The most authentic Rhodes?

[pethu]

I would be intereted in the .ext preset as well.

Great thread, thanks everyone for your contribution.

@pethu: could you please share your .ext preset with us ?

Obviously I know where to find samples of mine and Scarbee. I believe I can find an excellent example using MrRay73, where Guido could tell immediately it was MrRay, but frankly I was fooled at first into thinking it just might be real. I'll post some links when I get time later.

Oh yea, please do.

I don't know if it's really fit for public consumption, but since you ask so nicely... here you go. Maybe it's an illustration of what Steve Gray (or one of the other Sky members?) once so wisely said: "Keyboard players always need a bit more help."



Preview:

http://www.pethu.se/music/RhodesTest.mp3

First pass dry, the second with the FX chain. Note that the Autofilter "wahwah" effect present here is really only for those funky moments which takes me considerably more than a single take to get right.

And the .ext

http://www.pethu.se/music/IFX-MrRay73.ext

[learjeff]

IPlay4God, I don't hear what you're talking about in that clip, but perhaps I'm getting distracted by the percussion. I do know that when you thwack the high keys really hard, the pickups pick up the mechanical noise in the frame along with the note, a toneless thunk sound. Is that what you're talking about? My soundfont has a little of that in the upper register, but frankly I didn't sample lots of layers there because except for that mechanical noise (which I found unmusical -- admittedly a limited viewpoint), the tone doesn't change much at the high end.

Next time I'll sample more layers up there, especially since the notes are short they don't add much to the overall sample size.

Thaks for pointing this out, and please do help me pinpoint what it is you're looking for.

In the sampling process, we generally apply judgement, so the results are not objective. My soundfont is a fairly extreme example of this for sampling, since I was really building it for my own use and going for the sound I want from a Rhodes. The so-called 'physical modeled' ones are even more value laden since the models are heavily tweaked to produce pleasing results -- they're not really models of physical phenomena, they're more like abstract models of the results of physical phenomena. (True physical models would require massive processing, and even then would only be approximations of reality, and would still probably need to be carefully tweaked to get what we demand from them.)

Scarbee is much less affected by assumptions and value judgements, but even then there's judgement about things like what the highest velocity should be. A reasonable assumption would be to have the highest velocity match the same strike that would be required on a MIDI keyboard. In other words, play the Rhodes as hard as you'd play the MIDI keyboard to get velocity 127. However, I can tell you that, especially after a few beers, or when that damn guitarist is just too loud, we strike Rhodes keyboards far, far harder than we ever intentionally strike our MIDI keyboards. (Thanks to too many years of playing Rhodes, and a Rhodes sound on my MIDI keyboard that doesn't bark enough, and a few beers, I've broken quite a few keys on my MIDI keyboard too.) So, Scarbee barks nicely, but doesn't honk the way I sometimes play my Rhodes. Even my soundfont doesn't go all the way -- it's hard to get oneself to play that hard when wearing the white lab coat, so to speak. In the heat of battle, it's a different thing altogether.

Oh, I also found my fingers and especially thumbs would be very sore after a session of this kind of playing. I'm slowly getting over it; still breaking keys but rarely hurt my hands any more.

Note that in this respect, no MIDI keyboard with only 127 levels of velocity that's also expressive and playable in the ppp range can really duplicate what a real Rhodes can, from ppp to ffff. I'm talking about extremes here. It's reasonable that MIDI keyboard manufacturers don't try go that far in their realism; it would be cost-prohibitive. (Plus the keyboard would probably have to weigh a lot to take the abuse.)

Cheers
Jeff

[Mango]

http://www.jamalhartwell.com/MP3_Jams/Rhodes_Bark.mp3

I am of no help but i do love this clip! kinda D'angelo Vs. Madlib

[spookyricky]

I used them a lot in my trax!Lov them!listen on my website if you'd like !GreetZ

www.tecquilarecordings.be

[spookyricky]

I use them a lot in my trax!Rhodes always r sooooo sexy!Listen to my trax if you'd like on my site!GreetZ
www.tecquilarecordings.be

[waiting man]

I use them a lot in my trax!Rhodes always r sooooo sexy!Listen to my trax if you'd like on my site!GreetZ
www.tecquilarecordings.be

[Pantsdown666]

http://www.jamalhartwell.com/MP3_Jams/Rhodes_Bark.mp3

I am of no help but i do love this clip! kinda D'angelo Vs. Madlib

Ditto! Good description too

[Jafo]

Anyway, I'm spending my soundfont-technology time these days trying to create a program to make it a whole lot easier for other folks to create similar quality multisample soundfonts, so we can have a really good wurlitzer too, etc. The number of technical details to manage is mind-boggling, and it's better to get the computer to do the math and bookkeeping, isn't it?

