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Music Media Technology

Concert to be Performed from Beyond the Grave 196

Posted by CowboyNeal from the digital-resurrection dept.
rtphokie writes "Raleigh, NC based Zenph Studios is hosting a live concert performed by two piano virtuosi long since dead. Zenph developed software which digitally transcribes performances even from the scratchy recordings. A more faithful transcription of timing, key and pedal pressure is achieved using Yamaha's high resolution version of MIDI."
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Concert to be Performed from Beyond the Grave More

Concert to be Performed from Beyond the Grave

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  • elvis (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Only 4 hours from me. darn sounds cool how they do these.

    Here comes elvis next.

  • Holograms (Score:3, Interesting)

    by justdweezil ( 821601 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @07:51PM (#12309091)
    Coupling a performance like this with a 3D Projected likeness of the artist would be mindblowing. The projection wouldn't even have to be very good.. but being able to visualize the person while hearing the digital "passion" in their notes.. live.. would be something amazing.
    • Then you need to take extra care to avoid power surges in the holographic matrix, because then you'll be stuck with some piano-playing hologram who won't go away.

      Then you'll have to make a moral decision: Endure the wisecracking hologram as a poorly-needed comedic relief, or shut off the power and kill the poor dude.

    • Re:Holograms (Score:5, Funny)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @08:55PM (#12309478) Homepage Journal
      "The projection wouldn't even have to be very good.."

      Frankly, I don't care if it is very good or not. If they don't stick to the standard of emblazaning an H on his forhead, I'm going to nitpick!
      • Sometimes I think im the only fan....

        Comments like this let me know I am not the only loon in the universe :)

  • Meh (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21, 2005 @07:52PM (#12309093)
    I thought this was going to be about dead musicians coming back from the grave to kill those who use their music as ring tones. Still cool though.

  • Side Note (Score:4, Funny)

    by Paperweight ( 865007 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @07:52PM (#12309094)
    Unfortunately insiders acknowledged that it would be impossible to bring Michael Jackson's mucis back from the dead.
    • "Unfortunately insiders acknowledged that it would be impossible to bring Michael Jackson's mucis back from the dead."

      I wonder how many bitter-beer-faces that little typo caused.

  • Not dead yet (Score:3)

    by Nadsat ( 652200 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @07:54PM (#12309110) Homepage
    Glen Gould is alive in my heart.
  • ... not that I'm surprised by a Slashdot (or submitted article) being misleading, but there's not much to crow about here.

    We're talking about a slightly more modern idea of the old player pianos. Stuff that matters indeed..

    • Re:Just a tad misleading... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 21, 2005 @07:58PM (#12309129)
      did you actually read the article - or even the summary?

      The piano is just the thing they play it on, no one's saying that's a great achievement - MIDI enabled pianos have existed for years.
      The achievement is being able to accurately translate a recording into MIDI instructions.

      Whether or not it's as good as they claim is yet to be seen.

    • Re:Just a tad misleading... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Texodore ( 56174 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @08:10PM (#12309201)
      Disclaimer. I used to work for the founder of Zenph Studios, back when he founded a networking software company and he left when it merged with a larger one. I am still in touch.

      Someone takes a recording from long ago on vinyl. They play it on vinyl. Advanced signal processing listens to the sound from the original recording and detects which note is played when keys are pressed and lifted, and apparently when pedals are in use as well. This is laid down in a high-fidelity MIDI format. This MIDI file is fed through a high-performance Yamaha piano and the concert is played live on the piano in the concert hall. The piano translates the MIDI files and hits the keys, pedals, everything to the exact timing specified in the file. The magic is in the signal processing of the original recording. The idea is to replicate the original recording, note for note, tone for tone, microsecond for microsecond, feeling for feeling.

