YES! now that's music (to me).
That's the kind of music in general that I play on the arranger.

Now to one very important issue...if you play that kind of music you must have solo voics that are superb...and I mean superb!

Or...the performance is crap.

My biggest complaint on all MFG's arrangers is that the quality of solo voices need to step up a few notches...I don't need 400 of them...just 20-30 absolutely top quality voices. When I play songs like that...and you hold note and the damm vibrato speed or timbe changes note to note...BAH! Sometimes I just turn the keyboard off and go watch TV.

If you are playing slow ballads with lots of feeling...the sound is everything.

Can you imagine that beautiful song they sang together...sung by 2 people with only average (or below) voice quality? Or an instrumental version by talented musicians but with instruments that had problems?

Is it so darn hard to get the kind of solo voice quality I am talking about? In an arranger?

Lee S.

Its all in there ....if you dig in to the OS and make custom sounds the way you like them....that's what an arranger will let you do. remember what may sound good to you will be the opposite to the next person for sure.

Donny,
I have been doing some custom sounds...but a lot of the time you need to get some quaity samples to load as the ones in the arranger are the ones with these quality issues.

When the samples themselves have the bad vibrato and timbres, note range --- note range...there is the root of the problem. You can not program your way out of these issues...you need new samples.

Both my T2 and the PA have some f these problems on some sounds.

So, I buy a TOTL arranger for near $4,000 and I have to do some of my own sounds????

Lee S.

Don't you mean $5000.00 with the new Audya just around the corner & yes you will always have to edit sounds, styles, etc ...thats why they have these tools in the keyboard....nothing comes perfect out of the box you have to make it YOURS many of these SA sounds have to played correctly also to make them sound right. Or Lee maybe a Workstation like the Motif would be a better way to go for your needs so you can CREATE sounds in a better way?

If you want solo sounds to be as effective as the real thing, you have to give up your left hand to the bender. Plain and simple.

Scoops, natural (non LFO or sampled) vibrato, big bend ups and downs (that's why a pedal doesn't work), timbral changes... All these things happen with a real player from note to note (and most of the really juicy stuff occurs at chord change boundaries, so there goes your LH). Unless you are willing to go to SMF's, I'm afraid that convincing solos will always be at least one step removed from reality...

I always prefer a non-vibrato sound for solos, as the speed of the vibrato changes depending on the tempo of the music (can't sample that!) and the emotional content of the line. A pitch strip allows you to do VERY convincing vibrato, as well as trills and note jumps without re-triggering the envelopes and sample starts. Trouble is, no arrangers have them yet.... I would have thought at least Korg would have (being on their WS's).

But analyze real players carefully, and you start to realize just how much of whet they play has at least SOME pitch variation. Sampled vibrato, even if done for every note, won't get you that. It's a nice dream, but it won't satisfy you unless you finally give up on that arranger chord cuing, IMO.

This is why Yamaha is so effective sound wise IF You Play the SA voices correctly as described....they are hard to beat.
But leave it up to the players talent otherwise if can all go horribly wrong and sound terrible .....then they blame the KB instead of themselves

So true.

Using a pedal to bend does get you a little closer, and even though I can only set it for up or down, it does let me bend at the chord changes at least in one direction.

I don't mind missing a few bends here and there ...sometimes these can be overdone, and make things sound less realistic, especially if the voice you are working with has other issues.

One of these issues that Yamaha SA/SA2 voices addressed was unrealistic attacks.

Now, using SA technology, and depending on if you play legato or not, the note will re-attack or play smoothly...that always frustrated me with the older style voices...even though they were great samples, the multiple attacks always made it sound so poor.

SA Guitars also give you pitch bending if played with the recommended technique...very cool, and also respond nicely to legato play....and you don't need to lose the left hand.

I still prefer the immediacy and flexibility of LH chords and RH melody, and even though SMF can be fairly pliant when using markers and other tricks, I just find the former more satisfying and more fun too.

Ian

All good points...but you kind of missed my point here.

Go to your arranger. pick a flute, oboe, violin, sax, trumpet, english horn, etc...etc..solo orch. voices, play only that sound SLOWLEY up and down the keybed...(try different velocities for different passes...like you would on a slow ballad, be sure to HOLD that note for a while...listen to the vibrato and timbre carefully note - note. Not all voices will have problems (seems like the ones I really like seem do)

You will find that things go well ...then OOPS, what the hell is that...it's a different timbre and/or a faster or slower vibrato ( by a lot). That's the issue.
The other night I was playing stranger on the shore for my wife, using the PA's tenor sax exp 1..all of a sudden my wife says 'What was that sound? it sounded like a duck honking, compared to the other notes'

A little variance is fine it adds to the realism, but not when it is a significant change. Who do they have QC test these things....the janitor?

If you play fast country or rock...you will probably never care about this.

Oh by the way...the Motif and the Korg M3 have some of the same problems.
My Kurzweil has VERY little. But, they don't make arrangers.

So the only answer today is 1) get great samples and make your own complete new sound 2) use a PC with top quality VSTi sample player (and spend big $$).

It's just sloppyness...you take a beautiful sax on the PA2...very nice except one or two samples they used do not match the others in timbre or vibrato..ruins the performane. But other Sax's are OK.
Same thing I found on the T2. They sample the sounds with vibrato to make the programming easier (less work). But that is a mistake. Yes, some say it is a more realistic vibrato if it is sampled...but if the speed is screwed up ...who cares!
Sometimes it's just they copy a sound from a previous keyboard and the problem right along with it.

When I play the Ketron Audya in a couple weeks we will see how it rates in this area.

It will be interesting to see how they did.

For now...I just don't use some of the sounds with issues...and some of those I like in general!

Lee S.

I think this thread has been hijacked...



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Bill in Dayton

Bill seems normal to me