janury01 2012

keyboardmag.com STAGE SKILLS · STUDIO SMARTS

A MUSIC PLAYER PUBLICATION01.2012

®

“The GAIA® is by far the warmest and fattest analog modeling synth out there. Newer synths can’t hold their own when compared against older vintage synths, but the GAIA matches up.”

Mitch “Catalyst” Cohn, Musical Director and Bass Player for Chris Brown (The F.A.M.E. Tour); previously with Lady Gaga, Beyoncè and Kanye West

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16 ELECTRONICA COVER STORY Th ink DJing is a hipster shortcut for the musically challenged? With huge ears, serious production chops, and an abiding love of analog synths and Jean Michel Jarre, Dutch sensation Sander Van Doorn will make you think again.

24 ROCK Keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen of indie heroes Wilco

relates how increased use of synthesizers opened up the band’s creativity on their new album

The Whole Love.

28 SONGWRITER By recording an old upright piano to analog tape,

Vanessa Carlton created an ethereal soundscape that’s a thousand miles from her early polished pop.

32 PLAYLIST What we’re listening to and why we like it.

34 JAZZ Emmet Cohen on fi ve ways to play like B-3 legend

Jimmy Smith.

40 IMPROVISATIONRenowned educator John Novello on soloing over

one chord.

44 CHORD DOCTOR Cliff ord Carter on voice leading.

10 Voices, stories, rigs, and tips from the Keyboard community.

24

KEYBOARD (ISSN 0730-0158) is p ublished monthly by NewBay Media, LLC 1111 Bayhill Drive, Suite 125, San Bruno, CA 94066. All material published in KEYBOARD is copyrighted © 2011 by NewBay Media. All rights reserved. Reproduction of material appearing in KEYBOARD is forbidden without permission. KEYBOARD is a registered trademark of NewBay Media. Periodicals Postage Paid at San Bruno, CA and at additional mailing offi ces. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to KEY-BOARD P.O. Box 9158, Lowell, MA 01853. Canada Post: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608. Canada Returns to be sent to Bleuchip International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2.

6 Keyboard 01.2012

NEW GEAR 14 Our monthly wrap-up of the keyboard and pro audio industries’ most signifi cant wares.

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COVER PHOTO BY MAGDABEDA.CA

JANUARY 2012CONTENTS

VAN DOORN—TAMARASUSA.COM, SMITH—KEYBOARD ARCHIVES, CARLTON—BRANTLEY GUTIERREZ

REVIEW

KNOW

CODA

46 THE ART OF SYNTH SOLOING An introduction to pitch-bending.

48 5 THINGS I’VE LEARNED Th e Asbury Jukes’ Jeff Kazee on pleasing the crowd.

50 DANCE Putting the freak in frequency shifting.

52 ROUNDTABLE Our team of experts on exotic sampling tricks.

54 BIZFan funding your musical project, part 2.

56 VIRTUAL BRASS We round up fi ve top sample libraries and software instruments: Arturia Brass 2, EastWest Hollywood Brass, Sonivox Broadway Big Band, Vienna Dimension Brass, and Vir2 Mojo. 70 SYNTHESIZER

John Bowen Synth Design Solaris.

76 SYNTHESIZER Radikal Technologies Accelerator.

80 KEYTAR Roland Lucina AX-09.

82 SOFTWARE PIANO Synthogy Ivory II Italian Grand and Upright Pianos.

84 APP Algoriddim Djay for iPad.

90 What could the price of a Synclavier buy you today?

What’s Online Right Now!

@ keyboardmag.com/january2011

A close look at Yamaha’s incredible new concert grand piano, the CFX.

Video interviews and panel discussions from MoogFest.

Camilla Grey and Leisha Hailey of Uh Huh Her.

7 01.2012 Keyboard

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8 Keyboard 01.2012

EDITOR: Stephen Fortner [email protected]

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VOL. 38, NO. 01 #430 JANUARY 2012

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Taxi Won’t Take You for a Ride.You may know Taxi as a membership-based A&R fi rm that critiques your music and possibly pitches it to career-makers. I’m skeptical of any service that off ers to help musicians “make it” in return for a fee, so I didn’t know what to expect when I attended Taxi’s free, annual “Road Rally” convention last November. Tony Robbins-style pep talks? Okay, maybe that was ten percent of it, but 90 percent was the most focused, specifi c, high-quality advice that I’ve ever seen disbursed in a seminar format. Photo highlights from the weekend are on the facing page.

Th rough three days of clinics, the most re-curring theme was targeting: Know what you’re good at, who you’re trying to impress (label rep, ad agency music supervisor, fi lm director, etc.), and what makes that person’s life easier. Panelist after panelist—all successful musi-cians, composers, and those who hire them—gave specifi c analyses of what worked and what didn’t. For example, it’s one thing to hear a TV

composer say, “Your cue should accentu-ate hit points in the scene without being too overt,” but another entirely for the guy to open his DAW, roll the scene, and give concrete examples of too overt, not overt enough, and just right.

I almost never come away from anything like this even remotely impressed, let alone enough to write an editor’s letter about it. While no single service is a magic bullet of musical success, I now believe that for anyone who starts with a baseline amount of motivation and talent, a year in Taxi and one visit to Road Rally will do more for you than ten NAMM shows worth of schmoozing in the Anaheim Hilton.

Editor’s Note

Stephen FortnerEditor

The First Time I ____________.Played a Hammond B-3

John MedeskiJohn’s fi rst brush with tonewheels and drawbars came during a

high school visit to the house of a rock-playing friend. A committed pianist at the time, the future Hammond

wizard wasn’t immediately won over—but that changed during his fi rst year at conserva-

tory. “During a jam session at the recital hall, I found this B-3 under a cover and

started experimenting with it,” he says. “It was an amazing experience. I

started treating it as a vehicle for sound right away, testing out the

low notes and watching how the tubes reacted. Something clicked that

day. The instrument was like an orches-tra unto itself. All the possibilities became clear.” | mmw.net | Michael Gallant

VOICES FROM THE KEYBOARD COMMUNITYTALK

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10 Keyboard 01.2012

Connecting iOS synths to MIDI hardware is so magical, I got an original Line 6 MIDI Mobilizer back when there were only three compatible apps. When Apple released iOS 4.3 with CoreMIDI, developers started programming for it. There are now three Mobilizer-style CoreMIDI interfaces: the MIDI Mobilizer II, the IK Multimedia iRig MIDI, and the Yamaha i-MX1. Each has two 2.5mm TRS jacks that connect to breakout MIDI cables. Insert a 2.5mm TRS audio cable instead,and you can connect two iOS devices directly. That lets you layer sounds, add another bank of controllers or keys, or use randomizer apps like Amos to control your iOS synths. In the photo, Little MIDI Machine on my iPad is triggering 50in1 Piano on my iPod Touch. David Battino

Key SecretsUnexpected Features of Your Gear

“Taxi’s critiques give you hard-to-hear but valuable advice about how your music is or isn’t meeting the needs of the market. Th en, their connections can get your foot in the door,” explained keyboard-based songwriter Alyse Black, who positively owned the room at the nightly open mic and who we expect you’ll be hearing a lot more from soon. “Yes, music is about art, but sync licensing and A&R is about the intersection of art and commerce, and this is where a discriminating ear gives Taxi its credibility.”

