Trying to help my keyboard player.

We need help bad! I'm just a lowly guitar player trying to help my keyboard guy reach his full potential. I am a computer guy, so you'll see why I was leaning in a certain computer based direction. It's just not cutting it.

The band plays classic rock covers, and are having a heck of a time getting the keyboard sounds together. Hopefully some of you guys can help out here.

The goal is to have a solid group of typical classic sounds at our fingertips. Piano, electric piano, a few B3s, some typical classic synth lead and pads. We also have a need for some arpegiated synth, for some of the Who songs we

The Clavia Nord Electro seems to be a great companion keyboard to a stage piano. Gives you a lot of those secondary vintage sounds like Rhodes, Wurli, B3, etc. There's an upcoming new model called the Electro 3 that looks like a killer.

Look into the Muse Receptor if you want a rack unit that'll handle softsynths. This may be the exact thing you are looking for to sub for the laptop.

Seems like you're making it way tougher than it needs to be by bringing the laptop into it. There are all kinds of keyboards at all kinds of price ranges that give all the basic piano, organ, strings, horns, synth, pad sounds. Probably best to head down to a music store and try them out.

I'm primarily a guitar player but play guitar and keys in my band. I don't have nearly the knowledge most of the guys in here do, but my main keyboard is a Roland Juno D. It's entry level, but does everything you need pretty well. You can find them used for $300 - $400 and new for $599.

If you decide to stay the laptop route,look into Brainspawn Forte to host your softy's.

Checked out the Juno just now, good price but the organs, mainly B3 style seem a bit weak.

The Clavia seems like a good price, can anyone tell me if it has decent horns?

The Muse appears to be a hardware VST host, am I right? A bit $$, but i'm guessing it's more stable than the laptop.

We've tried a few different hosts at this point, the key seems to be changing patches quickly. So far the easiest was Keyrig, by using the controls on the M-Audio controller. We're a bit dissapointed by the horns, and the lack of arpegiator means we have to shell out to another program for a few songs, slowing us down. The organs were ok, and the synth seemed ok too.

Some great ideas guys, please keep them coming. I'm looking at anything and everything now!

Hi. Welcome to this thread!

The Clavia has no horns.

! The Clavia has no horns.

My bad.

Well piano and epiano is pretty much covered.

It's really down to organ, synth and horns that we need.

Korg X50?

Not bad for the price and it has a nice palette of sounds.

Yeah, It's pricey but probably worth it for playing multiple keyboard/synth parts simultaneously. I doubt you'd need it unless you want multiple sequences playing at once. Or if your keyboard player has 4 controllers and 8 arms.

Have a look at this little thing:

http://www.smproaudio.com/produkte/v-machines/v-machine.html

I've never used one, but the price is right and people seem to be digging it so far. I think it's only one part at a time but you can do splits (ie: bass on low keys organ on higher keys) and layers (piano mixed with pad, etc.). I think you can also set up all your patch volumes in the V-Machine host program, so no more live awkward volume adjustments.

I'm going to hit GC sometime this weekend and try the Juno and the Korg with the keyboard player, they look pretty close to what we need.

Anyone know if they are able to 'program' the arpegiator to customize the intervals? Am I describing that correctly?

Yeah, It's pricey but probably worth it for playing multiple keyboard/synth parts simultaneously. I doubt you'd need it unless you want multiple sequences playing at once. Or if your keyboard player has 4 controllers and 8 arms. Have a look at this little thing: http://www.smproaudio.com/produkte/v-machines/v-machine.html I've never used one, but the price is right and people seem to be digging it so far. I think it's only one part at a time but you can do splits (ie: bass on low keys organ on higher keys) and layers (piano mixed with pad, etc.). I think you can also set up all your patch volumes in the V-Machine host program, so no more live awkward volume adjustments.

This looks VERY promising!!! Thanks!!!

Precisely which model PSR does he have? There's a big difference between them, as most of them are cheap portable consumer (toy) keyboards.

The X50 that carbon111 suggested might work for you, and besides being a good value, it's very lightweight and portable with the Triton engine.

