Radical Piano Introduction Radical Piano is designed to be a straightforward, awesome sounding and very flexible piano. Radical Piano combines sample playback technology with physical modeling to give you great sound quality and seamless dynamic response as well as great freedom to tweak your sounds. The combination of sample playback and physical modeling also makes it possible to keep each piano sound set down to a minimum size. This allows for very quick loading times when you switch between instruments. Radical Piano also features sympathetic resonance, which means that any undamped strings will ring along with the played notes (strings), just like on acoustic pianos. This makes Radical Piano sound extremely realistic and alive. There are also a number of other controls for further shaping the sound the way you want it. As a bonus, we also included an audio input so you can route external audio and process it in Radical Piano! The pianos Radical Piano holds complete sound sets recorded from these three pianos: • Home Grand A Bechstein grand piano with a nice “not perfectly tuned” home grand character. • Deluxe Grand A Steinway Model D grand piano - one of the greatest grand pianos out there. This particular one belongs to Sveriges Radio (Swedish Radio Ltd). • Upright A Futura upright piano with a distinct “living room” character. The microphone configurations The microphone configurations for the grand pianos and the upright piano respectively. The pianos were recorded using up to nine microphones per instrument, placed at various critical positions inside and outside of the pianos. The different microphone recordings were then stored in Radical Piano as separate sound sets. The following microphone configurations were used: • Vintage Mono A single microphone placed outside the waist of the grand piano (or behind the upright piano). For the Steinway grand piano we used an old school mono ribbon mic with vintage characteristics and a narrow frequency response with the emphasis in the mid range. For the Futura upright piano we used a vintage tube microphone. • Ambience Two microphones in AB configuration* placed quite far away from the piano to capture the room ambience. • Floor Two pressure zone microphones that lay flat on the floor just behind the front legs of the grand piano (and behind the upright piano). They add depth and richness to the sound and are best used as a complement to the other mics. • Jazz Two microphones in AB configuration* placed just outside/in front of the piano. This gives a full bodied sound with a wide stereo image and a less pronounced attack. • Close Two microphones in XY configuration** placed close to the hammers. The close mics produce a distinct sound with a sharp attack, ideal for uptempo pop/rock. * AB configuration: Two mics in stereo configuration placed several feet apart and tilted slightly away from each other. ** XY configuration: Two mics in stereo configuration placed close together in 'V' shape at a 90° coincidence.
