How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key"

M

matthewd5

Veteran
ok so i'm doing preproduction on my latest short (god that sounds kind of snobby?) and i have a public domain of a very nice beethoven piece that is a solo piano...

for creative reasons there is a part where a ghostly young girl is playing the piece on a ratty old piano and it is supposed to sound very out of key because the piano is presumably not very well maintained etc.

the 11 year old girl can possibly play the piece but as a backup i would REALLY like to make a version using adobe audition because that is what i have and i have used it quite successully in the past to elininate noise and to do some basic effects.

can anyone point me in the right direciton on how to do this?

matthew
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Well there are a few ways to do this. But first I would strongly suggest getting a copy of your song as either a .WAV or .AIFF file and not use an MP3 at all - just to preserve quality and have the song in an uncompressed form. If you wind up manipulating the file it will be best to work in a non-compressed format.

For the rest. If I were doing it, I would create a midi file of the song that I could manipulate pitch and timing with on a note by note basis. In addition, feeding this midi file through a sampler (computer based) would give me the ability to pick and choose which "piano" I wanted to be played. I don't use Adobe Audition, so I don't know if this is possible with that program.

If not, I would bring the uncompressed file into an audio editior and work with each note (or small sections of notes) and adjust pitch to take the song out of tune. In addition, I would play with some eq settings to achieve the proper (or improper in this case) sound. Also, play subtley with the timing. Again this would all be MUCH easier and more realistic if you could edit a MIDI file rather than an audio waveform.

Matt
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

ok thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

i went out on the web and found a midi version of the song.

now i'll go tinker with it in audition and see how it deals with midi files.

matthew
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

I thinik you will find that you need to take it into a midi editor program (eg Sound Studio Gold). Audition will play it but not be able to do what you want to the piece.

A midi editor can re-key it, mis-time notes, re-tempo, re chord it, etc...Once all that is done , bring it back into Audition and play with the effects and feel.
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

yes i found out that audition doesn't support midi at all.

is there a good PC program that does midi?

the one you mentioned is MAC only.

matthew
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

What David said. Plus, if you want to go deeper into audio editing and audio post production on PC look into Cubase SX, Soundforge (might be part of Vegas now I'm not sure) or Cakewalk's Sonar (not my fav). There are probably others I'm missing, but I'm a Mac guy.

Also, if you really want this to sound realistic, the pitches should be off, yet remain constant for each note on the keyboard. In other words, if you detune A4 by 24 cents, that tuning should remain constant whenever A4 is played. This of course assumes that you want to simulate a piano which has gone out of tune and not one that is somehow mystically decaying before your eyes.

Matt
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

thanks for the names of software.

right know i would just like to find something straightforward that will let me take the midi file and change the key for the whole song...

matthew
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Any midi program will do that.  Bear in mind that just changing the key of the piece will not make the piece sound out of tune.  

Here's a freeware program that might fit your bill: http://www.anvilstudio.com

Again, I'm a Mac guy so I have no idea how well this works.  If you search the web (which is what I just did) I'm sure you'll find a bunch of programs like this for PC.

Matt
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

so i found a few things that let me change the notes but as you said it definitely doesn't sound out of key.

i don't know anything about piano's so i just don't know what makes it sound "out of key"

matthew
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Are you making minute changes to individual notes or are you just changing the key to the piece?

Not to sound pompous (honest!) but do you play any instrument or have any music theory under your belt or will you be approaching this from scratch if you will?
 
Making a Piano Sound out of tune

Making a Piano Sound out of tune

THE EASY WAY:
Hire, beg or sleep with someone to get them to play it on a piece of crap piano and record it.

THE HARD WAY:
Ok, well lets assume that we know nothing about pianos or general intonation.  You probably know good intonation when you hear it and bad intonation when you hear it so you should rely on your ear as much as possible.  In any case, I’m going to give you an oversimplified explanation here, but would strongly suggest that you do a bit of on-line reading about intonation, well-tempered intonation as it pertains to a piano and pianos in general.  The more you know, the easier it will be to pull this off.

Creating a TRULY out of tune piano from a midi file is actually quite complicated (and nearly impossible from an audio file).  Why?  Well first we need to understand how a piano makes its notes and why it sounds like a piano in the first place.  

Every note produced by a musical instrument produces what are called overtones.  In fact, the scales that we use today are derived directly from the “overtone series”.  The first note that we hear, and that we name the note after is called the Fundamental or First Harmonic, although Fundamental is more commonly used. If when you played a note all you actually heard was the Fundamental tone, say A, you would hear a sine wave.  This would sound like it were coming from a synthesizer and would sound the same no matter what instrument you played it on.