THE HANG

11 01.2012 Keyboard

1. Composer Kevin Kiner scores a scene from CSI: Miami in real time. 2. Roland’s SPD-SX, one of many new goodies on display. 3. You know it’s a great crowd when a Steely Dan jam breaks out and everyone knows the parts cold! 4. Surprisingly good $479 U47 clone from Gauge Mics. 5. Production music guru David Trotter takes questions. 6. Alyse Black wows the crowd at open mic.

1.

2.

3.

6.

5.

4.

Scenes from Taxi Road Rally 2011

12 Keyboard 01.2012

To catch up on previous episodes of the Packrat and his

time-traveling keytar, visit keyboardmag.com/packrat.

Gear that gets audio or MIDI in and out of your iPhone or iPad is popping up faster than Bootsy Collins sightings at NAMM—so much so that we missed some in last month’s roundup.

1.

iForgotDEPT. OF CORRECTIONS

TASCAM iXZPlug in a mic, guitar, or bass into the XLR combo jack to interact with the latest amp modeling, recording, and DJ apps. For a keyboard, either use a direct box and the XLR in, or use the 1/4" in and just keep the gain thumbwheel down. There’s also a mini head-phone out and phantom power for condenser mics. The iXZ feeds audio to your iOS device through its 1/8" input. $69.99 list | $49.99 street | tascam.com

Yamaha i-MX1Connects any MIDI device to any CoreMIDI-compatible iOS app, letting you play and control the apps sound using a physical keyboard or other interface. Dedicated apps let you control Yamaha synths, too. $110 list | $69.99 street | yamaha.com

Apogee MicWe tried this ultra-compact USB condenser mic at Taxi Road Rally (see page 11) and were stunned by its pristine sound quality—Mic han-dles A-to-D conversion onboard. It’s plug-and-play via an included cable to your iOS device’s dock connector—we saw it fi re up im-mediately with GarageBand on an iPad 2. A three-color LED monitors the adjustable input level. $TBD | apogeedigital.com

Line 6 Mobile InThough targeted at guitarists who prefer the Pod over the IK fl avor of amp modeling, two things make Mobile In good for keyboardists and DJs: an 1/8" TRS stereo line-level in next to the guitar jack, and Core-Audio compatibility to work with a wide range of apps. As with the Apo-gee Mic, A-to-D conver-sion is onboard and you plug into the 30-pin dock connector. $99.99 list | $79.99 street | line6.com

History in the making.

withwithwithwithwithwithwithhwwithwithwithwithwithwithiwi thwiththhwithwithwitwwithwithwithwithwithi thwittti thwiththi thi thwithwithhwithwii thwithi

Tempest is an analog drum machine, the first full collaboration between legendary instrument designers Dave Smith and Roger Linn. If “analog drum machine” conjures up images of the pre-programmed, set-and-forget beat boxes of the past, rest assured: Tempest is nothing of the sort. Its innovative, performance-oriented operating system gives you an extraordinary level of control to create, edit, arrange, and manipulate beats in real time as they play. It is a revolutionary new musical instrument.

To see and hear what Tempest is really about, visit www.davesmithinstruments.com.

Tempest. Made to be played.

BY LORI KENNEDY AND STEPHEN FORTNER

14 Keyboard 01.2012

NEUMANN TLM-102 WHAT Large-diaphragm condenser mic. WITH Transformerless design for uncolored sound. Cardioid pickup pattern. Ideal for vocals but handles loud sources up to 144dB. WHY Don’t we all want a little Neumann in our studios? $1,058 | neumann.com

KAWAI CL-26WHAT Home digital piano. WITHHarmonic imaging sound. Graded hammer action. Polyphony of 96 notes. Built in 30W speaker system.WHY Kawai is underrated, which means they try harder.$1,099 direct | kawaius.com

iZOTOPE OZONE 5WHAT Comprehensive audio mastering software. WITH Enhanced DSP. Updated interface. Multiple visually-oriented processors. WHY Whether you’re desktop mastering or cleaning up sound for picture, it’s the closest thing we’ve seen to magic “sound better” software. $TBD| izotope.com

AVID PRO TOOLS 10WHAT Major update to the entire Pro Tools family. WITH Clip gain for easy level-matching. Multiple audio formats and bit depths within a session. New channel strip plug-in. Native or DSP-powered. HDX cards offer fi ve times more muscle than HD Accel. WHY Because the software is the industry standard, and the HDX cards, well . . . because you can. Host-based software: $699 | HDX systems: starting at $9,999 | Visit website for upgrade pricing | avid.com

NEW GEAR

15 01.2012 Keyboard

CHICK’S MARK VWHAT Chick Corea’s Rhodes Mark V electric piano for Yamaha Motif XF. WITH Twelve velocity layers and 400MB of unlooped samples of Corea’s customized Mark V. WHY If you have a Motif XF with Flash memory installed, you can channel Chick. $129 direct | motifator.com

FOCUSRITE SCARLETT 2i2WHAT Two-in, two-out USB recording interface. WITH Combo jacks to handle mics, guitars, or line level. Direct monitoring for zero latency. Scarlett plug-in suite. Does 96kHz. WHY Because two channels are all you need but you want the audio quality of a higher-end multichannel interface.$199.99 | focusrite.com

MOOG LADDER FILTERWHAT Bob Moog’s original fi lter design in a 500-series module. WITH Its own envelope. Two- and four-pole modes, highpass or lowpass. Can self-oscillate. WHY Adds serious synth cred to the normally recording-oriented “lunchbox” format. $849 | moogmusic.com

ARTURIA OBERHEIM SEM VWHAT The next best thing to Tom Oberheim’s hardware re-issue of the legendary analog synth module. WITH The architecture of the vintage SEM, only polyphonic and eight-part multitimbral. Oh, and there’s a modulation matrix. WHY It’s long overdue, and you know Arturia’s gonna do it right. $249 | arturia.com

All prices are manufacturer’s suggested retail (list) unless otherwise noted. Follow keyboardmag.com/news and @keyboardmag on Twitter for up-to-the-minute gear news.

