mdb@aicchi.UUCP (Blackwell) (01/28/86)
I'm looking to get a synth and related equipment sometime late this year. (My 1986 christmas present to myself :-) I need some advice on what is available for my particular application. I have very little experience with current synths. I usually play piano... What I would like to do is to be able to write multi-intrument scores and be able to play them back. Since I am a pianist at heart, the keyboard/ controller *must* have velocity sensing. I also need to keep the overall cost down. Hopefully below $5k. Most of the <$2k synths I have seen at local stores do not have velocity sensing, and are limited to playing two 'instruments' at once, usually via a split keyboard which reduces the available range for the 'instrument'. I would like to be able to print out the scores in serveral formats (eg, piano, band, vocal). Scores should be enterable(?) by computer or keyboard. Hopefully some good editing should be available, too. Well... Is this all possible??? I also saw a very nice thing called a sampler, by akai. VERY nice sounds. Is this gadget worth the ~$1500 price tag? BTW: It seems no-one can do a good acoustic piano on a synth (or sampler). Why??? Thank you all in advance for any help you can supply. Mike Blackwell ihnp4!aicchi!mdb
ach@pucc-h (Stephen Uitti) (01/28/86)
In article <661@aicchi.UUCP> mdb@aicchi.UUCP (Blackwell) writes: > I'm looking to get a synth [...] need some advice [...] I usually > play piano... I would like to [...] write multi-intrument scores > [...] the keyboard/controller *must* have velocity sensing. [...] > below $5k. I'd go with an 88 key MIDI controller, Roland makes a good one. As a pianist, I liked it's feel in the store... Then get an Oberheim Xpander or Matrix-6 (a Matrix 12 is twice the voices, but I'm not sure your budget can withstand it.) All of these machines can do poliphony with arbitrary split/layering. The Xpander and Matrix-6 do 6 voices (the Xpander has no keyboard of it's own). The Matrix-12 does 12 voices (I just took delivery of one - it's awesome, even compared with my Prophet T8 and certainly my DX7). > I would like to be able to print out the scores in serveral formats > (eg, piano, band, vocal). Scores should be enterable(?) by computer or > keyboard. Hopefully some good editing should be available, too. Get a computer and some software. Don't buy this sight unseen! I've heard good reviews of Roland's MPS that runs on an IBM PC. I think it does what you want. You might be able to save yourself some money by using an IBM PC clone (made by someone other than IBM). Make sure that the system works for what you want to do before any commitments are made. I should stress that again: make sure the computer does what you want. I think there is similar software available for an apple, and probably a Mac. Look around. >Well... Is this all possible??? Sure it's possible. You could go even cheaper by getting a Sequential Circuits Six Track, or something. I've heard (but haven't verified myself) that a Casio CZ-101 can do 4 differant sounds at a time (and you can MIDI it to a real keyboard). The Casio can be had for ~$300. This might be acceptable if you don't care too to much what it sounds like, as long as it's "close" (for example, if you want a band to play it normally). >I also saw a very nice thing called a sampler, by akai. VERY nice sounds. >Is this gadget worth the ~$1500 price tag? I've seen it advertised (in Chicago) for just under $1000. It sounded pretty good. I'm not really into sampling machines, myself. The prophet 2000 sounded pretty good too. Often samplers are noisy, and therefore have difficulty with bells. The Akai has a Vibes patch that didn't seem to suffer from this. On the other hand, the sound system that it was played through wasn't the best. >BTW: It seems no-one can do a good acoustic piano on a synth (or sampler). >Why??? Piano's are incredibly complicated sounding. The harmonic structure varies considerably in time. The envelope is only approximated by ADSR, or the ADR, ADRR variations. The sounds are differant up and down the keyboard. Also, every piano is differant. One of the better piano's can be found on the Kurzwell. It's sort of a sampling machine for $13K. The Fairlight does pretty good too, but for $40K... The best piano I've heard on an "analog" synth is on the Matrix-12. Some people don't agree. Other people don't think that some pianos aren't good piano imitations. It can be very difficult to figure out how to record real pianos so that they sound OK on playback. The room the piano is in can have a real impact on the sound. Every detail is important. >Thank you all in advance for any help you can supply. > Mike Blackwell ihnp4!aicchi!mdb Stephen Uitti, Purdue University. ach@pucc-j
knudsen@ihwpt.UUCP (mike knudsen) (01/30/86)
> I'm looking to get a synth and related equipment sometime late this year. > (My 1986 christmas present to myself :-) I need some advice on what is > available for my particular application. I have very little experience > with current synths. I usually play piano... > > BTW: It seems no-one can do a good acoustic piano on a synth (or sampler). > Why??? You raise a lot of questions, worhty of pages of rambling answers. However, I'll just venture one personal opinion that I was thinking of posting. Namely: Never mind whether a given patch on a given synth sounds LIKE a piano. The REAL question is: Does piano music work well on it? I'm mostly a pianist, but on my new Korg DW-8000 (1985 Xmas present to myself, BTW) I use several different factory preset patches (with my own twiddlings) for different types of piano music, or to match the mood I'm in, even changing presets for different sections of one piece. Actually, I play lots of Harpsichord music as well. To do piano music, a synth voice must be: Clear thru-out the whole keyboard range (lots of e-piano patches get too muddy in the bass); Well-balanced enough that you can bring out a part in any part of the range by varying your touch Crisp on the attack, but not excessively so Not harsh or muddy when played in close chords Have the appropriate decay time (easy). Also, be aware that touch-sensitive synths allow this feature on patches where you wouldn't expect it -- strings, brass, even organs and voices. Plus, may presets named "Hard Rock Bass" and such often yield excellent piano/harpsichord sounds with a little tweaking. If you won't take my advice, marry a rich girl and buy a Kurzweil, or an electronic piano maybe (yech). mike k PS: You'll want a separate MIDI keyboard, with the full 7 octaves. Piano pieces on 5-octave keyboards can pose frustrating problems.
