Nord User Forum

analogika wrote:

Gambold wrote:>which is why I believe the Felt's just a quality, medium-sized upright piano recorded with the damper engaged.<

I'm not sure what this means. The dampers are always engaged - they rise when a key is struck and then fall back down on release. If you press the damper pedal, they don't fall back down. Are you saying they sampled each note without using "pedal-down."

Language issue, methinks: The dampening felt curtain is what's meant here, not the dampers.

The "damper pedal" is another word for "sustain pedal", because it raises the dampers.

The pedal that dampens the sound on uprights with a felt curtain is called the "muffler pedal".

The nomenclature may not be entirely clear to everyone.

Not quite a language issue, it's just that for some reason my brain told me to write damper even though I was thinking of the una corda pedal. My bad! I meant that the Felt upright sounds pretty similar to my upright when the "moderator stop" is engaged (my piano doesn't feature a una corda pedal: there's a stop on the left, like in some older German and Austrian uprights).

Gambold wrote:> We should report that to the support so that they can fix it.<

Only if they tell us what piano they used, and how

Also - "reporting to Nord" - how exactly does one do that? There's been a lot of discussion over the years on how Nord isn't the easiest company to communicate with. I suppose you could send an email to one of their generic email addresses.

Either the support or the feedback form. To their credit, I've always got a reply, even when I pestered them about the 9th drawbar cancel issue.

https://www.nordkeyboards.com/support
https://www.nordkeyboards.com/feedback

>even when I pestered them about the 9th drawbar cancel issue.<

Yeah, why they changed that, we will never know.

>The pedal that dampens the sound on uprights with a felt curtain is called the "muffler pedal".<

Interesting. Our family Conover Grand had a "soft" pedal on the left that shifted all the hammers over so they struck less strings per note. Our Yamaha upright has what we call a "practice" pedal which I think is the muffler. Although I thought it moved the action closer to the strings...no felt involved...

Gambold wrote:>The pedal that dampens the sound on uprights with a felt curtain is called the "muffler pedal".<

Interesting. Our family Conover Grand had a "soft" pedal on the left that shifted all the hammers over so they struck less strings per note. Our Yamaha upright has what we call a "practice" pedal which I think is the muffler. Although I thought it moved the action closer to the strings...no felt involved...

The left pedal on your grand is called the Una Chorda pedal, as it shifts to hit only a single string, or una chorda. That pedal is not necessarily implemented the same way on uprights. On some models, it instead drops a felt curtain between the hammers and strings. In the end, the intended effect is similar - to soften the transients and overall volume of the instrument.

Gambold wrote:>The pedal that dampens the sound on uprights with a felt curtain is called the "muffler pedal".<

Interesting. Our family Conover Grand had a "soft" pedal on the left that shifted all the hammers over so they struck less strings per note. Our Yamaha upright has what we call a "practice" pedal which I think is the muffler. Although I thought it moved the action closer to the strings...no felt involved...

You're confusing two different things:

The "una corda" pedal is designed to work around the basic dynamic limitation of all mechanical pianos: the minimum volume is whatever velocity you need to get the hammer to swing and it the key.
Una corda uses a mechanical trick to let you play more softly:
On grand pianos, it moves the entire keybed and all hammers a few mm to one side, so that the hammers only hit one of the strings for each key in the mid and upper ranges. This changes the sound, but makes it softer.
On uprights, it usually tilts the entire hammer assembly closer to the strings, so less force is needed to have them strike over the shorter distance. This allows for softer playing, but doesn't change the sound.
Una Corda is not a "practice" pedal: it's a pedal used specifically for softer ppp passages (I first encountered it in the Gymnopedies) and occasionally called for explicitly in notation.

Then there is the "muffler" pedal — this doesn't exist on grands, and on uprights, it's usually the middle pedal, when it exists. It lowers a felt curtain between the hammers and the strings. I've heard *this* called the "practice" pedal.
The effect on the sound is extreme, and I've rarely found it desirable (though this particular piano does sound very nice).

When a grand has a third (middle) pedal, it's a sostenuto — a sustain pedal that locks the dampers in the raised position for only those notes that are being played the moment the pedal is pressed.

Gambold wrote:
Also - "reporting to Nord" - how exactly does one do that?

I meant the form in the "Support" page of their website. It's true they don't always respond, but as far as I can piece together, it's because the submitted request gets routed to whatever the dealer of your own country is, which may or may not decide to forward it to Clavia. So folks writing from Sweden get in contact with Clavia directly, and are the luckiest for this. In my (Italian) case, I think I got a reply only once out of 5-6 instances.

The piano sample info gives Yamaha SU118.

Hey, where did you get that info?

It's embedded in the npno files. I found the info when I updated my viewer app yesterday...

Found a low-fi youtube video of the Yamaha in question, and it didn't sound anything like the Felt Piano. Not that I doubt the source instruments, it's just that something magical must have happened to that piano during preparation and recording. I don't think I would have looked twice otherwise.