Piano Forum



Enfant Terrible or Childishly Innocent? – Prokofiev’s Complete Piano Works Now on Piano Street
In our ongoing quest to provide you with a complete library of classical piano sheet music, the works of Sergey Prokofiev have been our most recent focus. As one of the most distinctive and original musical voices from the first half of the 20th century, Prokofiev has an obvious spot on the list of top piano composers. Welcome to the intense, humorous, and lyrical universe of his complete Sonatas, Concertos, character pieces, and transcriptions! Read more >>

Topic: Katsaris Passing off MIDI-augmented recs as Real?  (Read 3221 times)

Offline fftransform

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 605
Katsaris Passing off MIDI-augmented recs as Real?
on: August 07, 2019, 07:10:15 PM
For example:



Others have recently cropped up on his channel, though I doubt it's actually him posting them there.  Can't verify with 100% certainty, but myself and several others have noticed this.  Anyone with audio editing experience?

Some passages have nail clacking, but it itself sounds wrong and sample-repeated.
Sign up for a Piano Street membership to download this piano score.
Sign up for FREE! >>

Offline lostinidlewonder

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 7498
Re: Katsaris Passing off MIDI-augmented recs as Real?
Reply #1 on: August 08, 2019, 01:14:46 AM
Sounds like real playing to me, what parts concern you?
"The biggest risk in life is to take no risk at all."
www.pianovision.com

Offline ranjit

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 1410
Re: Katsaris Passing off MIDI-augmented recs as Real?
Reply #2 on: August 08, 2019, 04:50:08 AM
It's really hard to make a midi sound convincing. Of course, sound engineers will take various takes and splice them together. This may be why the recording sounds excessively "clean", at least to my ears. Could you provide a timestamp?

Online perfect_pitch

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 8496
Re: Katsaris Passing off MIDI-augmented recs as Real?
Reply #3 on: August 08, 2019, 09:25:42 AM
Well, I'm no expert in the matter - there did seem something quite jarring about the recording you posted. It's too clean in the decay of the notes, and when it gets quite loud there seems to be an absence of harmonic resonance on the other strings.

On the other hand, we know Katsaris can play, so I don't see why he would do it though. Had you said Richard Kastle though, there would be credibility to your suspicion...

Offline ahinton

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 12144
Re: Katsaris Passing off MIDI-augmented recs as Real?
Reply #4 on: August 08, 2019, 11:37:01 AM
Writing as one who has undergone the unfortunate experience of listening to some music that was passed off as a live piano performance but which was without question a MIDI, I can say that I have no reason to doubt that what is posted above is a genuine live performance by Katsaris whose considerable facility is well known; whether or to what extent it might have been edited I cannot say, but I have no reason to suspect MIDI involvement here.

Best,

Alistair
Alistair Hinton
Curator / Director
The Sorabji Archive

Offline johnlewisgrant

  • PS Silver Member
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 117
Re: Katsaris Passing off MIDI-augmented recs as Real?
Reply #5 on: September 05, 2019, 02:13:08 AM
Short answer: why would he risk his career that way?
Long answer: depends what you mean by “Midi”.   In theory a pianist could record on a Bos or CFX Yamaha Grand, hooked up to a midi player, microphones in play, and midi record his performance.  The performance could be replayed on the instrument by the MIDI machine, without Midi-editing, but perhaps with adjustments to mic placement, to improve the recorded sound.  Is that “midi”??

Make it interesting: one midi edit is made to the performance.  Is that any different from an analogue splice?   Hmmmm.

Offline Bob

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 16364
Re: Katsaris Passing off MIDI-augmented recs as Real?
Reply #6 on: September 05, 2019, 10:56:35 PM
Interesting.... I could see it being fake.... What if you slow down the grave notes and see if they're perfectly even?


The decay does sound abrupt, but couldn't that be the mic placement or recording?  It sounds very precise for the tail of the notes... which seems odd.

The double octave grace notes are slow and then speed up though... How else does a human do that?

Where are the environment sounds?  If someone was really sneaking you could fake the recording and then add in extra crap sounds in the environment.



Now I'm reading comments.  I thought people were saying it was MIDI when I glanced through before.  Imagine having your performance perfected enough that people think it's MIDI.....  There still is that decay though....  If it was fake and MIDI I was thinking that might be something like a goal to practice toward if you make a performance that clean.   And then I was also wondering what "MIDI" recording would mean, the same as the johnlewisgrant -- Just connect an acoustic piano to MIDI and tweak it enough until the MIDI control is right where you want it.

Favorite new teacher quote -- "You found the only possible wrong answer."

Offline johnlewisgrant

  • PS Silver Member
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 117
Re: Katsaris Passing off MIDI-augmented recs as Real?
Reply #7 on: September 06, 2019, 01:19:24 AM
I mention Bos and Yamaha because they market concert grands equipped with very precise midi machines.  Ergo a pianist who records a performance on a “midi piano”, so to speak, could in fact make midi edits and THEN make an acoustic recording (like any other piano recording) which would from an purely acoustic standpoint be indistinguishable from the real thing.  What might give away the editing would therefore be oddities, such as artificially perfect technique or, as suggested, impossibly abrupt tempo transitions.  Listeners with a Czerny-like reverence for equal finger strength might appreciate absolute uniformity in, say, octave runs.   But a Chopinesque ear might want to hear the natural unevenness that a “normal” set of fingers tends to produce.  I’ve put a lot of experimental midi stuff on YouTube and soundcloud, mostly Bach, just because it’s interesting (to me) to hear middle voices that aren’t always easy to hear in my own playing.  Sort of demonstrates possibilities that may or may not inform performance.
For more information about this topic, click search below!
 

Logo light pianostreet.com - the website for classical pianists, piano teachers, students and piano music enthusiasts.

Subscribe for unlimited access

Sign up

Follow us

Piano Street Digicert