David Mellor discovers that Roland's new dedicated piano module sounds a lot bigger than it looks.

If you want a piano sound on your next recording, there really is only one instrument that will give you a totally realistic result. It's big, usually black, has 88 keys, three legs, and would kill you stone dead if it fell on you. That's right — a grand piano. I'll explain in a moment why I think this is so, but don't get the idea that I am going to tell you that imitation pianos don't have their uses. The Roland P55 is about as good an imitation as you get, and for many applications it'll be impossible to tell the difference between this and the real thing. But first, let's take a look at the not inconsiderable advantages of the grand piano, which must rank as one of mankind's greatest inventions (along with the bicycle!).

There are several qualities possessed by the grand piano (and some by the upright) which electrically produced piano sounds will never share. The first is that as a living, breathing, acoustic instrument, the grand piano has an incredible versatility of timbre, so much so that it would be impossible to play a note twice and get exactly the same sound. Every pianist has his or her own individual touch to which the piano will respond. Piano modules, on the other hand, have just 127 MIDI note on values, this number being a long way short of infinite. Every piano sounds different, too, whereas each piano module of a particular type will sound just the same as the next one off the production line. Additionally, there will be variations in timbre wherever you choose to listen to a particular piano, in which room and from which distance and angle. The same applies to microphone positions for recording.

Now that we are some years down the line in the development of electronic instruments that simulate real instruments, we should be knowledgeable enough to stop over-simplifying issues. From a design engineer's point of view it may seem that the loudness of a note, together with its timbre, is a simple function of the velocity with which the key is struck. Any good pianist will tell you that there is a lot more to it than that, and it doesn't take too much imagination to realise that the pianist's fingers don't just impart a velocity to a key, they impart an acceleration, and even a rate of change of acceleration. No MIDI controller attempts such subtlety yet. I have a Yamaha U1A upright piano at home which I use purely for practice and for developing new musical ideas. I find that the subtlety of tone available allows me to imagine the sounds of other instruments, something that I can't do with sampled piano sounds.

But real pianos have great disadvantages to match their considerable advantages. The first thing you notice about a real piano is that it's large and heavy and that it takes up a lot of space in your studio. Acoustic instruments are difficult to record in small rooms and unless you want to achieve the 'mic right next to the strings' sound, then you may only be able to get an inferior recording of what might be an excellent piano. Despite many attempts, I have never been able to get a pleasing recording of an upright piano, so I'd personally rule these out completely. And if you want to take your piano out of the recording studio and on stage, then you must be exceedingly rich or a complete nutcase. (In view of recent court proceedings and libel awards I'd like to place on record that I think Elton John falls into the former category rather than the latter!). For getting a good basic piano sound, and for on-stage use, a good quality piano module has a lot to commend it.

CHECK IT OUT

One trend I really like in electronic musical technology is the frequent provision of a demo song to show off what the instrument can do, given its head. Roland have allowed some of their top musicians to produce excellent material that you should hear before you do anything else. Of course, you can't expect a shop demonstrator to know every secret function on every piece of equipment on display so I'll tell you what to do here: hold down the two 'PART' buttons and switch on the unit, then press the upper of the two larger round buttons. The unit will cycle through several pieces that use practically its full range of piano sounds. If you have a keyboard in front of you, as you probably will, then you can run your fingers rapidly up and down and other people in the shop will think it's you that's playing! Before you start plink-plonking for real, it might be a good idea to restore the factory settings in their entirety so that you can audition Roland's idea of what the P55 should sound like rather than the previous customer's. Hold down the two 'INSTRUMENT' buttons, switch the power on and press the upper of the two larger round buttons again.

What you should hear now as you play is a bright, firm piano with maybe just a little too much reverb. Of course, you'll want to hear what the piano really sounds like, so you'll need to reduce the reverb to zero; this should expose any weaknesses or sampling artifacts. You'll find two arrow keys for the amount of reverb and you can easily get rid of it. The display will change as you make the adjustment to indicate the reverb value, and then change back to the program number when you release the key. Without the reverb, the sound is still impressive and you can be certain that when you add your own favourite brand of reverb, whether Alesis Quadraverb, Lexicon 480 or Great British Spring (a little joke for old timers!) that the result will be of a very professional quality. With any sampled sound, the potential problems you'll be looking out for are any signs of the looping that is necessary to extend the sound to a sufficient duration, and any discontinuities between adjacent keys as one sample changes to the next. Without any reverb, you can hear some looping in the P55, but you'll have to listen very closely. Discontinuities are hard to find too, and remember that real pianos change timbre stepwise across the keyboard anyway, since some notes have only one string, others two and others three. There is another discontinuity in a real piano: the uppermost notes don't have dampers, so as you play a rising scale you'll find that you reach a point where the notes don't stop when you raise your finger. Cleverly, this is imitated on the P55 and it sounds all the better for it. If you want to test another potential problem area, test the velocity response. On a real piano, the sound will get louder and brighter as you hit the key harder. If you were programming a sampler you would assign two or more samples to each note in different velocity zones to get the same effect. The trouble is it's very hard to get a convincing result. Roland have succeeded, though, and you'll have to listen very hard indeed to spot the joins. The unit isn't as responsive as a real piano, but with used with a 7-octave weighted keyboard, the majority of keyboard players should be entirely happy, even if some pianists notice something slightly lacking.

