Instrument Background

The CP-70 was a portable electric piano invented during the seventies
by the japanese company Yamaha, also makers of renowned fine classic
grand pianos. It was made for the touring musician who wanted to take
an acoustic piano on the stage. It's a rock solid instrument that
splits into two parts for better transportability. The structure is
based on the keyboard and mechanics of a classic grandpiano but with a
smaller harp, less strings and shorter than a classic baby grand.
There's no soundboard, and every note has its own piezoelectric
pickup. The main preamplifier offers a basic 3-band equalizer and a
tremolo effect. This piano had a significant role in the pop music of
the seventies and the eighties, featuring in songs by well known
musicians like Stevie Wonder, Genesis, George Duke, Simple Minds, etc.
It is now back on the stage thanks to the british band "Keane", you
can see it in the video of the song "Everybody's changing". Every
modern digital keyboard offering a wide variety of timbres has a patch
inspired to the sound of the CP piano, and sometimes it's still
preferred in genres like rock and pop where the producers want a
brighter and more prominent piano sound.


Plugin Description

EG70 is a physical modeling simulation of a CP-70 electroacoustic baby
grand touring piano.

Main features:

* Full Polyphony (73 notes)
* Adjustable sympathetic resonances
* Realistic response to keyboard dynamics
* Adjustable global tuning
* Four dynamic curves available
* Realistic control panel with active EQ and Tremolo effect
* Stereo tremolo mode (auto-pan)
* Adjustable note decay and release lengths
* Built-in stereo digital reverb
* On-screen help tips and readout values
* Low memory and CPU power needed
* Easy MIDI-Learn feature


EG70 has a very natural response to keyboard dynamics and to player's
style. You'll hear the benefits of physical modeling mostly when the
sustain pedal is in use. The sound is warm and metallic at the same
time, unpredictable, rich and natural like only a real piano can be.


About Physical Modeling


Although physical modeling synthesis is a well known concept nowadays,
it's good to point out some of the differences that make a modeled
instrument, like a piano, preferred over a sampled one. As we all
know, physical modeling is a technique to recreate acoustic phenomena
in the digital world by means of math formulas and other complex
algorithms, but in practice it takes the musician to a compromise:
while samples offer true realism, being an actual photography of a
specific sound, just like a photography a sampled sound stays still,
never changes over time and doesn't react to external variations. On
the other hand, a modeled sound may lack of realism or may be somehow
imprecise regarding little details, but it's alive, does react to
musician's playing style, adds color and vitality, is never static and
takes full advantage of the power of modern digital systems. Speaking
of a piano, which is one of the most expressive instruments ever
invented by humans, using samples is a bit of a contradiction. Can you
quantize the dynamics of a piano and establish a limit? You can't. Can
you consider all of the variables and combinations that may happen
with different numbers of notes played in as many different
situations? You can't. Can you create resonances using samples? You
can't. This is why, sometimes, physical modeling can be preferable
over sampling, so that the virtual gets closer and closer to the real.
Now let's have a look at how EG70 benefits from physical modeling.
First thing: the polyphony. In EG70 you have a full polyphony of 73
notes. One note available per each single key. This could seem obvious
but it isn't. Many times you see digital pianos with 88 keys but
offering 128 or even 256 notes of polyphony. So, what's the point of
having more notes than keys? Because with sampling you need a note per
each sample playback. If you press the sustain pedal and hit the same
key twice or more times, you employ a new voice each time, so you can
even use all the available voices for a single key, because samples
start playing one on top of another, summing phases and amplitudes,
resulting in an unnatural behaviour for a piano. In EG70, when you
hold the sustain pedal down and hit the same key more times, the
virtual hammer always strikes the same (virtual) strings adding or
subtracting vibrations according to the phase of the string in the
very moment when it gets struck by the hammer. One key, one voice.
This is exactly what happens in a real piano, and every time you hit
the key you can hear subtle differences from other strikes of the same
note. Also, this extends the limit of the 127 velocity values
available in the MIDI protocol. Another example: the resonances. A
baby grand piano like the CP-70 has no soundboard, so the actual
resonance is very limited, but still there are 131 strings that are
free to vibrate when the dampers are released, 15 of which are large
round-wound strings that produce a high number or overtones, and the
last 8 keys (for a total of 16 strings) don't have dampers at all, and
are free to resonate all the times. So, when the player keeps a key
down when the note has reached a full decay, he's keeping the damper
away from the string(s) setting them free to resonate if other keys
are played. This is called .sympathetic resonance.. When the sustain
pedal is down, all dampers get away from the strings, so a single note
played may spread its resonances through the whole harp. This is what
happens in a real piano and in the CP-70 electric piano, and is
perfectly emulated by EG70.

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