vintage keyboard sounds

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famous beagle

famous beagle

Well-known member
Hey y'all,

I'm more of a guitar player but like adding keys to my tunes. The sounds I like predominantly are the vintage sounds: rhodes, organs, wurlis, oberheim, etc. But I'd also need nice piano sounds.

Right now I have an EMU Vintage Keys module which has those sounds (except piano), but I just have a crappy 49-key controller that just I use for recording sometimes.

I'm wanting to get a full-size board to play live with, but I'm wondering which route I should take: a controller or a synth. I know the Vintage Keys module is pretty old, so would something like the Yamaha S08 probably have better sounds than the EMU?

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Yamaha-S08-Performance-Synth?sku=700827

Would I be better off getting a new synth and selling the Vintage Keys module?

Basically, I'm trying to find the cheapest way to get to having a full-size board with decent piano and vintage sounds.

Thanks!
 
famous beagle said:
I need this to be used live. Those are soft synths aren't they?

Would I need to take a laptop to the gig to make that work?
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Yes.

For live work, and a distant second place, I recommend the Nord Electro.
 
just wondering why the nord is a "distant" second? I don't own one, but I heard they have decent samples. I'm kinda in the same boat, play guitar, but use a keyboard in the studio and on stage, right now hauling a ensoniq zr76 at about 90 lbs its been a work horse, been thinking about getting the hammond xk-1, ever played around with this? it also has 7 other keys, pianos, etc
 
famous beagle said:
I know the Vintage Keys module is pretty old, so would something like the Yamaha S08 probably have better sounds than the EMU?
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Probably. It depends on a lot of stuff, mainly how you play. Also, Yamaha has a certain sound, and you either like it or dont. It is cold and sterile, which is not a bad thing.

Organ is a tough one because it is easy.:confused::D Any synth has a reasonable organ. The problem is that organ often sounds better dirty and flawed than it does clean and pure, if anything the synths are too good.

I have a ton of organs on my latest CD I am doing. I used A Korg X50, Roland JV1010 and Yamaha mm6. I barely used the Yamaha, the organs dont do it for me. The Roland has the best Cathedral Organs, the Korg has good BX3s. The Yamaha has the best Pianos, E. Pianos and Clavs, but it is limited in the organ dept.
 
DavidK said:
Probably. It depends on a lot of stuff, mainly how you play. Also, Yamaha has a certain sound, and you either like it or dont. It is cold and sterile, which is not a bad thing.

Organ is a tough one because it is easy.:confused::D Any synth has a reasonable organ. The problem is that organ often sounds better dirty and flawed than it does clean and pure, if anything the synths are too good.

I have a ton of organs on my latest CD I am doing. I used A Korg X50, Roland JV1010 and Yamaha mm6. I barely used the Yamaha, the organs dont do it for me. The Roland has the best Cathedral Organs, the Korg has good BX3s. The Yamaha has the best Pianos, E. Pianos and Clavs, but it is limited in the organ dept.
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Thanks for the info. I agree that it seems organs are the easiest to get decent.

Actually, elec. pianos (rhodes and wurlis mainly) are my favorite, so maybe the yamaha would be the ticket.
 
PC2 (or PC2R if you're going the rack route) with the Classic Keys ROM. It's what I use and it's very good. Nord may be good too but the Electro is limited to a few sounds--the Nord Stage promises more but it is a full sized keyboard with no rack option.
 
Having owned a Rhodes piano and used a B3 in the studio on numerous occasions perhaps I'm a little more tuned in to many keyboard's organ patches sounding very very fake.

I had a Hammond XK1 and I thought it sounded fake. I had a VK-1000 and I thought it sounded fake.

I think NI B4 sounds very very good.

Horses for courses, YMMV, etc.

/shrugs/
 
Supercreep said:
Having owned a Rhodes piano and used a B3 in the studio on numerous occasions perhaps I'm a little more tuned in to many keyboard's organ patches sounding very very fake.
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Yup. Same with me and violin patches.:D

I look at synth organ patches as a new instrument. I am not trying to emulate a classic organ, rather coming up with a new organ sound. The exception is pipe/church organs, where I know very well what to listen for and expect.
 
Supercreep said:
Because the two programs I mentioned previously kick the shit out of it, sound wise.
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:rolleyes: good one, hell I even laughed. kickin' the shit outta keyboard still doesn't answer my question...but thats cool.
 
Lectric_Lab said:
:rolleyes: good one, hell I even laughed. kickin' the shit outta keyboard still doesn't answer my question...but thats cool.
Click to expand...


I'm sorry - I thought you asked why I thought the Nord's sounds came in a distant second to NI B4 and Lounge Lizard.

Is there some meta-question I failed to answer?
 
Lectric_Lab said:
:rolleyes: good one, hell I even laughed. kickin' the shit outta keyboard still doesn't answer my question...but thats cool.
Click to expand...


I'm sorry - I thought you asked why I thought the Nord's sounds came in a distant second to NI B4 and Lounge Lizard.

Is there some meta-question I failed to answer?
 
