Re: [fluid-dev] MIDI piano + sustain pedal realism

[S.]

Hi Aere, thanks a lot for the reply.

On 03/08/18 20:46, Aere Greenway wrote:
> Hopefully, you are not actually talking about the sostenuto (middle) pedal, 
> which does something very different from the sustain-pedal.
Nope, just the regular sustain pedal.

> I think, if after playing a note, you very quickly pressed the sustain pedal 
> (before the note has completely died) the remaining sound of the note will then 
> resonate with the strings of other notes, since the sustain pedal raises all 
> the damper pads off of the strings for all of the notes.
Hmm, yes, that must be the actual technical behavior that I'm thinking of. But just 
functionally speaking, a real piano doesn't have hard binary on/off cuts, you can always 
sustain the "resonant sound" before the note completely dies off.

> As far as I know, MIDI doesn't work that way.
Interestingly, LinuxSampler does. It truly feels like a real piano in that 
sense. For example, I can play a forte single note or chord on my keyboard, 
completely release the keys, and then immediately press the sustain pedal, and 
it sustains the resonant sound. Quite impressive. Or alternately, I can press 
the sustain pedal, play a forte note or chord and release the key(s), and then 
release and immediately depress again the sustain pedal, and it continues to 
sustain the leftover resonance. If you give LinuxSampler a try I suspect you'll 
see what I mean. It's impressive in that sense, but for other reasons I don't 
really like LinuxSampler (poor SF2 support, and not as good GUI options).

> I also saw once, a friend of mine was sure the sustain pedal wasn't working, 
> when what actually happened, is he (absent-mindedly) had his foot on the pedal 
> when he started up his MIDI software (he was using Rosegarden), in response to 
> which, the pedal from that point forward, acted the opposite way he expected it 
> to (pedal-down = pedal-release, and pedal-up = pedal-engage).
Interesting, I just tried this on purpose, and it does indeed behave as you described. 
But that's not what normally happens to me. With FluidSynth, the sustain pedal works 
"normally / correctly", it just feels a lot more synthetic and digital than 
LinuxSampler.