ward@chinet.UUCP (Ward Christensen) (01/30/86)
Keywords:music synthesizer Mike: so, you want a multi-instrument [technically called 'multi-timbre'] synthesizer, and want to be able to score and print? Well, so did/so I, and here's my experiences: I bought a Sequential Circuits Multi-Trak last July, and ordered Rolands MPU-401 and MIF-IPC hardware, and Music Processing System software. The Multi-Trak is nice because it can play 6 different instruments at once. It has a built-in sequencer (6 tracks, 4 songs, 1600 notes) so I could have something to "dink with" while awaiting my software. Meanwhile, I bought a portable PC to run the whole thing. I am now singing the blues, but having great difficulty PLAYING the blues! It turns out that the SCI M-T apparently doesn't "MIDI" well, thus I have been unable to figure how to do the "traditional" means of entering songs: playing one "part", then playing it back while adding more parts. Specifically, I've recorded a bass line, but cannot find a way to then play that back from MPS while adding a 3-part harmony. MPS is an awesome piece of software - interrupt driven graphics displays during playback, etc- but some REAL useful things, like being able to readily edit "program [instrument] changes", are lacking. If I select "bass" (patch # 47) on my M-T AFTER starting MPS recording, then it IS recorded, and will cause an instrument change on playback. However, it is "invisible", i.e. you have to remember to "carry along the blank measures at the front of the song", etc. I could go on forever, but its time to become philosophical: SEE IT, TRY IT, [or find someone who owns it] BEFORE YOU BUY IT. Don't spend almost $5000 and wind up with something that DOESN'T DO what you wanted. Also much of the software is copy protected - what a joke, I wouldn't DARE to use MPS for anything serious - one dropped bit, and you're waiting 2-3 weeks for a replacement. Its a $495 "video game". --- "You know, the more you know, the more you realize you don't know" /Bela Lubkin
jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) (01/30/86)
> BTW: It seems no-one can do a good acoustic piano on a synth (or sampler). > Why??? I am reluctant to post this, since I don't want to get into a "can you synthesize mechanical instruments electronically" debate, but a few weeks ago I saw a new, very amazing, instrument by Yamaha which uses FM synthesis to do a reasonably good synthesis of a number of keyboard instruments, including a piano. Now, "reasonably good" is putting it somewhat constrainedly, since in my opinion the sound produced was sufficiently close to a home upright piano that I don't think most people would consider it significantly different. What was really amazing, though, was that the keyboard *felt* and responded *exactly* like a piano -- not an approximation, exactly. I experimented with it a good bit to try to discover how effective a simulation of a piano was involved, and couldn't find anything anomalous. (One thing I didn't try and regretted later was striking one of the lower keys sharply, which on a conventional piano down in the lower octaves produces a particular sound, which I guess is due to an increase in the amplitude of the higher harmonics due to the hammer striking the long strings so close to the end of the string, but I don't know.) The weighting and action of the keys was identical to that of a good piano, with one exception, viz., that on many pianos if you depress the key slowly there is a point of detent near the bottom of the key's travel, such that the loudness of the note produced is more a function of how rapidly you push the key through the detent, rather than simple velocity at the time it reaches the bottom of the key's travel, or the force with which it is depressed. (The reason for this, at least in grand pianos, is that as you press the key, the key works a series of levers that throws the hammer upward toward the strings. However, near the bottom of the travel, there is a sort of "break" where the direct connection between the key and hammer releases, so that the hammer can fall back. If you push the key sufficiently slowly that it doesn't throw the hammer up against the string, then when it reaches the break point, the mechanism that releases the hammer to let it fall back seems to go through a sort of secondary motion that again has the effect of throwing the hammer up towards the strings again, at a different rate.) However, a lot of upright pianos I've encountered don't do this, and so I don't think it's an essential thing to simulate. Anyway, getting back to this instrument... it produced only sounds made by mechanical keyboards (several types of piano, harpsichord, and some sort of not particularly good organ), and cost around $3000, so unfortunately I didn't remember the model number. It did have a MIDI interface, though. It's worth looking at if you're mostly interested in a synthesizer that produces conventional keyboard instruments' sounds. [Incidentally, I also saw the allegedly immediate predecessor to this instrument, which was made by the same company, had a similar name, and looked like a piano. (This new instrument looked more like a conventional synthesizer.) This predecessor instrument sounded terrible, nothing at all like a piano, so they apparently made a lot of technological progress between the time the two instruments were released.] -- UUCP: Ofc: jer@peora.UUCP Home: jer@jerpc.CCC.UUCP CCC DNS: peora, pesnta US Mail: MS 795; CONCURRENT Computer Corp. SDC; (A Perkin-Elmer Company) 2486 Sand Lake Road, Orlando, FL 32809-7642 LOTD(4)=s