds without abandoning the existing advantages that the non-electric piano provides. us, while Roland has created a dozen or so presets that imitate pianos of the past and present, there are also ten presets that imagine what a silver-stringed piano or one with a glass sound- board might sound like – and Roland plans to release more presets in the future that could easily be uploaded into the instrument. e menu – accessible via a small screen on the instrument or, for an easier visual experience, on a computer screen via the USB connection – allows you not only to choose between these presets, but to see and alter the seings to create your own instrument. e parameters are extensive and subtle, each on a sliding scale of +/- 100, but by being accessed via the screen, the panel above the keyboard is simple and uncluered. e basic criteria are the hardness of the hammer, the cross-resonance (the eect created at the lower end of the piano where the treble and bass strings overlap) and the tuning. e rst two of these make noticeable but realistic dierences to the percussiveness of aack and brightness of the bass respectively. e tuning option is the real dazzler, though: there are three ‘strings’ for each note, which can be separately tuned. e outer two can be adjusted universally across the instrument, or easily varied from note to note by drawing a graph on-screen. So, whether you want honky-tonk, a dierent temperament or even the familiar sound of a piano that is not freshly tuned, you can have it. Delving into the ‘advanced tone edit’ menu brings up a host of further renements, including string delay time and the resonance of the soundboard. Of course, a substantial knowledge of piano anatomy is necessary to make full use of these; but that is why the presets exist, from which you can learn, then experiment and store up to 100 of your own. So much for the toolbox. What’s it like to play? e ivory-eect coating is a good start, and the point at which the note sounds is much closer to the keybed than on most digital pianos, allowing real pianissimo and so-toned playing, and generally sorting the men from the boys in the technique department. Since the instrument does not use looped samples, volume grading is far more rened and responsive, and conversely, the sound decays gradually rather than by step aer the key is depressed. e dynamic range is wide, with the le-hand end rewarding weight with power, and quiet sounds possible even in the brightest, silver-string preset. e escapement has been well developed too, so rapid martellato is possible. One minor shortfall is the unexpectedly harsh sound towards the top of the piano in many of the presets, although this can of course be manually adjusted if you know how to remedy the situation to your own taste. e only other signicant obstacle is that the V-Piano’s reliance The HP207 digital piano Last year, Rhinegold Publishing launched a competition with Roland, offering the HP207 digital piano and the C-30 digital harpsichord as fi rst and second prizes. We are delighted to announce that our fi rst prize winner is Mrs Nellie Potgeiter of Marlow in Buckinghamshire, and the second prize goes to Mr David Reilly of Northampton. For more information about...