My favourite sound in the module is program 4, which Roland call an Acoustic Piano — as though a grand piano isn't. This is the sound I could imagine myself returning to time and time again whenever a piano was called for in my recordings. I'd say that to try the instrument out you should spend a lot of time with programs 1 and 4, because I feel these two are the P55's greatest strengths. There are other piano sounds, for when you don't want the refined tones of a concert or a boudoir grand, and these range from tasteful variations on a similar theme, to bright poppy and honky tonk sounds. For fans of Roland's Structured Adaptive Synthesis technique, there are two SA pianos as well. Songwriters will gain a lot of inspiration from the two 'piano + pad' programs which are particularly pleasant to the touch.

"As far as the piano sounds go, the Roland P55 is a serious instrument."

Non-piano sounds are perhaps not the P55's greatest strengths. For example, I'd use this module for its piano sounds in preference to many others, but I'd only be inclined to use the electric piano sounds if my sampler was tied up doing something else. Where the piano sounds make you want to linger and play on, each electric piano sound makes you want to press the 'up' button to see what the next one is like. The Rhodes sounds do indeed sound like Rhodes pianos in various states of adjustment and amplification, but the real thing (I have one) is so much more responsive. And why is there no Wurlitzer electric piano? For many people the Wurlitzer sound is the electric piano. Roland could have offered a selection of Wurlitzer programs instead of the adequate but ultimately unconvincing harpsichord, celeste and clavichord. After saying this, I must stress that I don't want to put you off, and I don't want you to be distracted from the real worth of this unit by these perfunctory additions.

EDITING

I'll bet that most P55s are used exactly as they came from the factory. Their owners will only ever employ the first 10 or 11 programs without ever editing a single parameter. These will be the sensible owners (if they reduce the level of P55's reverb slightly), because they will be getting 95% of the value with 5% of the effort. Of course, some will want to go that little bit better and spend some time achieving that final 5% of which the unit is capable. Be warned that you'll need the manual by you, a good light to see the grey on black lettering, and a sharply pointed finger to negotiate the tiny buttons. Let me tell you what it can do:

The Roland P55 can play up to three parts, or three separate instruments if you prefer, simultaneously within the budget of 28 voices. If you first press the Part button to select which part you wish to edit, you can select any of the instruments and change some useful parameters. It you wish to stack instruments, perhaps the most important parameter will be level, and then perhaps pan. Reverb amount, chorus amount, key shift (transposition) and MIDI channel are all directly available on the push buttons. When you have explored all of these possibilities you'll be ready to go onto the second set of parameters which are accessed by pressing the 'PARAM 1/PARAM 2/SYSTEM' button once. You'll need to look closely at the front panel legending to work it out, but once you have, you'll find among other things that the 'brilliance' of a part may be adjusted. This isn't just a treble control, it alters the sound in a way you wouldn't be able to using only EQ.

Next up is Sub Instrument, which allows instruments to be layered within each part; this includes level control, plus a fine pitch control. The Touch function is very useful, and I'd say essential on a module that is meant to imitate a piano. The manual shows graphically how touch values of 1-9 affect the unit's response to how the keys are pressed from gently to strongly. You can make a surprising difference to the sound of any electronic keyboard instrument by adjusting the touch sensitivity and this one allows a useful degree of control. Stretch tuning is also available, where the extremes of the keyboard can be pitched slightly lower and higher. In these days of digital tuners, we often think of tuning as a matter of simple mathematics, but there is a lot of scope for personal preference and stretch tuning can make the sound of a real or electronic instrument more pleasing and interesting to the ear. The last two functions available in this mode are sub instrument transpose and split point.

The third editing mode is for system level parameters which affect all three parts. These include matters such as tuning and an option to lower the pitch to the standards of the Baroque period, when concert A was thought to be a mere 415Hz compared to today's 440Hz. Five temperaments are available, in addition to the normal equal temperament, and the tonic key of each of the temperament can be specified. Here also you'll find a selection of reverb types, including rooms, halls, a plate and delays, plus nine chorus types just to round it all off. I'd definitely recommend using the chorus with the electric piano sounds — they always sound better with a bit of movement in the harmonics.

CONCLUSION

As far as the basic piano sounds go, the Roland P55 is a serious instrument, and you shouldn't think that just because it is small, relatively low priced, and has one of those inconvenient wart-on-a-string external power supplies, that it is somehow going to give an inferior sound. In fact, if you were a budding recording engineer and you had just miked up a real piano to give a sound like one of those from the P55, your studio manager would probably give you a pay rise! I often use the piano sounds on my Korg 01W/FD and the P55 is definitely superior to these in terms of tone and general usability. I don't like the fiddly buttons, nor the lack of a decent display, and many of the extra sounds are some way off being exciting, but overall this unit has my recommendation.

Further Information

P55 £469 inc VAT.

Roland UK Ltd, (Contact Details).