A few notes:

1. Greg Sullivan's Wurlies are fantastic and free, but not up to your standards. I think Scarbee have a Wurly; it'd be pricy -- and completely worth it! (And there's always Mr. Tramp, right?)

2. The SFZ format is orders of magnitude more usable than SF2, and its only drawback is the associated fleet of files. However, most mega-conversion apps (ESC, Awave, Translator Free, etc.) will do both these days, so even that isn't an issue: just write the SFZ, and convert it to SF2, GIG, VSB, whatever.

[Pantsdown666]

The SFZ format is orders of magnitude more usable than SF2, and its only drawback is the associated fleet of files.

... and I'll just add lack of cross-platform compatibility

[WillieJenkins]

IPlay4God, I have your dvd set brother, and its helped my keyboard playing immensely. Thanks so much for blessing us with it

But onto your question, I think what you're looking for is the scarbee rhodes + the scarbee vkfx ( http://www.scarbee.com/products/vkfx/index.php )

The thing about the scarbee rhodes is that its sampled direct from the sound board, its bypassing all of the effects a "normal" rhodes would have, like tremelo and the preamp. The preamp is what gives it that "bark" you're looking for.

The VKFX module has modelled the preamp / tremelo sectino that you are looking for. Download the demo and check it out, crank up the preamp knob and you'll be BARKing in no time

peace,
-Eric

[learjeff]

Jafo: I do use Greg's wurlie. I find it better than MrTramp, but I'm still a big fan of Guido for all his great software. Yes, Scarbee's is no doubt excellent, but I'd like to see a free one show up of better quality than Greg's, nice as it is. And I wouldn't expect it to quite rival Scarbee. There's a big gap there, and that's what I'm aiming at.

And I do use sfz rather than soundfont, for simplicity, but with easy translation to soundfont for compatibility. So far, the features I plan to use are supported in both formats but sfz is far easier to manage and way quicker to update.

Willie, the Stage 73 does not have a preamp, it just has a passive low pass filter (called "bass boost", but it's really a bass cut) and volume control. Two pots and a capacitor, that's all it is. Just like typical electric guitar passive controls, but with a different cap.

The "bark" is caused by the extreme movement of the tine, which is very close to the pickup near the center of its swing but very far away at the ends, creating a kind of square wave on acid. Well, it doesn't look much like a square wave, but it kinda sounds like one. One of the great things about Rhodes is you can get great bark without any distortion in the analog chain. I usually play mine direct into a mixer, and never allow any clipping in the mixer. Of course, feed the same signal to a nice tube amp or preamp and it barks even sweeter, but that's another matter.

I agree that the scarbee effects sound excellent. I haven't used them but I've heard clips, and I'm intimately familiar with the sound of the Scarbee samples without effects. Those effects are on my xmas list, or maybe the next time they go on sale. There have been a couple great sales, but always when my piggy bank was empty.

The modeled preamp/tremolo is only found on the Suitcase Piano models. Yes, it adds a special sound, but isn't responsible for the bark. It may improve the bark on the scarbee samples by adding some distortion. I find that when you take a slightly distorted signal (like Scarbee's hottest samples -- "distorted" by the pickup itself) and add a little distortion with a different unit, it sounds a nicer than getting all the distortion from a single stage (FX unit or preamp).

Cheers
Jeff

[WillieJenkins]

learjeff,

Its clear you know rhodes's 100x more intimately then myself, so I can't dispute much of what you're saying, due to my own ignorance.

All I can say is that I know that with those effects, that sound that IPlay4God was looking for will "re-appear", I initially felt the same way about the scarbee rhodes when I got it, I couldn't get it to "bark" properly, but once I used the effects (the manual states how to set things up like you're "used" to hearing it) I could definitely hear more bark, and it even more closely emualted what I remember hearing on Herbie records etc.

Maybe Mr. Scarbee can show up once he gets back from vacation and explain more.

Thanks for the all the info tho, very cool stuff.

[mumpcake]

The SFZ format is orders of magnitude more usable than SF2, and its only drawback is the associated fleet of files.

... and I'll just add lack of cross-platform compatibility

You'll have to add a better drawback than that.

[pljones]

I think sfz support exists (as a "foreign format") on Macs... Be nice if a Mac developer could be bothered to write native support for it though. Given that the format consists of a plain text file plus associated samples (in whatever format you want to support - SFZ.dll only supports .wav and .ogg but that's a developer-choice), it's not exactly hard...

[l0gic0]

it really depends on the player how a rhodes will sound in the end !!!

for more realism try boogex for those distance sound like in the example from IPlay4God, rhodes can be amped too.