Is there any decent substitute to real harpsichord?

dumbangel · Post by **dumbangel** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 8:27 am

I'm in love with the sound of this instrument. I hear it in a lot of music I like (Beach boys, Modern Jazz Quartet, soundtracks,?). So far all the imitations I've heard of that sound were ludicrous. Has anyone found anything nice that can be used as substitute during recordings?

Wince99 · Post by **Wince99** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 9:05 am

Maybe you can use samples?

For the price, I like motu's Symphonic Instrument. You can hear the samples at :

http://www.motu.com/products/software/m ... esets.html

I think it sells around 300$. You can find higher quality samples above the 1k budget though.

pwrb · Post by **pwrb** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 9:12 am

I just installed a "rinky tink" attachment to my spinet upright. More info here:
http://www.mypianoshop.com/store/produc ... ctid=17951

It's supposed to give a "tack piano" or "honky tonk" sound to the piano. But in my piano's situation, it sounds very harpsichord-like. But with dynamics. Everyone who tries it in my studio remarks about how "60's/British" it sounds.

If you do order it, I should warn you that it takes significantly longer than an hour to install and adjust.

Pete
www.weissy.com
www.verdantstudio.com
www.weisstronauts.com

jv · Post by jv » Sat Dec 29, 2007 9:27 am

pwrb wrote:I just installed a "rinky tink" attachment to my spinet upright. More info here:
http://www.mypianoshop.com/store/produc ... ctid=17951

It's supposed to give a "tack piano" or "honky tonk" sound to the piano. But in my piano's situation, it sounds very harpsichord-like. But with dynamics. Everyone who tries it in my studio remarks about how "60's/British" it sounds.

If you do order it, I should warn you that it takes significantly longer than an hour to install and adjust.

That looks cool, I've been wanting to do something like that to my piano. How long did it really take to install? Is it easy to disable the attachment to return to the normal piano sound?

pwrb · Post by **pwrb** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 9:39 am

It took me, uh, like, all afternoon. My piano is a Baldwin Acrosonic spinet from the 40's. Kinda cramped inside; that's what made it so difficult for me. Perhaps it would be easier on a larger upright. Also, there's a lot of measuring, trimming/slicing fabric, and crimping the "tack" attachments to the fabric that is a bit tedious. But the good news is, yeah, there's a nice handy cable and lever that allow you to enable/disable the whole works instantly. Alternatively, I believe if you're super-handy and your piano has a mute pedal, you can hook this up to the mute pedal, so it engages when you push the pedal down.

Bottom line... I'm really glad I did it. Pretty inexpensive, plus it doesn't permanently modify your piano. And it sounds great, I think.

Pete
www.weissy.com
www.verdantstudio.com
www.weisstronauts.com

dumbangel · Post by **dumbangel** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 11:12 am

Pete,

the cool thing is your spinet piano looks a bit like a bulky harpsichord as well. I'd love to hear what it does.

pwrb · Post by **pwrb** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 11:40 am

I never thought about it that way; yeah, it kinda does look like the front end of a "very manly" harpsichord. I don't actually have a recording of it handy, but thanks for the idea... perhaps I'll make an example recording of it and post it on the myspace page.
Pete
www.weissy.com
www.verdantstudio.com
www.weisstronauts.com

tonewoods · Post by **tonewoods** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 12:09 pm

My Alesis Fusion has some pretty nice harpsichord samples on board....

jammybastard · Post by **jammybastard** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 9:10 am

the biggest issue I've found isn't finding a suitable sound, it's finding someone who know how to play the keys with the touch necessary for get it to sound right.

apropos of nothing · Post by **apropos of nothing** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 9:30 am

Presuming you're trying to use harpsichord in context of modern music, you're much better off using a nice multisample set. To play period music on harpsichord, most players use non-equal temperments, and frequently they're not tuned to A440, either. All this means that more than half the time when you actually come across a harpsichord and try play something, its not going to sound in tune, even if the harpsichord has been tuned recently.
FFI:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/temper.html#reasons

dumbangel · Post by **dumbangel** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 11:45 am

Actually many recently made harpsichords use equal temperament. But I'm thinking more about a substitute anyway. These instruments went out of fashion so long ago and are very expensive to buy or rent. I imagine the same problem will apply to Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos in many centuries.

high five · Post by **high five** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 9:46 pm

pwrb wrote:It took me, uh, like, all afternoon. My piano is a Baldwin Acrosonic spinet from the 40's. Kinda cramped inside; that's what made it so difficult for me. Perhaps it would be easier on a larger upright. Also, there's a lot of measuring, trimming/slicing fabric, and crimping the "tack" attachments to the fabric that is a bit tedious. But the good news is, yeah, there's a nice handy cable and lever that allow you to enable/disable the whole works instantly. Alternatively, I believe if you're super-handy and your piano has a mute pedal, you can hook this up to the mute pedal, so it engages when you push the pedal down.

Bottom line... I'm really glad I did it. Pretty inexpensive, plus it doesn't permanently modify your piano. And it sounds great, I think.

I had this "thrown in" with my piano, so I don't know anything about the installation... but I'm pretty happy with it. It's connected to the mute pedal, like you said, and it sounds somewhere between a tack piano and a harpsichord. You can get a variety of sounds by pressing harder on the mute pedal, so the metal parts line up directly with the hammers, or press harder and sounds kind of muted (the hammer hits the cloth that the metal hangs from, so the metal hits the string indirectly)

Here's a recording I made of it, this is an upright Yamaha. If you've ever watched the Pink Panther cartoon, the end of the recording reminds me of the little French guy. Also, the tacks only go down an octave or so below middle C, you can hear the bass is "normal". I'm not sure if I'd like the way it sounds in the bass, how low does yours go, pwrb?

pwrb · Post by **pwrb** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 11:03 pm

Yeah mine only goes down about an octave below middle C too. Must be the same kit. It can easily be modified to go lower, I imagine; just add more cloth strips and "tacks".

Nice recording. I like the mandolin-like effect you get toward the end there. Very 60's easy listening.

-Pete
www.weissy.com
www.verdant.com
www.weisstronauts.com

LeedyGuy · Post by **LeedyGuy** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 7:19 am

Tori Amos did some really incredible things with some evil sounding harpsichord parts on her Boys for Pele album. It's killer if you haven't heard it...or even if you have.

thieves · Post by **thieves** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 8:41 am

The piano/keyboard player in my band has been using the harpsichord settings on his yamaha digital piano (not sure of the model, but it's a huge 88-key guy that set him back a couple grand) and the sounds are passable, but when we recorded the parts, it was really tough to get a realistic sound. what we ended up doing was running the keyboard through his amp, rolling off most of the lows under 100k, replacing them with some low mids around 160 or so, then we put a large diaphragm condenser about 5 or 6 feet away a bit off axis. It gave us a decent dry sound, but it still doesn't sound like a real harpsichord. I think part of the problem is that with real harpsichords, there is so much sound coming from the instrument that isn't the sound of the strings. It's a noisy instrument, emulations of the sound seem to clean it up too much.

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Is there any decent substitute to real harpsichord?

Is there any decent substitute to real harpsichord?

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