ELECTRONICA » ROCK » SONGWRITER » PLAYLIST

LIKE MANY OF YOU, THIS WRITER IS AN ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC IMMIGRANT, not a native. If your defi nition of “electronic music” begins with Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, and Jean Michel Jarre, it’s easy to hear the four-on-the-fl oor beats and see the DJ-centric stages of EDM and wonder what all the fuss is about. Then, you discover an artist whose sense of melody, arrangement, and counterpoint is excep-tional. Just beneath the rhythmic uniformity that keeps club-goers dancing spans a landscape of ever-evolving musical motifs and synth sounds, and you fi nd yourself listening for every change. Such an artist is Sander Van Doorn, and such an album is Eleve11. To the EDM faithful, Van Doorn has become a demigod on par with the likes of Carl Cox and Tiesto, and what do you know—electronic music means the same thing to him as it does to us.

Musicianship that Goes to Eleve11BY STEPHEN FORTNER

SANDER VAN DOORN

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I’ve heard that what gives one credibility on the DJ circuit seems to have fl ipped on its head from ten or 15 years ago. What does that mean?Ten or so years ago, if you wanted to be taken seri-ously as an electronic music producer, you had to spin—you had to show up at the clubs and play other people’s music. Now, it seems that if you want to be taken seriously as a DJ, you have to produce your own tracks, know your way around a DAW, and know your way around some analog synths. Th ese days it’s hard to be a big-name DJ just being a DJ. Obviously there are examples of that with DJs who are phenomenal with their technique and their showmanship. But these days, you have to produce at least some of your own music. It’s your business card and your promotional tool. For me, it works out really well because I started out as a producer, and being a DJ now works in my favor. But, yes, there defi nitely has been a shift.

Can you tell us about the production behind a couple of your favorite tracks on Dusk Till Doorn—any sounds you think people might be surprised to know how you created.Dusk Till Doorn was a compilation album, so it was all based on short-listing the 80 tracks I’d collected to around 32 tracks on two CDs. I did use a few of my own tracks, one from Purple Haze. [Th is refers to an alternate stage name under which Sander has spun and done remixes, not to the Jimi Hendrix song. –Ed.] I used an odd sample of a choir and actually cut a small piece out of that, loaded it, opened Logic, accessed the EXS24 sampler, and made an arcing rhythm under that. “Daddyrock” is on that compila-tion as well. Th at was a really cool track. I used the Access Virus TI layered with the Dave Smith Poly Evolver for the lead sound. I like to layer synths, so I’ll use one patch from the Virus TI, and on top of that I’ve got a more atmospheric synth—more warmth and complexity from the Evolver. I also made one track that was specifi c for Dusk Till Doorn as well. It’s called “Overfl ow.” Th at’s a more tech-based track where I worked towards a pretty tech-y rhythm, and I used Logic for that.

Is Logic your preferred platform for music creation?Defi nitely. In the studio I still use Logic 8 because I’m always a bit afraid of stuff going wrong when I upgrade. On the laptop I use Logic 9, and that’s a really cool platform. I do like to use a lot of hardware synths. I use the Poly Evolver a lot—the keyboard version. It’s unbelievable. I really like the distortion function. I made two tracks—one is called “Riff ”—using that synth. It’s such a unique sound. It’s unbelievable. It’s very fun to work with as well. I’ve also got a Moog Voyager

for the more distinctive bass line sounds, the Virus C, the Virus TI, and some smaller synths. It’s a really workable studio platform.

What about Ableton Live? I think Ableton is a cool platform, especially to get into music producing. Personally I use it for doing DJ sets, and that’s pretty much it. I prefer using Logic for creating my own music—I think it has more possibilities—but I think Ableton is a simpler way of learning how to use sounds. It’s particularly cool to make remixes in Ableton.

You mentioned the Virus, which is a staple among dance music producers. Which one do you use more? I use the TI2—the new one. Personally I think the sound isn’t as complex and fat as the older Virus C. It’s a little bit thinner, so for some tracks I prefer the Virus C. In the studio it doesn’t matter as much

because I’m used to working with MIDI and layer-ing things, and that synthesizer [the TI2] is just very easy to use. It’s a brilliant setup, the Virus TI2, but the sound is defi nitely diff erent. I’ve had it now for about eight months and it’s brilliant—it has a lot of presets that you can really build on.

It seems like with the Virus B and the C they were going for more of a straight virtual ana-log synth. It was before real analog synths like the Prophet ’08 had really come back.Yeah. Th at’s also what I like about the Evolver—it combines digital and analog oscillators and it’s capable of really complex sounds. Sometimes it’s such a distinctive sound that it’s “stubborn”—it can be hard to make it your own. Th e Virus C, on the other hand, is a very straightforward platform but still it has more complexity than the TI2. You’ve got the “analog” function, but sometimes that just feels like you’re adding bass, to be honest. I think that

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why it’s so popular, though, is because of the whole software integration function—you can automate it in your DAW like any other plug-in.

What are some of your favorite soft synths?I like to work in Spectrasonics Trilian. It’s more sample-based, but it’s got really cool sounds, and combined with some plug-ins from Logic, you can make really fat bass lines. I spend a lot of time creating bass lines. Omnisphere is nice for atmospheric sounds. I use [Native Instruments] Massive a bit. I still use Rob Papen Predator a lot—it’s phenomenal. It’s a more woody kind of sound, very distinctive. Th ose are defi nitely my preferred software synths.

What are some of your musical infl uences or heroes that might surprise your fans?Moby has always been a big inspiration. I get a lot of inspiration from listening to punk and to

bands like Radiohead and Sigur Ros. Th ey’re an Icelandic band. Th ey kind of got discovered by Th om Yorke of Radiohead, and they have a bril-liant sound. Th ere’s a lot of feel that goes into it. It’s good to listen to those kind of tracks and try to translate them into dance using dissonant chords. You’re using the keyboard the “wrong” way, and you get really cool sounds with that. Th at’s usually the basis for a lot of my tracks. I like to use melody, but in a diff erent way.

