A smorgasbord of electric pianos - Sand, software and sound

I’m well into the process of sampling Genos/CSP electric pianos using 1010Music tangerine. I’ll have more to say about the process of sampling the EPs in a later post. Today’s blog is laden with enough detail about EP velocity levels to make your eyes roll. Suffice to say, one needs to know where the levels are in the source material before choosing exact velocities for sampling.

There are so many Genos EP voices that I produced a short list of my favorites:

  Genos/PSR/CSP electric pianos

  Voice            MSB/LSB/PC1 Velocity ranges
  ---------------- ----------- --------------------------------------
  Magnetics          104/0/5   1-75  76-104  105-115 116-127
  Electric Piano 1   0/119/5   1-75  76-106  106-127
  Electric Piano 2   0/122/5   1-60  61- 81   82-112 113-127
  SmoothTine         0/119/6   1-70  71-100  101-127
  SuitcaseSoft       104/7/5   1-46  47- 75   76- 99 100-118  119-127
  SuitcaseWarmth     104/14/5  1-46  47- 75   76- 99 100-118  119-127

I like the warm bell-like character of Magnetics. This voice have been around for ages — Tyros 4! Still, oldies can be goodies. Electric Piano 2 is unique to the CSP/CLP instruments and has a nice, unaggressive character.

I decided to sample: Magnetics, Electric Piano 2, and SuitcaseSoft. Those three voices give me a big enough spectrum of tone colors. I determined source voice velocity ranges by sending fixed velocity values to Genos/CSP and listening for velocity steps. I verified the velocity ranges against UVF meta-data when possible.

For comparison’s sake, I took a brief look at a few MODX voices to identify the waveforms in use (and typical velocity ranges). Here’s a mini-dump:

    MODX/Motif electric pianos

    Performance      Wave
    ---------------- ----
    Vintage 74        EP1  3 levels: Soft, Med, Hard
    R&B Soft          EP3  4 levels: Soft1, Soft2, Hard1, Hard2
    Early 70s         EP1  
    Soft Case         EP3  
    Crunchy Comp      EP3
    Vintage Case      EP3
    Hard Vintage      EP1
    Sweetness         EP1
    Case 75 Amp       EP4  5 levels: p, mp, mf, f, ff
    Dyno Chorus Rd    EP2  4 levels: Soft1, Soft2, Hard1, Hard2
    Dyno Straight MW  EP2
    E.Piano 1         EP3

After A/B testing, MODX EP4 is the same multi-sample as the Genos Suitcase, that is, comparing “Case 75 Amp” versus “SuitcaseSoft” with all effects and EQ turned off. Yamaha added the EP4 waveforms with Montage along with the new, detailed “Rd” and “Wr” multi-samples. Yamaha probably captured EP4 during the long gap between Motif XF and Montage, then tossed it into Montage along with the other new electric piano waveforms.

I also like the MODX Performance “Case 73 Soft”. It uses the newer Rhodes 73 waveforms:

    Part 1                  Part 2
    ----------------------  -------------------------
    Rd73 p         1 -  49  Rd KeyNoise p     1 -  84
    Rd73 mp       50 -  85  Rd KeyNoise mf   85 - 116
    Rd73 mf       86 - 108  Rd KeyNoise f   117 - 127
    Rd73 f       109 - 119  Rd KeyOff mf    Keyoff
    Rd73 ff      120 - 127  Rd KeyOff f     Keyoff
    Rd73 KeyOff  Keyoff     EP2 Soft1+      Keyoff
    Rd73 KeyOff  Keyoff     EP2 Hard1+      Keyoff
    EP2 Hard1+   Keyoff     Rd Soft Keyoff  Keyoff

Yamaha paid far more attention to mechanical noises in Montage/MODX. I’m in the process of punching up this Performance. [Yet another small distractions er, project.]

After a number of “lessons learned”, sampling EPs has progressed well. More to come about the actual process later.

For more about 1010Music tangerine, please see:

Check out my article about Yamaha piano voice programming.