need a very hard attack on a piano

[colinjstewart]

I'm trying to get a very hard attack on a piano sound. An example is this one, from Parasite Eve:

http://www.sfu.ca/~cjs/peHardAttackPiano.mp3

Clearly it's not a natural piano, but I'm wondering if it's possible to achieve this with some sort of effect. None of my piano samples have an attack nearly this hard. Any ideas?

[zircon]

That doesn't play in my Winamp, for some reason. Doesn't even have a file length. Can you post an MP3 link or something?

Chances are, a "hard attack" just means that the key is being struck hard and the sample(s) have been edited to actually chop off a few MS of the waveform.

[colinjstewart]

Here's the fixed version. It was playing through Firefox when I tested it -- not sure what the problem was.

http://www.sfu.ca/~cjs/peHardAttackPiano.mp3

Here's what I've got, by comparison:

http://www.sfu.ca/~cjs/pianoChord.mp3

Not nearly as strong. I don't think it's going to be a matter of just cutting the waveform -- there's a really heavy pulse in the Parasite Eve one -- something else besides the piano, maybe?

[Rozovian]

Listen to the mid frequencies. The Eve sample doens't have nearly as much as yours do. EQ those down a little (maybe 5dB), and you should be able to raise the volume a bit. You may have to drop the highs too. Also, you might want to cut the low low lows (<50Hz) so they're not pushing the peaks.

And like zircon said, if you take your sample, open it upin an audio editor, cut some of the attack to get it to rise faster you get a faster attack. Listen to the perceived volume of the Eve sample, you should hear that the volume drops sooner than in yours. Try dropping the decay slider to around 200ms, and make sure the sustain slider isn't at 100%.

[Yoozer]

Use an equalizer to bring out the attack part more. Dip at 400 hz, boost at 4khz, throw a brick wall compressor over it. Some reverb with the lower frequencies removed (before the compression) adds some nice ambience, too.

edit: I typed this before the reply above here was made, I just hit reply later .

[colinjstewart]

Thanks. Here's what I've come up with:

http://www.sfu.ca/~cjs/pianoChord4.mp3

I maxed out the decay and lowered the sustain, then boosted at 4kHz, dropped it at 400 and compressed it. Much stronger.