If you want high quality horns, listen to the PSR-S900, which inherited the Super Articulation voices from the Tyros 2. It also has more than 25 organs, including virtual drawbars. It's a ROMpler however, so I wouldn't suggest it for programming synth patches. A VA synth like the R3 or X-Station would be much better for those. If the horns aren't all that important and not used for solos, then the PSR-S900 is probably not worth the extra money compared to the X50 or other budget ROMplers. The Korg M50 is a new ROMpler derived from the M3, which has received a lot of interest recently. It's a bit expensive for a ROMpler, several times the price of the X50, for example.

The X50 has 250 User Arpeggio patterns for you to customize. You can set each step individually for the arp pattern, up to 48 steps. It has two arpeggiators that can run at the same time.

The PSR was only being used as a controller for the computer. It's a version > toy but

Help for a guitarist, a ROMpler = sampled sounds stored in ROM? As opposed to synthesized sounds, like FM, yes?

They're okay. For a while I was using an expression pedal to turn the rotating speaker sim off and on. That helped.

I've added a Roland VK-8M clonewheel module for more authentic B3 sounds, so I actually use the Juno and the VK-8M. The Juno can get you by if money is a concern though.

You can with the Juno. Not sure about the Korg.

Basically, yes, sampled waves stored in fixed ROM. It's a bit more complex than that because the sampled waves can be modified very extensively with filters, envelopes, and effects. And the waves can be simple sine/saw/square waves, not just sampled acoustic instruments. But there is a limit to what you can do with sampled waves to modulate each other compared to virtual analog synths that use more of an algorithm based approach.

The benefit of giving up some synthesis capability is that you get a much wider base of complex sounds as a starting point, and usually the ability to play a lot more of them at a time, higher polyphony and multi-timbres. Having multiple synths to serve different purposes is a common way to get the different kinds of synthesis. ROMplers are a good first choice because they offer such a wide library of built-in sounds and quite a large ability to alter them within the bounds of the engine. But you're stuck with the built-in waves as a starting point. With a sampler, you can add and change the wave set. And virtual analog synths are usually hybrids too, like the R3/Radias, that have a limited set of waves in ROM to extend their sounds beyond that easily done by basic waves.

So after taliking to the keyboard player, and passing on some of the great ideas you guys came up with we're going to try a few things.

1st is head to GC to try the two keyboards mentioned here.

2nd is to try the horn sounds that are built into the PSR keyboard. He says they sound better than the ones he's been using from Keyrig.

3rd is to plug away at the VSTs, and try Brainspawn.

I'm rooting for the VMachine, but I don't see a good way to try it, short of buying it and returning if it doesnt do what we need.

Any other suggestions?

Check over at the KVR forums ,do a search on the V machine. There are quite a few people over there that have it. It's the first time out of the gate for this product so there's a few bugs to be worked out

I'm surprised no one mentioned Reason. If your on a laptop...it's way more stable, pretty flexible and pretty easy to augment with sound libraries. I've used it live and it's actually pretty cool.

Don't have Reason 4 so can't comment on the arpeggiator.

Reason is typically a DAW, correct? We've tried using a DAW as a host, both Ableton and Sonar, they were way to heavy.

One of the Hosts we tried, Cantabile, was pretty stable, but we couldnt find a quick way to switch patches.

Keyrig seemed to make the PC crash, but it may not be related to Keyrig. The problems seemed to show up after about a month or so of use.

I still think VSTs are the way to do it, the sounds and options are limitless. There just doesnt seem to be an easy way to go quickly from B3 to synth to horns without touching the mouse.

Forte will do everything you need and more. It's very stable. I'm running it on a 2gh laptop(single core) with only 1 and1/2 gig of ram with no problems.

Reason is typically a DAW, correct? We've tried using a DAW as a host, both Ableton and Sonar, they were way to heavy.

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It's certainly not a DAW in the truest sense....and it's probably the least CPU intensive thing I can think of (that does not that there are not other options I have not considered).

 

Download the demo.....mess with it for a few hours and decide for yourself.....way back at Version 2....I pulled the demo and was at the store buying a full copy within a few hours. I ran it first on a works laptop for a function we did here using a 49 key and 88 key usb controller.

 

Each 'patch' was a different project which I tabbed between. Everything from some strings to organs and piano's. Worked great.

 

Of course, your mileage may vary.

I'll say again, if this is for live use, any solution that requires a computer seems like a bad solution to me.

You could get a used Vintage Keys synth from Roland or Classic Keys from Emu.

Expect to pay about $250. No horns, to my recollection, other than synth stabby horns, but they'll do in a pinch.