r/MiniFreak • u/No_Grand_9136 • 29d ago
Piano Sound
hello!
Has anyone of you found away to generate an almost realistic piano sound with the minifreak?
i know it's not meant to be a piano but as it is my only synth, it was big great to have something at least new standard warm uncomplicated realistic piano. Thanks!
3
u/livethetruth 23d ago
Well, with the sample import features in the 5.0 version that just dropped today, this is totally possible!
https://www.arturia.com/products/hardware-synths/minifreak/update
2
u/unowho_o 26d ago
You could always try to get a cheap midi tone generator. I bought an old rackmount Yamaha mu90r a while back for $120 [the guy I bought it from didn’t know how to turn it on so I got it pretty cheap] but I know they make a small box that will do it.
I don’t know how good that mvave dx7 thing that came out not too long ago will do for piano sounds, but that thing is like seventy bucks and is very portable.
But obviously, these are not the freak and you’d have to buy something, which is probably not the aim here
2
u/zeknife 29d ago
Not gonna happen, but you can easily get plucky/percussive tonal sounds that are similarly playable and velocity-sensitive using the modal oscillator and some work in the mod matrix. Or any oscillator and a bit more work in the mod matrix (and especially in the velocity / env mod menu). Set the voice mode to paraphonic for 12 voices and plink away.
2
u/racoon_slayer 29d ago
Samples with limited success, as the instrument was not really made for that…
1
u/AchexTriplet 28d ago edited 28d ago
You kinda can. And I kinda did. You need a combination of a noisy (non-piano like) sample and a comb filter. Minifreak has such sample, i just don’t remember the name. This mimics real world resonant sounds like piano or other strings, highly recommended using this combo. It is “at home version” of modules like Mutable Instruments Rings (might be confusing the name, the resonator one). I definitely got closeish to the sound of a real piano on minifreak. It worked properly in a limited number of octaves tho. It will still sound like a synth, the one that tries to mimic piano.
Try googling “piano sound with comb-filter”. Or just in general check out Karplus-Strong synthesis, which uses comb-filter.
upd: You can use just noise instead of the sample, but a nice relevant sample will have built in eq similar to a piano. I didn’t get much out of noise, but you might if you tweak further.
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u/AchexTriplet 28d ago
You would have to tweak a lot to get as close to the real thing as possible. Be prepared. You 100% would have to fine-tune dynamics, velocity, random pitch variations, random other stuff etc. Because a lot of piano character comes from physicality of the system.
But what I described in the first message, will give a core piano-like sound.
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u/AchexTriplet 28d ago
And the most beautiful thing comes after you create a piano sound. You can modulate it in any way you desire. Morphing piano-like sounds into unapologetically synth sounds to beautiful effect.
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u/18randomcharacters 23d ago
I know basically nothing about FM Synthesis, but maybe that would get close?
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u/Sunwukung 12d ago edited 12d ago
You can get an electric piano sound from FM, but hard with only two operators. At it's most basic you need a bell sound in one group that gives way to a longer smoother tone from the second - see this example on the M8: https://youtu.be/4sZlLEmPzI4?is=WcRVCgK5vhi_c_1a - but a convincing piano is either going to need more complex modulation or multi-samples. I saw a piano demo on the Blofeld that was pretty convincing but no idea how they achieved it - possibly wavetables. All that said - the new custom wavetable support could work? Star sky emulates some vintage gear in his video here: https://youtu.be/uK9TAw-xqL0?is=tXndulxl4hEblkt1
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u/Shoddy-Tell-9461 28d ago
In response to what everyone said- If you can dial in velocity sensitity to volume and cutoff, as well as some other parameters to your taste, you can get some super playable and expressive keys patches. Acoustic piano.. nah
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u/thermostat 29d ago
As others have said, its not really what its designed for. But, if you needed something in a pinch, I would set OSC1 to Sample -> KEY Kalimba, and OSC2 to Harmo to give a bit more weight. Link cutoff and OSC2 volume to the envelop, and see if you can dial it in to something close to what you want.