      So, this is a HUGE step beyond player pianos. We can replicate old recordings and (GASP!) re-record them using modern methods, saving old lost tapes, making old recordings available in SACD and DVD-Audio. We can replicate concerts across the globe. Piano competitions can be done remotely. This could be of incredible significance to old classical music libraries and performances.
      • This MIDI file is fed through a high-performance Yamaha piano and the concert is played live on the piano in the concert hall.
        It's not really live though, is it? It's just a different (and technically very advanced) form of recording and playback.

      • Re:Just a tad misleading... (Score:5, Informative)

        by ockegheim ( 808089 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @09:20PM (#12309611)
        In my job as a sound engineer, I regularly edit classical piano music. High-end midi pianos have an amazing potential for recording, as no high fidelity recording can substitute for a real live sound. A recorded midi file would have the feel of an artist, and it would be easy to correct wrong notes.

        Extracting a usable midi file from a recording is very sophisticated signal processing. If the pedal is down a new attack can get lost among the wash of notes. The musical score would help if the program knew what notes to expect. Even so, I suspect they chose Glenn Gould because he was very sparing with the pedal when he played Bach.
      • Is this the Bosendorfer piano? I have a recording of Mozart sonatas from probably 15 years ago that called itself the "First transoceanic recording" because it was played by the pianist (Philippe Entremont) in Austria, where the HiFi MIDI recorded it and the pianist then went back in the computer and tweaked it to perfection, and then it was played back by computer in a sound studio in the US where it was recorded. A fantastic record.
      • I remember one of the cool things about Scott Joplin was that he recorded his own song's player piano rolls. If you went to the store at that time and picked up a player piano rolls for one of his pieces, it was performed by him. So you were getting it exactly as he would've played it - within the parameters of what a player piano can do.

        Player pianos could only record which notes were pressed and for how long. They couldn't reproduce the dynamics of the piece. MIDI is a huge step forward because you can r
        • IIRC many of his rolls were actually "enhanced" by his publishing company... extra bass lines added, etc., without his approval and sometimes in rather inappropriate ways.

          And, while its true that a MIDI recording is not 100% true to the source, its also true that an audio recording is not 100% true. a lot of the dynamics and spatial acoustic information are lost in a stereo rendering due to microphone placement, compression, etc. -- one could argue that playback on a disklavier is better in at least some
      • "We can replicate old recordings and (GASP!) re-record them using modern methods, saving old lost tapes, making old recordings available in SACD and DVD-Audio."

        Naturally, all with brand spanking new COPYRIGHTS on them that are so durable that they will last and last.

        Any bets on which lasts longer - the Eveready Bunny, or modern copyrights...

        Hey Yamaha, make me proud, put them under a copyleft or in the public domain. (If they are there now that is.)

        all the best,

        drew
  • This story is pretty low on the accuracy scale, at least from a technical standpoint. I don't think they're talking about some new form of MIDI as the teaser statement implies. The author of the article just seems to think that MIDI is "high-def", which is pretty funny, actually. Especially considering how slow MIDI's transmission speed is.

    • Re:"High-def" MIDI? (Score:2, Informative)

      by ElephanTS ( 624421 )
      No this is wrong. Yamaha has a form of high def MIDI for recording grand pianos. They abandoned 7-bit MIDI because it couldn't reproduce all the nuances they wanted to capture. This is the data that is captured. However, there is no such this as high-def MIDI really, it's an analogy (which is strange for a digital idea).
  • /. just today released a story [slashdot.org] about PR works.

    Can you guess the 3 experts and who payed for this one?

    And by the way: who want's to ear this old gizzers, anyway?

  • Not the same (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ShamanDave ( 841298 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @08:00PM (#12309143)
    Part of the charm of Glenn Gould's recordings stems from the fact that you can hear him humming along with the music if you listen carefully. I guess he drove recording techs nuts.

