John Walker: Re-creating great performances

[Meteotrance]

the disclavier is a great piano from yamaha, but i think it's to stupid to attempt to recreate by computer the human feeling of big dude like Glenn Gould, think about doing the same for Hendrix or Django Reihart it's realy stupid.

by the way if a guy played midi data on today music the performance is reflect what he played, but only if is not try to cut and past the data ^^

[imaginaruis]

We are inside Glenn Gould's body...

[gadogado123]

Great product, bad "presenter". He should stay at the showroom

[radicalsystems]

i have the zenph reperformance of this music..its a sacd in surround the 1955 recording..whats odd is that in this video the looks to somethng similar to an application i have..which it pretty cheap..

[flugelmaniac]

brilliant invention,but to properly recreate

the original sound it will need the original

make and model of instrument the pianists used.............and these will have to be voiced etc in the same way they were, say in 1930. Also for greater

realism it will good to re-create the period sound of the old recording equipment............

Cortot on a Yamaha is just not nice!..........

it needs a 1930's Pleyel or Bechstein

concert grand, with properly voiced original hammers.

[flappospammo]

i always preferred the guitar

[wingin]

should appreciate his creativity :p

[johnny85er]

This guy is terrible

[loripiqoni]

This guy is way too much enthusiastic

[gew1105]

What a threat. First notation programs that use live samples of instruments being played and now this!

[jeremyhillaryboobphd]

this presenter is soooooo shit

hes like a used car salesman

n he laughs at his own jokes waaaay too much

with that annoying laugh

[electrourge]

OMG WOW

[reivilo]

Sales pitches are not allowed at TED... this guy is just wanting the people at TED you to buy this overpriced piano cause they are probably the only people who can afford it.

[curzmg]

I believe he said he works for Sony whereas the piano is manufactured and sold exclusively by Yamaha. Perhaps you should actually try to trust people; it is actually a brilliant device and as a sound engineer he is obviously very keen to tell you about it. The genius of the Diskclavier is immense.

[sparrow111260]

Superb!

[nemesisnick66]

AAAH GHOST PIANO!!...can it do other instruments to?

[prokofiev770]

Very cool technology, but no machine can swing. Particularly clear in the Art Tatum example. Kudos to the innovators of this technology though.

[reivilo]

sales gimmicks aren't allowed at ted?!?!?

[pookiehohn]

HOLY crap it even had his breathing in it if you listen closely. At first it was bugging me but then I realize that that was one of the things glen gould was famous for.

[reivilo]

sure that was not the presenter on the stage.

[pookiehohn]

Whoops! I didn't realize that. Thanks for pointing that out to me.

[jotedimmy]

I think that the breathing was the speaker breathing into his microphone...

[smartiboi]

the giddiness this guy displays actually makes watching this easier than some of the other ted presenters *cough* spencer wells *cough*

[Anicrit]

gdfbbcvbrg

[spankyquest]

wow, thats gay, u can only really appreciate this segment if u were actually at the TED convention. seriously, it was worthless posting it on here since we all have to listen to these recording filtered in low quality youtube coverted audio.

[TheWiseCommenter]

the concept of it is cool enough. deal with it.

[spankyquest]

ill deal with your face

[baronmorris]

get well soon, spanky. ;-)

[SchumannSC]

wow this feedback you are giving does nothing. the people who post this wont read it. the only people you're hurting is other commenters.. like yourself.. in a way, you're hurting yourself.

[sy1234]

When I first heard of MIDI, this is what I thought it could do. It's nice to see the ideas growing up..

[poiklpupoiklpu]

wow, that's incredible! i'm listening to art tatum now, and there's so much grain on that song at the end. this youtube video has it in better quality! does anyone know if they've released this remastered version of the song?

[RandalLeistikow]

Yes. On June 3, Sony released "Piano Starts Here", an album containing Zenph's re-performances of thirteen Tatum pieces. The hybrid SACD (for standard CD and SACD players) presents each piece in two formats: 5.0-channel surround, offering astonishing realism, and stereo binaural, designed for headphone listening to give you the experience that you're sitting on stage playing the piano during the live concert. You can buy the album by going to Zenph's homepage and clicking the "Store" link.

[ratholin]

It's impressive but it still sounded like a machine playing music. But the tech is really fun :D

[somnachardri]

i've tried mucking around with fourier transforms and things to try to analyse music- its a complete pig of a problem so much respect to the engineers who are doing this

[DeathByMullet]

It was cool to see how excited he got about the music.

[lorenrb]

that was cool!

[midbluegreen]

this man looks so dumb

[nestor2509]

Thats awesome, I love the idea.

[archangelhunter]

Does anyone else see how ironic it is to listen to this on Youtube?

Even if the quality of the sound were achieved, it would not be realized by anyone listening to it at the output quality of youtube audio...

[bluebeard2]

My thoughts exactly. At best, we're getting a new, cleaner recording.

It's about like how people watch ads for high definition television, on their standard definition, and they're all awestruck because water looks glittery. No, it's the same picture, because your television is standard definition.

[ColdIronChef]

I have to say that this is really interesting. I unfortunately lack the ear to appreciate the subtle differences in sound, so while I think it's really cool to have the ability to listen to a dead musician play the piano, I'm perfectly content with my boring mp3 player. Now if they can get modern musicians who are still alive to play on this piano and record the data instead of just using it to recreate old recordings, you could be able to improve the way we listen to music going forward.

[tmcthree]

Surely the sound also depends on the instrument being played and the artists connection with it.

[CrashGames2108]

How is this better than MIDI?

[jarduli]

hes so deaf

[freaks182]

i really like hte idea, it does sound kind of mechanical tho. but this would really help restore alot of really amazing performances that aren't very good quailty

[yeldarbo]

It's too bad they chose a piece by Bach to play because most of his music is extremely mechanical sounding to begin with - so hopefully it's just because it is a Bach piece.

[kev3d]

Yes but Beethoven is too moody and Mozart too Grandiose...Vivaldi perhaps? But Vivaldi is better as an ensemble, who would you pick? I think perhaps Tchaikovsky's Swan lake. Which to me is a very moving piece even if only on a Piano.

[Beachapeeater]

Something with some pizazz maybe...Mendelssohn's Rondo Capriciosso?

[IdleGod]

Thats pretty amazing actually. Take a crap recording from someone famous, digitize it, and re-create it.

[apocaRUFF]

Amazing :)

[VeritasEtLibertas82]

I don't like it at all. It even sounds mechanical. It's missing all the subtlety that requires a human.

[gusphraba]

Not sure if it works but theoretically it should show more of the human and less of the technical sound of the recording, so the opposite of what you said. If you base your opinion on this video, it's just a mono crappy YouTube video.

[VeritasEtLibertas82]

I'm not talking about the recording I'm talking about the technique.

[AuthenticPunkDance]

This is awesome. :)

[t3h3Lone]

People waste money for the weirdest purposes...

[TheFutureIsAtheist]

"People waste money for the weirdest purposes... "

ya they do, like donating money to a church

[mikezephyr]

zing!

[gusphraba]

Or billions on more nuclear warheads than you could ever use.

[albedoshader]

@TheFutureIsAtheist: It would be better to keep your “future atheist” agenda out of TED talks about non-religious topics. People also waste money for huge cars, unhealthy food, weapons and so on — so what?

[DerClunk]

Ridiculous, and creepy.

[irish202]

yea next

[SWinger7]

Radiohead next

[PeterZeeke]

radiohead? doing TEDtalks?

[Dassiswas]

great job. how about doing Black sabbath "paranoid" next? :D