Lectric_Lab said:
:rolleyes: good one, hell I even laughed. kickin' the shit outta keyboard still doesn't answer my question...but thats cool.
Click to expand...

I have the B4. Yes, it does sound very good. It also has a lot of features that an organist would dig. The main reason I dont use it more is that I dont work well with softsynths. I tend to work very quickly and have my hardware synths down cold. By the time I load a softsynth and find the right patch, I can already have the tune laid down.:D

Also, the B4 doesnt have pipe organs, which is what I gravitate to. My lil Roland JV1010 has a cathredal organ that sounds as good as any $$$ sample.For the one tune on my CD that I needed a B3-ish sound, I used my Korg because it was sitting in front of me.:D I dont know if it is a particularly "authentic" sound, but it got the job done.


For me, getting an authentic organ sound requires getting an authentic organ player.:D I am not, I am a decent keyboard player but a classical geek, I just cant get the vibe so I steer clear. My favorite organ solo ever is by George Duke on Zappa's "50-50". No amount of technology will do that, only George Duke could. If I could play like that, I would go after a more "authentic" sounding patch. Until then.....:D
 
Supercreep said:
I had a Hammond XK1 and I thought it sounded fake. I had a VK-1000 and I thought it sounded fake.
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Out of interest, did you use the built-in rotary simulator or an external one? Or a real one?

I'm currently using an XM-1 / Rotosphere combination and while it isn't perfect by any means, it works well enough for my purposes, which is sort of organ sound found in very early Genesis ("Looking for Someone", "Giant Hogweed" etc).

To get much better would require a real rotary speaker, and as David K says, a competent playing technique. That said, the only sound I have been utterly unable to approach in any way is the distorted bassline on 'Killer' by Van Der Graaf Generator.
 
jpmorris said:
Out of interest, did you use the built-in rotary simulator or an external one? Or a real one?

I'm currently using an XM-1 / Rotosphere combination and while it isn't perfect by any means, it works well enough for my purposes, which is sort of organ sound found in very early Genesis ("Looking for Someone", "Giant Hogweed" etc).

To get much better would require a real rotary speaker, and as David K says, a competent playing technique. That said, the only sound I have been utterly unable to approach in any way is the distorted bassline on 'Killer' by Van Der Graaf Generator.
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I've never used a real rotary speaker live.

I've used them in the studio frequently.


Motionsound makes some inexpensive rotary solutions with line level inputs.

Leslie simulations are usually very fake sounding. I must say that the B4 again sounds very very good. You can use the rotary simulation as a plugin as well.
 
David and JP, thanks, that's more what I was looking for, I'm by no means an "organ" player, I just fill in with it and try to use the feeling I have for dynamics, I like John Lord, and the player in late SRV's band. Supercreep, sorry I asked an ignorant question, but I don't use softsynths, never even loaded one up, or keyboard controller, just all hardware and looking for "vintage keyboard sounds". I was looking at the Hammond XK-1, and the MP 145, more interested in live performance feature than studio, plus the added keys, this is...if a laptop and s/w can get me a better sound live than a hardware set-up I am all ears...a double funtioning rotor sound leslie and speed control is what I'm looking for, the xk-1 is suppose to have this "built-in" I'm always leary of digital sampling, especially when a Hammond, in itself sounds fake. Thanks for the help guys.
 
Lectric_Lab said:
David and JP, thanks, that's more what I was looking for, I'm by no means an "organ" player, I just fill in with it and try to use the feeling I have for dynamics, I like John Lord, and the player in late SRV's band. I was looking at the Hammond XK-1, and the MP 145, more interested in live performance feature than studio, plus the added keys, this is... if a laptop and s/w can get me a better sound live than a hardware set-up I am all ears...a double funtioning rotor sound leslie and speed control is what I'm looking for, the xk-1 is suppose to have this "built-in" I'm always leary of digital sampling, especially when a Hammond, in itself sounds fake. Thanks for the help guys.
Click to expand...

The software route is undoubtedly cheaper in the short term, assuming you can get it to work - I gave up in the end. The big unanswered question is whether the software is still going to work in the future.

One of the most important factors in the Hammond equation is the rotary speaker. The simulator in the XK isn't great, and IMHO it's likely the source of most of Supercreep's grief with it. If you bypass it and use an external device it will probably sound worlds better.

I don't know what the state of the art is nowadays, but when I did the research a year or two ago, it seemed that the Rotosphere was about the best you could get in a pedal. It's all-analogue and uses a 300v valve circuit for the distortion. Digital modelling might well have improved since then, but at the time the next step above that was an actual rotary speaker, either a Leslie or a Motion Sound unit. They make a small one which is just the high-end - apparently many people disabled the rotary mechanism in the Leslie anyway.
Two caveats about the Rotosphere - IMHO it sounds best in mono, and you can't disable the bass rotor.

If anyone's interested, here are a couple of clips I recorded with the XM/Rotosphere combination:

(whole song, draft mix)
(augmented with synthesizer basslines)
(augmented and solo)
 
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