    • Re:Not the same (Score:2, Interesting)

      by mendax ( 114116 )
      Let's not forget Glenn Gould's beloved piano that he hauled around with him wherever he went. The humming and the piano were the bane of recording engineers. But then the man was a true eccentric. But will the "performance" reflect accurately the eccentricies of his performance style? At least they need to put a guy wearing what looks like Gould's winter wardrobe (which he preferred to wear even in the summer) on stage in front of the piano to give it at least some authenticity.

    • Re:Not the same (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Quirk ( 36086 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @08:24PM (#12309308) Homepage Journal
      Glen Gould was a supreme recording tech. He stopped playing publicly "on 10 April 1964 in a Los Angeles recital [glenngould.com]". The list of Gould's idiocyracies would fill a few pages. He would steep his hands and forearms in steaming hot water to loosen them and increase the circulation. Those who witnessed this ritual said his arms would come out burnt red. He loved recording technology and was a master of the craft. Some detractors have suggested his later output reflected his virtuosity as a technologist more than his ability as a pianist, but those who heard him live state unequivocably that his mastery of the keyboard was unparalleled, especially his ability to play at a blinding speed.

      • Re:Not the same (Score:2, Insightful)

        by adrianbye ( 452416 )
        > He would steep his hands and forearms
        > in steaming hot water to loosen them
        > and increase the circulation.

        He most likely had a repetitive strain injury (RSI) from his piano playing, and this was how he reduced the pain. That his arms came out burnt red may indicate the level of pain he felt.

  • Rumor has it... (Score:3, Funny)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @08:01PM (#12309146) Homepage Journal
    ...that they'll be opening with the Adams family theme song

    They're creepy and they're kooky,
    Mysterious and spooky,
    They're all together ooky,
    The Addams Family.

    da da da da. tum tum.

    • Actually the Addams were supposed to be alive although ghoulish. I hate to say it, but the Munsters theme (ripoff that they were...) would be more appropriate, Herman was a re-animated corpse, his wife and father-in-law were undead.

  • transcribing polyphonic notes (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Attempts to transcribe polyphonic notes are typically only 80 percent successful, says New Scientist. About 10 percent of polyphonic notes are missing and another 10 percent are mistranscribed, which can give the replicated music a hollowness or discordance.

    Zenph Studios, a software company based in Raleigh, North Carolina, claims that it has found a solution to the problem, although it refuses to say how for commercial reasons.

    By taking the musical score into account?
    • Exactly. These are famous last words, but: "how hard can it be?"

      You have the exact musical score, and that as a first-guess MIDI file should be pretty good (but will lack "feeling")... then you have an algorithm (genetic algorithm maybe?) that varies the exact timing and release of keys and stuff, until it best approximates the original recording. Since you're starting with the real musical score, getting the notes right shouldn't be the hard part... the rest of it should be the hard part.

      In fact, you can
      • Nice post, but just a small remark - sometimes the score won't be available, since for example Fugues (which Glenn Gould liked to play) involve some improvisation, and I bet that even in other places he would improvise some times.
        • Gould's reputation was built on improvisation. His 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations became an instant best seller and was one of, or, possibly, the first classical best seller. His refusal to play Legato (smoothly) upset the status quo of the classical music world. Leonard Berstein, legendary conductor of the New York Philarmonic, deferred to Gould's quirky redition of a work, suggesting that genius of Gould's level should be allowed leeway.
        • Of course he improvised. So what? There are lots of people that can sit down with a recording and transcribe it accurately, and many of them have empty larders as we speak.
      • its a fitting problem all right but in polyphonic transcription the number of independent variables is non-trivial, the cost of evaluating a guess is very high, and there are tons of local minima due to harmonic equivalence, which, due to the curious nature of instrument physics (missing fundamentals, even/odd harmonic patterns, detuning, etc), often beat the true optimum if your fitness evaluation is not sophisticated enough. a genetic algorithm will converge about as fast as 1000 monkeys banging on typew

  • Pragmatic Programmer article on the company (Score:5, Informative)

    by jarich ( 733129 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @08:06PM (#12309173) Homepage Journal
    Andy Hunt wrote an article about this company... catch it here:

    http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/articles/zenph/ index.html [pragmaticprogrammer.com]

    • Not quite. That's an audio recording of player piano rolls, but this is really the opposite - it's converting a recording into the digital equivalent of a player piano roll to play back on a real piano.