Can you elaborate on hearing a pop melody and then translating it into an electronic dance track? For instance, the fi rst track from my album Su-pernaturalistic is called “Look Inside Your Head,” and the whole inspiration behind that was the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” It’s completely dif-ferent, but you hear this “feeling,” and then you play the melody and you try to capture the same

atmosphere using a diff erent melody, perhaps pitch-ing it up, and basically creating a whole new track around that. Th e end result is something completely diff erent in terms of melody and chords, but it con-veys the same emotion and feel. It really works.

What are some cliché sounds in dance music that you wish people would just stop using?You had this whole era—especially with trance mu-sic—where you had Roland JP-8000 string lines. Th e synth is brilliant, but I’d like to see people use it in a diff erent way. It sounded very unique, but all of the sudden this huge string kind of sound that used that “SuperSaw” waveform, detuned a lot, was popping up everywhere. It’s time to say goodbye to those kinds of sounds, to be honest.

Speaking of detuning, there was the “Hoover” patch. . . .Th e Hoover! [Laughs.] Actually, the Hoover-type S

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patches they use these days have a little more freaky, dirty, Dutch kind of sound. It actually sounds very cool and fresh again, but the old use—that doesn’t work for me anymore. I per-sonally like very woody sounds—percussion-like sounds as stabs or as lead sounds. For instance, with the “Riff ” track, the sound I made with the Poly Evolver has a very percussive sense to it. Th at’s my preferred tone. Evolvers are just phe-nomenal at those woody kinds of sounds.

Let’s talk about some tracks from Eleve11. At the beginning of “Love Is Darkness,” what was used to generate the organ-like sound that plays the opening motif? How about the more detuned trance riff later on?Th e organ-like synth is a layered combination of a detuned Virus C sawtooth and a low, semi-stereo pulse synth from Logic’s ES1 soft synth. Th e riff was a triple-layered stab from the Virus TI2.

Before anything comes in that’d identify that track as “dance music,” rock drums anchor the intro. Between about 1:15 and 2:45, it almost sounds like ’80s new wave—Missing Persons or somebody.Th e track originally was supposed to be a new Pur-ple Haze track, but when I changed some electronic synths into guitar sounds it became more rock, so that’s why I decided to change the drums to a more band-like rhythm. Th en, with the fi nishing touch of [vocalist] Carol Lee, who comes from a rock back-ground—she’s part of the Dutch indie band Bettie Serveert—the track kind of produced itself.

Th e melodic hook of “Koko” is eventually played by a typical stacked sawtooth, but at fi rst, it’s orchestral strings. Can you speak in general about bringing organic sounds into an EDM context? Th e melody of “Koko” actually consists of about

12 layers of sounds varying from a midrange vio-lin, a high range cello, a midrange dance piano, about three synths, a low pulse synth for a few chords, and of course the whistle that I recorded myself using a sampler. I feel that adding organic sounds to an EDM track gives it more warmth and dimension. I will be doing a lot more experi-menting with that in the future.

What was the source of the piano sound at the beginning of “Believe,” and what was used for that angelic-sounding processing on the background vocals?Th e piano was a combination of an orchestral piano and a dance piano, both from EXS24 in Logic, and I just played in the chords. I used a short reverb to add more warmth and then did some additional EQing. On the vocals, I side-chained two reverbs and a delay, each one on a diff erent frequency and diff erent pan position, and each with a diff erent decay setting.

I love the Tangerine Dream-like intro to “Nano.” How was all that counterpoint built up? Th e starting sound of “Nano” consists of a Virus TI2 arpeggio with a lot of reverb, in combination with a high-pitched FM synth from the TI2, with a slow at-tack and a guitar in the background. Th e main synth later on comes out of Spectrasonics Omnisphere—I think the patch is “Euro Synth”—in combination with a sequencer from the Virus TI2.

Th ere’s also a lot more collaboration with vocalists on Eleve11 than I’m used to from house or trance. . . .For me, the Eleve11 album created a platform to experiment a lot more with song-based tracks, us-ing both male and female vocals. An “artist album” is good for that because, in my opinion, it needs to stay interesting from start to fi nish and needs to work in whatever environment where you might play it. I’ve also discovered the added potential of vocals creating a counter-melody that I sometimes didn’t even imagine was possible on top of the existing chords—that gives me extra inspiration to take the track a step further. For example, the vocals of “Love Is Darkness” gave me the idea for the big lead stab in the break. Before the vocals were added, I didn’t even have a lead.

I also notice that though there’s a little bit of ducking the rest of the mix around the kick drum—“Timezone,” for example—you seem not to overuse this technique. Is that conscious?Absolutely. Also, sometimes I feel that there’s an obsession with some producers, pumping up the volume of their tracks to the absolute maximum. Th e problem you have there is that you lose every bit of groove the track is supposed to have and end up with a standard “kick-noise-kick-noise” rhythm.

How much deviating from the usual “club” song form can one get away with on an artist album? For Eleve11, I made a “no-beat” intro and outro for almost every track because the album would lose its fl ow otherwise. Of course we’re also releasing the singles separately, with beats, so DJs can mix and beat-match them in their sets. Th e standard structure of an EDM track originates from a practical standpoint: Most modern producers are also DJs, and therefore build a track in a way that makes it mixable and something that’ll work in a club. However, you do see more and more produc-ers removing the intro and outro beats if a track becomes more interesting because of that. You can still get good segues to and from other tracks if you use, for example an arpeggio-based synth

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22 Keyboard 01.2012

phrase that has a rhythm of its own—like the way “Nano” or “Eagles” starts.

Are there meaningful sonic diff erences be-tween all the genres that have cropped up in dance music—techno, electro, trance, house—or is it more cultural?It’s funny how you picked those four distinct styles, because “progressive” is already a sub-genre between house and trance. Th ere’s tech-house and deep house, and dub house is kind of the new thing right now. . . . So, techno is really rhythm-based—usually faster than the other styles. Th e bass is lowered a lot, but it’s about creating this rhythm that feels good looped, and you can keep on dancing to it. You can listen to it all night. Th at’s what I like about techno. Electro is very freakish these days. Th ere are a lot of uses of small sounds repeated, but changing subtly—it’s almost nervewracking.