Just as white light is made up many different colors of the "spectrum" a “note is made up of many tones.  The "spectrum" of a note is it's overtone series.  A piano string which has been struck and is vibrating produces its Fundamental by vibrating over the entire length of the string.  However, there are certain points along the string, referred to as nodes, that also resonate (albeit to a lesser extent) as if the string were actually that length.  So our piano string also vibrates in halves, in thirds, in quarter, etc. Each of these produces a pitch called an overtone or partial (also referred to as a harmonic) which is heard  (although less loudly) along with the fundamental pitch. The tones these nodes produce are arranged in a manner close to a harmonic series, which means there is the fundamental, plus another an octave above, another a fifth above this, another a fourth above, another a major third above, then a minor third.... and so on, theoretically to infinity. These partials are not merely theoretical - they are acoustical reality. Together they produce a composite sound which give a particular instrument its “Timbre” or characteristic sound.  Because every instrument produces overtones differently for each note, these overtones are what allow us to tell a clarinet from an oboe, for instance, or a violin from a harp.

Now a piano key hits anywhere from one to three strings per note. Most unisons on most pianos consist of a 'trichord' of strings - three strings constituting a 'unison group'. Each one of those strings produces a note. And, as we’ve already learned, each note is not one pure musical pitch, but many.  

When a piano goes out of tune, generally each of these three strings (per one note) will go out of tune at differing rates.  That is why on some old pianos you can play one note and it will sound out of tune all by itself, you are actually hearing many clashing tones.  First you are hearing the three clashing fundamental tones, plus you are hearing all of the overtones for each fundamental clash.  

What the hell does any of this have to do with what you are trying to accomplish?  Well, if you are trying to make the piano sound truly out of tune you would need a sample base of an actual out of tune piano to achieve the effect (or you would have to create your own, but trust me, you don’t want to do this).  If you had a sampler, which I don’t think you do, you could try and find a sample that is of an out of tune piano, however most sample manufactures go to great lengths to ensure that their pianos play very well in tune.  Probably the best patch you could use, if you are using a PC soundcard with general midi sounds preprogrammed (you probably are) is the Honky Tonk piano.  It won’t be right, but it will probably be your best bet, and you could EQ it a bit to compensate for the saloon feel that it has.  This will help with the “each individual note being a tad off by itself” part.

Now once you’ve brought the midi file into your midi editor and have selected the Honky Tonk piano patch you will still need to “detune” some of the notes (or all of them) to achieve an out of tune piano effect.  Essentially, you will be adjusting a pitch shift to various notes (with a greater degree of pitch shift going to the lower notes for realism).  Most midi editors allow you to adjust pitch in at least two ways, the first way is in semitones or half-steps.  This would allow you to change an A to an A flat say, or an A sharp.  But that isn’t what you want to do.  Your midi editor should also allow you to fine tune your pitch in what is known as cents.  Cents are the distance between semitones.  100 Cents equals one Semitone.  So if you adjusted A down 50 cents, you would get a note BETWEEN A and A flat.  Now you’re starting to make a realistic out of tune piano.  If you really wanted to go nuts you could simulate the difference off the three strings by creating three identical As each as a separate midi event and then slightly detune each one by a different variable.  But experiment with that, only if you’re curious or don’t like the results you first achieve using the Honky Tonk patch and this method.

Now, and this is important, you need to make any adjustments constant for each individual note.  What do I mean by this.  Well let’s say the first note of your piece is C4 (the “4” refers to the octave, so C4 is the fourth “C” on the piano from left to right, also known as “Middle C”).  And let’s say that you adjust C4 down 50 cents.  You can adjust all the other notes how you like, but every time you play a C4, it should be detuned by 50 cents.  Get it?  You can choose to detune any note however your ear “hears fit” however every not should be consistent every time it is played so that your piano is consistently out of tune.

Of course you could simply record a pianist playing the piece on a piece of crap piano and save yourself a lot of aggravation.....  

Best of luck to you, I hope this has helped.

Matt
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Screw MIDI.

Find a sound designer that has Serato's "Pitch 'n Time", or Waves "Transform" package. These plug-ins are for pro tools, and allow you to change pitch and speed. I have used Pitch 'n Time, and it rocks the house. Dealing with the whole MIDI thing is a pain in the ass.

Basically, you import the waveform into the plug-in, and you can literally draw the pitch and time expansion that you want over the wave form.

Another trick, in pro tools, is to have several tracks with the same recording on them, and have each one be a slightly lower or higher pitch than the other. Then automate fades across all of them.

