Coakley's Perfect Piano V.II

Coakley's Perfect Piano V.II
William Coakley
Format : Kurzweil CDRom
Review by Clif Marsiglio
Tuesday, November 24, 1998

Contents:

4 meticulously sampled Pianos. 10+ foot Fazioli piano, Steinway D, FZ1, and the Kawai.

I had been a dog person for most of my short life, but the last few years have changed my opinion on pets forever. Since picking up my first cat, I've learned these are both intelligent and elegant animals. Part furniture, part live consultant, these animals have shaped my outlook on music, whereas my dogs never cared much for music what so ever.

Of the three cats I've picked up over the last few years have had very different tastes and thus pushed me to what they found particularly interesting. My first, Zimbabwe (Bob the jungle cat) was more into the rhythmic pulses of Front242 and NitzerEbb and would run up walls dancing to these. He merely walked out of the room bored with any other music. Meow T'se Tong was more into the punky Popcore or any particularly of my loud noisy atonal guitar. The latest furball, CatCatCat, has been particularly fond of piano and even some of my own renditions of the classics, as bad as I may play...

Because of his particular interest in my music, I've written several compositions for his enjoyment. When I had first gotten the little fuzzy, I thought he hated my music because he'd hide within my bookshelf within the piano room. I'd pluck him out, kicking most of the carefully arranged books down and move him to another room just to see him run back to his listening spot. Thanks to Cat3, I've learned the sweetspots in my piano room for both my real acoustic baby grand as well as my K2000's monitors. He now has to share these spots with mics that I had used for recording room ambiences, but for some reason records a low rumbling but nonmenacing growling sound. I've not figured this out, but it stops immediately as soon as I turn this up into the live mix. Again, cats believe their duty is guide your work not be a part of it.

I had used piano primarily as a compositional tool and then translating everything to either synth or guitar arrangements so I'm just going to follow the recommendations of my eight month old feline. His favorite seems to be the grand when it is in tune. The fact that this thing is only a few feet from the door to my second floor patio and my house guests are required to smoke outdoors means this is in tune only as the seasons allow. While in tune, I play a lot of tapped bass lines, which I've yet to find accurately sampled on any CD-ROM and Mr. Cat really seems to dig. These just get him curled directly under the sound board purring so loud I cannot even record from a far with him around. Most people keep their hands out of the lid and then off the strings when they play so I guess I cannot complain too much about this.

After the acoustic, his next favorite seems to be the Steinway D that is located on the Coakley Perfect Piano Volume 2 which is actually more oriented on the 10+ foot Fazioli piano. Catcatcat will sit pert in behind Faust, Kafka, Poe and Nin, Anais not Trent, noting every midied inflection I throw his way. To be honest, I prefer this piano over the Fazioli as well. Piano is a matter of taste over everything. I prefer the muddied sounds of an upright to a perfectly tuned full grand. Aside from my own set of aesthetics, this disc was recorded nearly perfectly. The only patch I did not like was the Kawai 'Tack' pianos presented almost as an afterthought.

There are two sets of samples and their respective patches with the Kurzweil version. When scrolling thought these two, the difference in volumes is immediately recognized. One you have to go full crank on the volume to get a sound, and then scrolling through these, one is immediately assaulted by the sonic blast due to the differences in volume. The only other negative I found with this set is that if you are using a limited polyphony synth, you're going to be disappointed. On my K2000, I have 24 notes of polyphony. With the stereo samples, one is given only half of this to use. I've had to relearn my pedaling techniques to play live with this disc. I would almost suggest if you have something of this limited nature, to either wait until you can upgrade to a more powerful machine or to do as I have, reedit the patches to a mono and use a good outboard reverb unit to put this back into its correct placement.

As winter is staring to set in, my piano will be soon completely out of tune and I will be in need of a good piano to appease the cat. $200 for the retuning or $300 for a disc that never needs retuning. No sampler is going to beat a well tuned acoustic of any variety, but this sure makes a run for the money.

Fazioli, Steinway D, FZ1, Kawai Pianos.

William Coakley
http://www.williamcoakley.com