Trance is a lot more about distinctive melo-dies. It’s a bit calmer, but it’s still a little bit fast. So there’s defi nitely a big diff erence, with trance being a lot more melodic, symphonic—there’s a lot more feel that goes into it. But then again, these days, styles are colliding more and more, which I think is a very good development. House is getting more melodic. Th ere are a lot more infl uences that go into trance these days, and techno has changed a lot throughout the years as well—it kind of went from those very percussive jungle sounds to more minimalistic infl uences. It’s interesting how all these styles develop, come together, and then diverge again.

With all that stylistic fl ux going on, what would you like to do that you think hasn’t been done before?Th at’s a diffi cult question because within music, there’s always a general sense of hitting a bound-ary, of “What can we do that’s more than just this?” I think a lot of infl uences come from key-board and software manufacturers, in fact. Th ey come up with new sounds and new possibilities. For instance, Logic has new features where you can do really freaky stuff with the pitch control and stretch functions. Th en all of a sudden, because a function like that exists, a whole new style evolves. I think the future defi nitely looks bright. I can’t tell how it’s going to sound, but I know I’d like to combine diff erent styles of music into utterly new things.

What was the fi rst time that you heard a synthesizer and thought, “Wow, what’s that?”How it started was, my dad had all the old

albums from Jean Michel Jarre, the Equinoxe series. I think the reason why I’m an electronic dance artist today is because my dad would sit down, I’d sit on his lap, and he would tell me all these stories while those albums played. So I re-ally got to listen intensely to that music. For me, Jarre defi nitely did it—he’s like the classical mu-sic of the synthesizer world.

Of course, there’s Vangelis’ Blade Runner soundtrack. It’s funny how music really can make or break a movie. For me, one of the best pairings of a classical-type piece with a fi lm was Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”—it made the movie Platoon so much more intense just because of that music. I think that being an artist, you lis-ten diff erently—and more intensely—to music. When you go out to a club with your friends, you’re the quieter one because you’re always lis-tening and your ears are focusing in on new stuff and the details of the music. Again, I think that’s all because of my early experience listening to Jean Michel Jarre.

Does your live rig go beyond what most peo-ple would think of as a “DJ setup”?When I play live I only DJ, and I am looking into possibilities of playing instruments live as well. I think it’s very important that if I perform live, it’s actually live. So eventually I’d like to work with

diff erent equipment live instead of using just a laptop or CDJ decks. Another challenge I want to take on is to look at more event-type stuff —being a producer for bands, remixing, and also being onstage. Th ere are so many possibilities.

Where would you like to see synthesizer technology go to next?We live in an age where everything needs to be fast. You’re on the road a lot as an artist. I’d prefer to have just a simple block of equipment using processors of really cool hardware synths, that I could use for producing on the road. I’d like to see something compact, without any controls.

Do you mean a soft synth?Hardware, actually, but with a software interface to keep the size down. You just connect it to your laptop and you have a massive synth with you on the road. Th at’d be brilliant for me because on the road I’m missing my big analog sounds, so it’d be cool to have something small to take with me that would have what I need. Soft synths are easier to take on the road, but half the time I’d much rather mess about on a Poly Evolver or a Moog.

Did you originally learn music by ear? Reading? Both?Defi nitely by ear. I don’t know how to read notes, but when I hear something, I can play it. To make an analogy, my fi rst synth I used to practice on was a little Roland Groovebox—the MC-303. I didn’t know what a fi lter was—I’d just twist a knob and see what happened. Th at’s how I learned all these musical terms and melodies as well. Likewise, the fi rst time I tried to reproduce a melody, it took me three days. Th at was another gateway into dance music production—reproduc-ing melodies that already existed, then just try-ing to make them my own. Th at’s how you fi nally learn how to produce your own music. It’s a really interesting, slow process at fi rst. Th en it kind of hits you, and it goes very fast after that.

What advice would you give to the kid who maybe has Ableton Live, a little MIDI con-troller, and a hard drive full of downloaded tracks, and aspires to your level of success?Every bit of musical knowledge I have right now, I’ve taught myself. I taught myself to play the pia-no, how to use a DAW such as Logic, how to mix, how to use limiting and compression, and how to arrange a track. I feel that the process of having to learn these things myself, and sometimes even using synths and plug-ins the “wrong” way—and therefore the right way—is what has led to the sound and success I have right now.

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Synth Makes the Heart Grow Fonder“Th ere was defi nitely an attempt to get out of the comfort zone of the last two or three records,” Mikael explains. “We were literally in the same places in the loft in Chicago making the last three records. Even the view I’d look out on, I was looking at it during A Ghost Is Born, Sky Blue Sky, and Wilco (Th e Album).

“So for this record, I placed limitations—I said, ‘I’m not going to play piano.’ Well, there’s one song where I play piano. It was just . . . I wanted to try everything else first. Over the years, I’ve acquired all these cool synths and had them worked on and beefed up and made really awesome. That should be my focus. Maybe you don’t get the same emotional reso-nance as with a piano, but you try to use the synthesizers and technology to be evocative in

HEAR ELECTRONICA » ROCK » SONGWRITER » PLAYLIST

BEING TRULY INDEPENDENT—NOT JUST SLAPPING AN INDIE MONIKER ON what you do, but fi nding something expressive through experimentation—isn’t easy. It means getting a little uncomfortable and taking an approach to music that might discover something personal and new. With The Whole Love, Wilco demonstrates just how they earned so much love as one of the world’s most respected indie bands. They create a new, electronic-driven sound without losing any of their song-writing focus or personality. And to get there, lead keyboardist and pianist Mikael Jorgensen has come full circle, back to the passion for experimental electronic sound that he says forms his true roots.

So, wait, how did Wilco—a group known for fairly traditional rock-band instru-mentation and folk-driven sounds—wind up blending gritty, synth-heavy timbres with their signature style?

some way. And that was really my goal for The Whole Love.”

About those synths: “In addition to a Fender Rhodes, there was the [Access] Virus, the Moog Little Phatty, and the ARP 2600. Th ose were the center points, because you could get poly syn-thesizer stuff from the Virus, and then get really great, thick, monophonic stuff from the ARP. Th en the Little Phatty, through the tape delay, and all this really nice, mushy, organic processing.

