Mike,

My band is often booked as a backup band for performers that come through Ohio and surrounding areas. Just 3 weeks ago, we were the band for the DooWop show that is touring the country while the show was in Cincinnati. You may have seen some of these performers on TV since a past concert was taped for broadcast to promote the show and sell DVD’s. Anyway, this particular show featured among others, Maurice Williams, The Edsels, The Eldorados, Little Peggy March, The Spaniels, the Skyliners and Daddy G and the Fifth Street Band.

Daddy G is a tenor (sax) player. His plane was late getting in so he didn’t make it to rehearsal before the show. He was to perform his own material but also supply the sax, (what is DooWop without a tenor honking away between verses?) for the other artists’ performances. Being the trouper that I am, I pulled up the Growl Sax on my Genesys Pro and proceeded to do a sax solo in Rama Lama Ding Dong and everyone on stage turned and looked at me as if to say “How’d you do that?”

Once Daddy G arrived and was warming up, I selected the Tenor 1 sound and started copying his licks. He came over and said he had never heard a keyboard that could actually sound like a real sax. Even when I was playing this sound along with Daddy G, I was surprised at how authentic the sound was.

To duplicate an acoustic instrument using the current technology of sample-based instruments effectively requires several things. A good sample set and the appropriate assortment of synth parameters to mold those samples into something useful. Something that the instrument can’t supply is the ability to play a sound with the proper articulation based on what the real acoustic instrument is capable of producing as well as playing in the range of the particular instrument, etc.

To me, most keyboard sax sounds are either far too sterile (clean) or have been surrounded by an artificial ‘breath’ sound or an LFO produced growl or buried in reverb beyond recognition. The sax sounds in the Genesys thankfully do not fall into any of those categories. Again, it is extremely important how the sound is played. Playing outside the register of the real instrument, or playing note runs that are not common to the real instrument, will only emphasize the fact that it is an imitation.

Just my two cents worth. I started out with a good fifty cents worth of comments, but I cut it down to the above. Although I do have to point out that an instrument's MIDI Implementation has nothing to do with how the instrument sounds. If you want to talk MIDI implementation though, please feel free, because there is not another arranger instrument out there that is as capable as the Genesys when it comes to MIDI, sequencing, great sounds and a real synth editor, etc.
(Sorry, I just added another cent's worth of comment there)

Dave