    • Re:This was done 12 years ago with Gershwin (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cascino ( 454769 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @08:33PM (#12309355) Homepage
      This was done 12 years ago with Gershwin
      That project was similar, but it's not quite the same thing. The Gershwin recordings were done using player piano rolls recorded by Gershwin himself - i.e.: his performances were already in a MIDI-like format - whereas this project is starting from the raw audio recordings of Gould and Cortot and creating MIDI files. In both cases the "concert" featuring dead performers' MIDI files is the headline grabbing story.
      • Just to clarify - the Gershwin project used not "piano rolls" per se, but recordings of a device truly like the MIDI pianos - it recorded the weight of key impact, the use of pedals, everything.

        I caught this concert with the Yamaha player-less piano together with the local symphony and it was uncanny.

  • And now all we need... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tuxedo Jack ( 648130 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @08:17PM (#12309260) Homepage
    Is a (not-so-) live concert by the legendary Hotblack Desiato.

    Unfortunately, he's spending a year dead for tax purposes, but hey, we can't but hope, eh?

  • Play it backwards (Score:5, Funny)

    by LuckyPhil ( 549767 ) <phil.g.howlett@g ... il.com minus bsd> on Thursday April 21, 2005 @08:34PM (#12309367) Homepage
    Gives a whole new perspective on the term 'de-composing'

  • polyphony (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cahiha ( 873942 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @08:47PM (#12309432)
    Zenph Studios, a software company based in Raleigh, North Carolina, claims that it has found a solution to the problem, although it refuses to say how for commercial reasons.

    There have been attempts at music transcription software since the 1970's. For some obscure reason, many of the people who tried didn't seem to think of the fact that classical music comes with a score.

    So, the "solution" to the problem is simple: use the known score to get the notes and polyphony, and use the recording primarily to infer the performance parameters. It's not a very complicated problem, actually. I suspect the main reason why you haven't seen this before is because it is of fairly little commercial interest.

    • Re:polyphony (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JJ ( 29711 )
      If this could be extended to vocal performances then I know of the perfect recording to utilize. I heard it on the Dr Demento show many years ago, it was an operatic aria by a castratti, a "modified" human. The vocal power was that of a man but the range encompassed both that of a woman and a man. Quite an eery performance when you considered that the singer paid a huge sacrifice to become a great singer. Many operas were written so that only castratti could perform certain roles and are now non-performable

  • Stuff that matters, like cash (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mechcozmo ( 871146 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @08:56PM (#12309483)
    Who gets the royalties?

  • FYI: the Yamaha XP Midi format and virtuosism (Score:3, Informative)

    by eh2o ( 471262 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @09:04PM (#12309529)
    The "high def" MIDI the slashblurb refers to is probably what yamaha calls "Yamaha XP MIDI".

    I can't find a technical spec on this right now, but its mostly backwards-compatible with MIDI plus the addition of a few extra details about the piano performance, e.g. key stroke depth, using the MIDI controller extensions. (However I'd be really suprised if it it was actually possible to determine key stroke depth from signal analysis of an old recording).

    If they did their homework it would should also have a higher clockrate. MIDI is notorious for its poor time resolution with a clock of only 1khz -- and studies have shown that virtuoso pianists can control timing down to the sub msec range, so this is essential.

    The article also beats around the bush on the polyphonic transcription issue -- but since these are classical pieces, score following seems like an obvious if not relatively easy way to do it.
    • MIDI is notorious for its poor time resolution True. with a clock of only 1khz False. MIDI interfaces run at 31250 bit per second, which gives (including start- and stopbit) for 3125 bytes. Although it is true that a note-on or note-off generally takes 3 bytes (which I suspect is why you say the clock is 3000/3=1 khz), MIDI distinguishes between data bytes (msb unset) and command bytes (msb set).

