Modartt / Karsten Collection (add-on for Pianoteq)

[Piet De Ridder]

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Modartt has released a new expansion or add-on for Pianoteq: the Karsten Collection, a set of five historic instruments modeled after originals which are part of the impressive Peter Karsten Collection (Braunschweig, Germany). Mr. Karsten himself collaborated with Modartt on the development of the modelled instruments.

Included are a NY Steinway 'Square' piano (evaluated and authorised by Steinway & Sounds), a Weimes pianoforte, a Schmidt 'sure' piano, a Giusti harpsichord and a Salodiensis virginal.

Great collection of less familiar keyboard instruments, the use of which certainly needn't be restricted to 17th-18th century music.

I did a little demo for the Salodiensis (the music in the video above). I originally intended to do some 60's-70's tv thriller music (a style that often features the harpsichord -- you occasionally even hear it in early episodes of "Columbo") but somehow, the music decided on a different course for itself -- that happens sometimes, doesn't it? -- and I suddenly found myself with a medium slow waltz theme, ever so slightly dark-ish in character, that I began to associate with Sherlock Holmes, especially after adding a rather prominent part for the solo violin. Hence the title: "A Three Pipe Problem" (Holmes, in the short story "The Red-Headed League", measures the difficulty of problems he's faced with by the number of pipes he predicts he'll smoke during the times it takes him to find the solution.)

Anyway, the result is music that, to my ears, still has a sort of 70's tv-music style and sound, a quaint 'European' tv-studio sound, if you like. I don't know how that happened, it just did. It's certainly not Hollywood sounding.

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[Luciano Storti]

That sounds marvelous, Piet, well done! Fits the image of Holmes perfectly and there are a ton of interesting things going on musically, as usual with you. Great work on the violin arpeggio figures - great way to take the intensity level up.

The instrument sounds lovely. I'm not in the Pianoteq camp, but if I were, I'd bite on this collection methinks.

[ComposerGuy]

Nice! Love those guys.

[EvilDragon]

What I really want to know is, which violin library is that, and holy crap how do the controller lanes look for it

[Piet De Ridder]

Luke, ComposerGuy, thanks!

Mario, that’s the Embertone Joshua Bell and, yes, it was no simple matter to arrive at what it ended up sounding like in the piece. Actually, the easiest bit were those fast arpeggio’s during the restatement of the theme. This Embertone Joshua Bell, in its default setting, responds surprisingly well to that type of playing and that particular section needn’t much editing afterwards. It’s all the other bits that I struggled with enormously before getting them to sound more or less decent.

My first impression of this library — I’ve had it for quite a while, but never used it prior to this recording — is that it’s almost as if it’s got a mind of its own. But that might be because it is programmed and scripted expecting a certain type of playing which is, clearly, far removed from the way I play. Whatever the reason, getting this violin to obey in the simpler phrases was much more of a challenge than having it render those swirling arpeggios.

Definitely capable of impressive things — it's quite good for slow Celtic-type stuff too. Maybe I should do a demo of that. —, but still, I came away with rather mixed feelings from this first encounter with the library, let’s put it like that.

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[EvilDragon]

OK thanks for the info. I assume you'd probably have similar thoughts about Bohemian Violin, which has some more intelligence built in. But at least you can force it to do the arcs you want to (and actually, I find it works supremely well exactly with the simpler, more lyrical phrases... with no excursions with modwheel or whatnot)... man, the next expansion is gonna be awesome.