“We also used the [Ekdahl] Moisturizer, the spring reverb on top of this trapezoidal box. It has the weirdest fi ltering, where it’s just a couple of LFOs, a multimode fi lter that lets you sweep the mode and the frequency, but after the reverb. It’s really unusual. So I used that—that’s the reverb for most of the synth stuff.”

Mikael’s sound on Th e Whole Love is heavily

analog, but there are digital sources in the mix, too. You can blame an addiction to digital instru-ments cultivated on the last album. Mikael says, “For Wilco (Th e Album), I was getting into the Na-tive Instruments Komplete set and all the really unusual sample libraries that are available now. Th e SonicCouture guys do amazing stuff , like the Bowed Piano, Skiddaw Stones, and Glass/Works libraries—all this beautiful-sounding stuff . I thought, ‘Th is sounds so great, it’d be really cool to have this in a Wilco song.’ I had my [Novation]

A Whole Lot of Synth Love from Mikael JorgensenBY PETER KIRN

WILCO

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X-Station as my MIDI and audio interface, and as that goes out to the control room, I’d sit there and try some ideas. And that paved the way for what happened on Th e Whole Love.”

To blend those digital sounds with the analog milieu of the record, Mikael says he kept the source dry. “If I was going to do an element us-ing [Native Instruments] Massive or Reaktor, it was just a D.I. coming off the mixer that I had my computer plugged into. Th ere was no amp, there was no signal processing; it was the driest, clean-

est signal. So there’s a little bit of a hybrid of the two.” Th ere was also the ability to add grit. “I also had a small combo amp, so if I wanted to just have some dirt and amp noise and grit, I could turn up my send and it would go to my amp.”

Crafting The Whole LoveWilco may be out of some comfort zones as far as instrumentation and production technique, but they remain squarely in a sweet spot for song-writing, owing to the focus and versatility of the

band. “Wilco’s a band that can kind of roll with whatever happens,” Mikael says.

“One of the things that makes Jeff Tweedy a great musician is his ability and willingness to tear apart a song,” Mikael says. “For some of the stuff that we did on A Ghost Is Born, everybody contributed a musical game, to make everybody play. It was just experiments, but [the idea was], let’s just use these modern composition techniques and improvisation games to do something that’s not like a folk song or a rock

song—all the other options that are available for recorded music.”

What brings that together? Songwriting, Mikael says, led by Jeff : “Th at sort of adventur-ousness has always been in the band. But I think in the core of it is always Jeff —he writes really great songs, and we’re part of that process to a degree. Ultimately, this is Jeff ’s vision, but he’s also super-generous in the fact that he says to just do what you want—not in a hands-off way, but more of a ‘What do you think? What should happen here?’ And sometimes I have no idea what should happen. I can just play synthesizer on this song. And then other times, we play so often together that, if Jeff starts playing and starts singing, we’ll all fall in and support that.

“Jeff gets really focused on the meta-content of what we’re working on, and at the same time, we’re fi ercely detail-oriented,” Mikael explains. “He’s thinking about lyrics, he’s thinking about the melody, he’s thinking about singing. And so he has enough faith in all of us that he can usu-ally just play without hearing what else is going on, so that way he can get his part together.”

Even with Jeff leading songwriting, the en-semble is central to the music creation process for Wilco. Th e Whole Love sounds wholly Wilco-like, rich with the musical grooves and relation-ships that have established the band’s fan base. Th e addition of synthesized sounds and analog-thick grit sounds positively timeless, rooted in rock traditions, and always set against crystal-clear songwriting. And while the mix is spacious and polished, there’s a spontaneity that shines through on this album as on past records.

“Th e way the album started was mostly jam sessions,” Mikael says, “so my ideas rose out of that, and Jeff had a couple of ideas here and there. Th rough three or four of these jam-re-cording sessions, the songs were starting to take shape. And we recorded all on Pro Tools; there was no tape machine in the making of this re-cord. Th at was another unusual thing because we own one of the last Studer A27s—the gold edi-tion. I think it was probably just a decision Jeff and Tom Shear [Wilco’s engineer] both made, being able to work and shift gears quickly.”

Of course, experienced synthesists will rec-ognize that this synth rig requires some active playing in order to fi t sound design into the jam-session process. “What happens is that you make the sound designing an aspect of your musical part. Th ere were a couple of times where I was changing the envelope aff ecting the fi lter to make a more percussive staccato sound, but doing that

slowly, so there’s a progression from a staccato sound to a more legato sound. And there would be times when I’d hit something, and it’d just be a total mess. I think we all knew that. We all had really good separation or isolation, even though we were all in one room. If there was something going on, and there was someone really just try-ing stuff , you’re at least separate from the rest of the things that are going on. So you can feel free-dom to just pursue whatever weird little idea.”

Traditional live sessions by day—with the odd patch in digital form—were followed by more out-there experimentation by night. “It was great, because we would work from about noon to fi ve with the whole band, and then in the evenings, the guys who live in Chicago would go home to their families,” Mikael says. (Mikael had relocated to Brooklyn.) “It was me, Nels [Cline], and Tom, and Mark Greenberg—the other guy who was engineering and assisting and writing copious notes of what was happening every day.

We would just be there and think, ‘Well, I’ve got an empty apartment I could go back to or we could keep working.’ And that was a lot of fun, to have that freedom and not have everybody around while you’re just trying something. It was nice to have a few hours in the evening to say, ‘Let’s try some wacky, Doctor Science overdubs.’”

Back to the FutureIn addition to Wilco, Mikael is developing a side project called Pronto. After a fairly unplugged start, it’s now becoming synth-driven—a debut at the band’s Solid Sound Festival featured three keyboardists onstage alongside drums. And while it might surprise fans who know Mikael’s playing through Wilco, he says that’s really where he got his start making music.

“I had all this computer, synthesizer-based music I made back when I was living in Chicago in 2001 and 2002. Th at’s this sort of transition into what the next Pronto record’s going to be,

26 Keyboard 01.2012

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which is a return to my roots, which in all hon-esty was in my bedroom in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, booting from a fl oppy and using Roger Powell’s Texture program, my DX7, and an Akai S900 sampler. Really, that was what I learned to play music on. Rig-wise, I just wanted to keep it super-concise. I fi gured you can get kind of Rick Wakeman about it, but I sort of opt-ed for [Kraftwerk’s] Ralf Hütter’s style—simple, consolidated, kind of monolithic. So for Pronto, it’s just the Virus with a Mackie mixer under-neath, and the Novation X-Station. I’m using the audio input on the X-Station to do vocoding, and then playing the notes.”

