Playing Rachmaninoff with virtual orchestra

rach3master

I'd like to share a setup I've been experimenting with recently, where I play piano with a virtual orchestra app developed by concert pianist Vyacheslav Gryaznov. This is a great tool that lets me experience the full orchestra from the comfort of my living room without having to settle for a 2nd piano accompaniment. Great practice too if you intend to play with an orchestra as well. I learned many things about my own playing that simply won't fly with a real orchestra lol.

The app is G-Phil.

https://g-phil.app

David Lai

rach3master Really cool. So, how do you make the orchestra sync up to you? Was it the bluetooth pedal?

Nice recording as well. I love New York D's!

rach3master

David Lai The app splits the concerto into several sections. When there are breaks such as cadenzas, the app is on standby until you press the bluetooth pedal to move it to the next section. The other sections that are continuous you can just join them naturally with auto-continue, meaning you don't have to do anything and the app will automatically move to the next section after it finishes playing out the current one.

David Lai

rach3master I see. Looks like I need to get a bluetooth pedal. Since this has a free version when version 2 comes out (if I understand correctly), I think getting a pedal wouldn't be too bad. I wonder if it works with VST setups and can be run through daws.

rach3master

David Lai Technically you can just press enter on the keyboard to move to the next section, but I imagine your hands would be quite busy! I'm not sure about DAW, but with the app for instance you can just record an uninterrupted runthrough even without mics and it'll remember your timings, which you can export the orchestra bits as a single audio file.

rach3master

David Lai Just FYI, in the app there a section image of the piano score that displays the end of the currently playing section. There is a dotted red line in the score that indicates when you should press the bluetooth pedal to cue an orchestral entrance and move to the next section. This part requires some practice to get right if the cue is during an offbeat or depending on your rubato, for instance.

David B

rach3master Always enjoy when you share your gift. The orchestral accompaniment sounded very professional and blended with the piano nicely. 👍

God Bless,
David

CyberGene

rach3master terrific playing, thanks for sharing it. I’ve always enjoyed your playing and musicianship 👏🏻 Is that your own Steinway? 🙂

rach3master

CyberGene Yep.

David Lai

rach3master I see. Well, this visual cue won't be useful for me, but glad to know how it works. Thank you! 🙂

vagfilm

Great polished app with score integration. Since you can control the tempo, I assume that it is reading a midi file in real-time and rendering it using a soundfont. A few months ago I made a very simple python program that did the same thing: the orchestra backup was split into sections (a new section was anytime there was a piano only part longer than a a couple of bars) and the orchestra entry times were controlled by pedal or keyboard. But it was an mp3 reader: you would pre-render the midi into mp3 using any orchestra VST. Better audio, but no accompanying score and no realtime control of tempo. This one is nicer.

rach3master

I’m not sure it is as exactly as you say, if I understand you correctly. Gryaznov personally crafts the orchestra parts from scratch according to his experience as a performer, so the orchestral rendering is baked-in, so to say. The only direct control you have is to select a tempo marking for each section, which directs the app to play from one of many audio files for that section.

David Lai

rach3master So, when you slow something down, do you hear the common artifacts when slowing down an audio file, or is it without any degradation in audio quality?

rach3master

David Lai None of the audio files have degraded quality. I selected a tempo for every section in this piece different from the "default" tempo.

rach3master

rach3master If I understand your implication, I believe he's not taking one audio file and speeding/slowing it down, but rather rendering them all at different tempos directly from Spitfire Orchestra.

vagfilm

@rach3master

Great! When I saw the choice of tempos in the screen in the beggining of your video, I thought "I can do that: pre-render at different tempos and then select the set of mp3s of choice".

If this is full audio and not midi, I can now put my sketchy program to rest, because this one looks much better than my amateur attempt (@David Lai was the only person to ever try it 😊).

Do you know if Gryaznov accepts sets of mp3s to include in the library? (not that I have any at the moment). But having an open-source library of orchestral "minus-ones" would be an interesting project...

rach3master

vagfilm I’m not sure, as he is pretty picky about how he wants the orchestra to sound. And it only takes him a few days to mock up an entire concerto at this point.

vagfilm

Great. In any case, at my current rate of piano progression, I will not be able to tackle the simplest of the adagios before 2078, so there is ample time to grow the library until then.

HZPiano

vagfilm 2078

Yeah, I've got plenty of time too, then.

😄

HZPiano

@rach3master ,

Very nice, and thanks for your beautiful pieces on YouTube!

Cheers,