-Dave
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

.. i would definitely work with midi on this one.. it would be way easier, and sound way better and more realistic, you could play the peice as normal, and then select any keys on the scale which youd like to be out of tune, and select every note on that the whole song duration that falls on that key with one little click, and transpose that single key down to fractions of a note in whatever direction you want.. that way every time that note is played back in the song it will be the same amount off key, and its all done in one easy step for each key you want out of tune.. so basically you would play the song in perfect pitch, and then go through the scale for whatever octaves you need to, and make whatever keys you want "off -key" and then save it, and just like a real piano only has certain keys that are out of une, it would have whatever keys you wanted be out of tune. .. very quick and easy to do and will be most realistic as well. if you tried to do this with a wave editor such as audition (which by the way does support midi playback in a sequence, but is not really a qualified midi editor), there would be no way that you could separate the single notes that are playing and supposed to be out of tune from the four other notes playing at the same time, and it will sound like you are pitch bending the whole piano off key every now and then. .. it would just be weird
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

I use the same tools Dave. The problem with the method you describe is that you will be changing the pitch for ALL of the notes in any given section (unless of course you are able to isolate the various pitches in various waveforms, which I don't think he'll be able to do, if he could do that, he'd just record it himself) and NOT create the illusion that the piano is out of tune.  Two very different things.  Some folks may hear it as being out of tune, but anyone who can hear will know that you are simply going through many unintelligent key changes and not playing the piece correctly on a piano that is not in tune.  I guess it depends on what effect you are going for.

Midi might be a pain in the ass for some, but if you know what you are doing and have the appropriate tools, you can do pretty much anything you want with it.  I don't know a single composer who scores ANYTHING without using a midi sequencer at some point in their workflow, even if the composition will later be recorded by live musicians.  I'm a dinasour, I still work on paper, but at some point it all goes into a sequencer.  Especially if you want to do orchestral work and don't have the budget to hire an orchestra.

What I described might be a pain in the ass, but it will yield believable results.

Matt
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Neil,

You beat me to it! Thank you for saying what I said, in a more straightforward way!

Matt
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&a

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&a

[quote author=MattC link=board=audio;num=1101629888;start=0#14 date=11/29/04 at 13:19:29]I use the same tools Dave. The problem with the method you describe is that you will be changing the pitch for ALL of the notes in any given section (unless of course you are able to isolate the various pitches in various waveforms, which I don't think he'll be able to do, if he could do that, he'd just record it himself) and NOT create the illusion that the piano is out of tune. Two very different things. Some folks may hear it as being out of tune, but anyone who can hear will know that you are simply going through many unintelligent key changes and not playing the piece correctly on a piano that is not in tune. I guess it depends on what effect you are going for.

Midi might be a pain in the ass for some, but if you know what you are doing and have the appropriate tools, you can do pretty much anything you want with it. I don't know a single composer who scores ANYTHING without using a midi sequencer at some point in their workflow, even if the composition will later be recorded by live musicians. I'm a dinasour, I still work on paper, but at some point it all goes into a sequencer. Especially if you want to do orchestral work and don't have the budget to hire an orchestra.

What I described might be a pain in the ass, but it will yield believable results.

Matt[/quote]


Actually, the plug ins i'm referring to will allow you to change the pitch any way you want at any time in the waveform. This way is much much easier than dealing with midi.

-DAve
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Ok, Dave so let me ask you this. you have a recording of an individual playing a D-7 chord, not an arpeggio, a chord. And you don't want to detune the whole chord by the same amount (that would simply be a transposition) what you want to do is slightly detune the third the fifth and the seventh by slightly different amounts. How would you go about doing this with one of the plugs you mentioned? Please, I'm curious.

Matt
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Well, assuming all the notes are played at the exact same time, you really couldn't, but the way that the desired effect was described was that the song would de-tune over time, not individual notes in a chord, in which case a pitch n' time type plug in would work wonders.

If you want to de-tune one individual note of a chord, then go play it on an out of tune piano.

-Dave
 
Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Re: How to make mp3 of piano sound "off key&q

Exactly...

What the original poster wanted was to simulate the effect of a young girl playing a piece of classical music on an out of tune, ill maintained piano. The piano would not "de-tune over time" and even if it somehow did, it would not go out of tune in a uniform manner. I'm not trying to be hostile here, I've used pitch correction software and like it, but it won't provide for the desired result in this case, that's all.

That leaves you with the two options I gave, of which you chose option 1 - record it on an out of tune piano. To be honest Dave doing this in Midi really wouldn't take any longer than trying to do it with pitch shifting software and he'll get a much better result. I may have made it sound more complicated that it really is, but I was hoping that by providing the theory behind it, he would then be able to experiment on his own, instead of just trying a particular setting and hoping that it worked.

Don't fear midi. Midi is your friend... ;)

Matt
 
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