Th at same experimentation-inspired inter-est for Mikael fed into the band’s self-organized festival. Rather than just play the usual summer festival circuit, the band started their own week-end-long musical extravaganza. Th e Solid Sound Festival, in the mountains of Western Mas-sachusetts, has become a showcase for unique-

sounding acts, headstrong in its commitment to passion over commerce.

Collaborating with this writer, Mikael curated a set of artists who make their own instruments. Th e lineup included Moog Music’s chief engineer Cyril Lance and the Dewanatron duo Brian and Leon Dewan (known in part for the Swarmatron, a ribbon-controlled analog synth reviewed in Key-board last month), alongside a variety of builders of strange and wonderful synthesizers and eff ects. Th at open, science fair-like racket is true to the band’s personality. “It’s a direct extension of the thing that brings Wilco together in all of this,” Mikael says. “It’s inspired amateurism. We’re not super professionals, we’re not schooled in mu-sic—not all of us are. I know a little bit about how to fi ddle around with things, and I wind up being more of a danger to myself than anything else.

“But I think it’s just the curiosity that all these diff erent people capitalize on. ‘What does this do? What would this sound like? What

would it sound like if we made our band out of just guitar pedals and some Casio keyboards?’ And it’s just that sort of curiosity that just keeps us always interested.”

A New AdventureDiscovering sounds, Mikael says, “is what’s se-ductive about synthesizers. Th en you bring the EMS Synthi into the equation, and then that just goes off the charts because that’s the least pre-dictable synthesizer that exists.

“I was having this discussion with a friend of mine who plays acoustic guitar, and that’s his main thing,” Mikael recounts. “And it’s really a diff erent set of concerns when you’re thinking about using the synthesizer as your voice or as an extension of you. With a guitar, you have so many diff erent musical options—velocity, the way you hit a string, and the multiple voices, and the kind of guitar you have. And there are all these variables that are inherent to a guitar and playing a guitar. And you can really accom-pany yourself when you sing. And you can make a song and you can make a thing with just a guitar and your voice. With a synthesizer, it’s a completely diff erent set of rules.”

As for the payoff from working more adven-turously with sound, you can hear it in the re-sulting album. And perhaps more importantly, you can see it in the smile on Mikael’s face as he recounts the process of making it. “It was so re-freshing to just have that change,” he says, “be-cause I feel like I painted myself into a corner by just playing piano. Before Wilco, I really wasn’t playing much keyboard. So when I joined Wilco, I just wanted to concentrate on playing.”

Having reached a “level of competency,” Mi-kael says, it was time to try something else: “It was one of those things where I don’t know if this is going to fl y, but I’m just going to go for it. And the whole record was like that—I don’t know if this is going to be the right thing, but I’m just going to try it and use my Wilco sensibilities and try to figure out a way to make it work.”

With the record complete, Mikael says he wouldn’t have it any other way—good news for anyone considering taking similar risks. “Regard-ing the adventurousness, I thought, ‘Wow, where has this been the last few records?’”

Keyboard Contributing Editor Peter Kirn co-curated the Handmade Music salon with Mikael Jorgensen at the band’s Solid Sound Festival in June on behalf of createdigitalmusic.com.

Why did you record to analog tape?Th ere are two reasons. First, I love the soundscape of analog recording. It was always what this record was supposed to sound like in my mind. It’s an aesthetic that I grew up with, listening to my parents’ record collection from the ’60s and ’70s. I’ve always dreamt of recording this way, so in a way, it’s odd that it took me ten years into my career to make it happen, but at least I fi nally got there.

Th e second reason is that recording to analog tape fundamentally aff ects the way you perform a song, the approach you take to an arrangement, and the overall vibe in the studio. Having the limitations that are part of working with analog tape can actually be wonderful. A lot of times I fi nd that when musicians are put into situations where there are very set kinds of rules—let’s say we only have four tracks or this much tape to work with—there’s an energy and honesty to the performances all around, because you have to make it work in that moment. And it’s all due to working in this medium.

Was recording to tape ever a problem?We had some headaches with the tape recorders


VANESSA CARLTON USED SOME UNEXPECTED TOOLS TO STRIKING EFFECT on her newest album, the organic Rabbits on the Run. For starters, the whole album was recorded to analog tape at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in the U.K., aided by U2 and K.T. Tunstall producer Steve Osborne. Second, in lieu of the polished piano tone that characterized her early radio hit “A Thousand Miles,” Vanessa gravitates towards a time-worn sound played on an idiosyncratic upright she discovered thanks to Tom Jones—more on that later. Then, there was quantum physics: Rabbits draws lyrical inspiration from a number of books, among them Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.

breaking because it’s vintage gear. I’m lucky, though. While Steve and the Real World staff were working on fi xing things, I got to sit under a willow tree and refi ne lyrics for another song. [Laughs.]

Did you record most takes live?A lot of the skeletal elements—drums, guitar, and piano—are live with us all playing at the same time. Th ere was great energy recording with the other musicians in the big room at Real World. A lot of the vocal eff ects and lush, swooping sounds that you hear coming in and out, those are magical things that Steve knows how to do. We crafted those very late at night as overdubs. A lot of the swells and things, those came from manipulation on my vocals.

What kind of piano did you use? It has a really distinct tone.Tom Jones had done a record at Real World and there was an upright piano on one of his tracks that Steve really liked. He found out where that piano had been borrowed from, somewhere in a town in England called Bass, which is about ten minutes

from Real World. It’s this little old white pine upright called a John Brinsmead. He knew right away when he heard it that that was what we were looking for.

How did he know?When Steve and I had started talking about pianos, I’d said that I wanted the piano that’s been sitting in the parlor at Grandma’s house forever. Nobody ever plays it and it’s probably the most charming sound you’ve ever heard. It feels like an old wine and it doesn’t sound too precious because it’s not a big grand. So that’s it—the John Brinsmead. We found it. We opened it up to mic it when we recorded, and it had the word “Schwander” on a sticker inside. I think that’s the description of the piano’s action—but anyway, we call it the Schwander, because the name “Brinsmead” is so proper. Th e piano has some swagger and it’s a little eccentric, so the name stuck.

What other keyboards are on the album?We used a Hammond B-3 through a Leslie on “I Don’t Want to Be a Bride” and a Mellotron as well—but most of the swells and sounds that you hear came, again, from manipulation of my vocals.