      Thus, (hex) 80 6c 3c would mean 'note on, channel 0' 'key 6c' 'velocity 3c'. When the command is not repeated fo
  • With this information, it should be possible to build a robot to play the piano the way the original artist did. That would be very interesting to watch, especially if it were done over every year, and we could the robot's progression.
  • I can't play music, but I can hum and vocalize it. There must be software by now that will create a midi based on my voice into a microphone, right? Does anyone know what's available and how well they work?

  • In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by isny ( 681711 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @10:28PM (#12310036) Homepage
    The Rolling Stones are on tour this summer.

  • My thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jessecurry ( 820286 ) <jesse@jessecurry.net> on Thursday April 21, 2005 @10:34PM (#12310080) Homepage Journal
    I love the idea that they can transcribe polyphonic notes with such clarity. I think that being able to hear these piano masters from a real piano and not just recording would be a great experience, I wish that I could see it live.
    One of the huge benefits I see is that now electronic music artists can incorporate classical pieces as done by the actual artist instead of a poor transcription. I don't know if anyone has heard tracks such as Gotti's Revenge, but I find that electronic music that integrates classical or otherwise note heavy songs has a much better sound.

  • the technology, or something similar (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rawshark ( 603493 ) on Thursday April 21, 2005 @11:16PM (#12310298)
    A few years ago I heard a CD made with this (or a similiar) technology.

    The way the technology was described to me was as follows: as you know a piano works by having a small hammer attached to each key. The recording technology has a modified piano where below each hammer is a pool of mercury. When the key is struck the hammer enters the pool, completing an electrical circuit, this causes a line to be drawn (???) on a piece of paper. Another modified piano will read the piece of paper like a player piano.

    We listened to music performed by Richard Strauss. It was very cool.
  • Did anyone else wonder that it seems they want to draw more attention by the "Beyond the grave" phrase than from the actual technology itself?
  • Good quality midi is difficult to distinguish from the real thing. See how good you are by trying MIDI or virtuoso [ucla.edu]

    Unfortunately the you need Real Player to listen to the files.
    • And good quality player-piano IS the real thing, and we have had it since 1890. (Ever heard of Scott Joplin?)

      Machines to record key strokes from organs existed around 100 years before that.

      No news here folks!

    • Not difficult at all. I got 100% right on the first try. I don't think those midi clips were recorded using a player piano though. They're most likely from a synthesized source, just like your sound blaster's midi synthesizer(maybe a bit better admittedly). You can always tell; the attack, decay, timbre are all wrong. Alternately, you can have a facsimile based on one sampled note, very often C3. To get all the other notes, that sample of c3 is pitched up or down. Again, you can tell it from the real
  • A recording does not contain enough information due to the mechanical limitiations of the technology to enable such a transferance of performance to occur. The dynamic range is too limited, even for just a single note, and the bandwith/resolution does not allow for a workaround. Although it might fool most people, it's NOT a *reproduction* of a performance, but a *facsimile* of one.
  • At the BBC Proms several years ago, the long-dead pianist Percy Granger played Grieg's Piano Concerto along with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, courtesy of a piano-roll recording of his performance whose tempo was controlled live by an operator (to ensure piano and Orchestra kept together). At the time I was amazed at the subtleties of performance that the roll had captured. I had assumed (knowing next to nothing about them) that piano rolls were a crude digital version, with little or no intonation, but this
  • First of all, the concert is not only given by 2 dead pianists. I'm the performer of the recital. The 2 dead pianists are present during the middle of the recital where we will demo this new technology.

    For all of you who has reservations about the results, i suggest that you come and hear the demo. This is not about getting a piece of music performed the way a composer wants it performed. It is also not about taking an old recording and "cleaning it up". What this technology will do, is completely recreat

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