Where did the piano part from “In the End” come from?Th at was one time when you realize, God bless the analog approach. It was really kind of random. We were winding tape for “Tall Tales for Spring” at half speed, and the most spooky sounds fi lled up the studio. It became a whole other animal, and we never forgot that. When it was time to decide how to conclude the record, we asked ourselves, what made sense? We ended

On Analog Tape and Upright PianosBY MICHAEL GALLANT

VANESSA CARLTON

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Watch the offi cial video for “Carousel” and get a complete songbook for Rabbits on the Run.

keyboardmag.com/january2012

up pulling out the tape from “Tall Tales” and overdubbing on top of that—some ukulele and other stuff . I started singing the top line, Steve drenched my vocals, and we created what you hear on the album. So basically, it all started with slowed down tape. Th e piano part is the exact same piano part from “Tall Tales for Spring.”

What was the songwriting process like for the album?I’m reading a book called Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit that’s all about how the mind develops so much from long walks, and I’ve spent a lot of time walking. Th ere were a couple years after my last record, before I commenced on this record, where I just wandered around this earth, a total gypsy. A lot of the ideas for songs crystallized on walks, away from the piano. Th e melodies always come so easily for me, and I feel that that door, for some reason, is always open for me. But really getting down to what I want to say, what poetry or picture or story I want to connect with—that’s more diffi cult. I just don’t think I ever pushed myself in a very extreme way [with earlier albums]. It’s scary to be honest. So there were a couple years that went by when I didn’t write anything, and then I started crafting together the stories and notions in my head based on the books I’d been reading, and weaving it all together with melodies.

What books were the biggest infl uences?Watership Down by Richard Adams and Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. I was looking for anchors and those books ended up fulfi lling that role. Th ey spoke to mysticism, spirituality, and science in a way that I really connected with, especially for that time in my life—I was dealing with a lot of chaos, a lot of pain and loss, all at the same time. Th e books are actually so diff erent, but they hit me in the same way, and they infl uenced both my personal philosophy and what this record turned out to be.

Do you transcribe melodies when you write songs?I never write out notes. I just memorize everything as I write. Every song I’ve written, I know what notes to play—lyrics, I forget all the time. Th e Hal Leonard songbook for this album,

though, is something I’ve worked on a lot. It’s defi nitely the most accurate songbook I’ve ever done, in terms of refl ecting what I actually play. In terms of crafting the top line combined with the melody of the piano and having it all make sense, the songbook really is its own variation, and it has to be done right. Books like these are mostly done by other arrangers, but I wanted to get in the trenches and be part of the book for Rabbits on the Run. It was an amazing process.

Musically, who do you look up to right now?In terms of dynamics, I love the way Aaron Copland writes. In terms of building layers upon layers and creating tension, I think Philip Glass is a master. To be honest, I haven’t listened to popular radio in a long time—I have satellite radio, but I go to the vinyl station—so when it comes to mainstream music, I’m a bit out of it. I should start paying more attention. [Laughs.]

Is the piano you used in the studio going on the road with you?My dear Schwander is in England. She’s an old lady, and I think that’s where she belongs. I don’t know if she can handle the road. I do have a ’72 Rhodes I’m going to take out with me, and Yamaha has been awesome about providing me with pianos and keyboards on the road.

Given your background as a ballet dancer, do you see any overlap between dancing and playing piano?It all comes from the same place, and I connect to both the same way. I love dancing because of the music, and I wish I could not be so idle when I played, that I could move more with the music. As a dancer, I also love waltzes, and I think I have a waltz on every album. “Tall Tales for Spring” was written as a waltz, and I spent a lot of time working on those lyrics to make them match that feel.

How has your songwriting changed since “A Th ousand Miles”?I feel like I’m chasing after something. Th ere’s no end to the process of growing as a person or an artist, and it’s very important to me to evolve my aesthetic in a way that’s organic. I want to protect that mental space where I can move, grow, and experiment.

In terms of lyrics, it’s an honor to be able to write and to have people look to me for that. But just because I can complete a song doesn’t mean a song is done. There’s so much to learn. When you’re 20 or 21, you’re going full speed ahead and not necessarily getting into the art of truly crafting some-thing. There’s an awareness that comes with

age and experience. I just want to get better and better, and to write stories that people connect with—beautiful, transcendent, simple, uncomfortable, or whatever a song may turn out to be. I just want it to be honest.

30 Keyboard 01.2012

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THE JEFF LORBER FUSIONGalaxyThe funkiest white boy in the keyboard, um, galaxy blasts off again with groovenauts Jimmy Haslip on bass, Vinne Colaiuta on drums, Lenny Castro on percussion,

and Eric Marienthal on sax. Unlike 2010’s Now Is the Time, there are no vocals this time around; the focus is less on acid-jazzy crossover tunes and more on corkscrewing melodies and straight-out shredding. Trumpet great Randy Brecker guests on a track. Lorber spends a lot of time on Rhodes, wah-wah’ed to head-bobbing effect on “Montserrat.” Throughout, the music is accessible and even pretty, but the players are too virtuosic and the grooves too greasy to dismiss it as smooth jazz—further proof of why Lorber was and is one of the founding fathers of fusion. (lorber.com) STEPHEN FORTNER

32 Keyboard 01.2012

MERIDIAN VOICE Atypical SymmetryNew York multi-keyboardist and composer Lloyd Landesman anchors this soaring instrumental rock-fusion project, which at times grooves like

edged-up Chick Corea, Weather Report, or Larry Goldings—while tracks like “Hacker” come closer to what a funky jam session between Hiromi and Dream Theater might sound like. Musicianship is outstanding throughout, thanks in no small part to Randy McStine’s Eric Johnson-esque guitar work and Adrian McCloskey’s outstandingly versatile drumming. Lloyd’s keyboard contributions come as a propulsive mix of organ and electric and acoustic pianos, with heavy doses of analog synth work as well; check out “Kitty” in particular for some tasty, prog-fl avored synth solo action. Eclectic, meaty, accessible, and just plain fun. (meridianvoicenyc.com) MICHAEL GALLANT

DAS RACIST Relax Das Racist has come a long way since 2008’s earworm “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco

Bell.” This Brooklyn trio has a divisive effect on the hip-hop community, but the haters need to zip it—these guys are smart and funny, spitting laser-sharp raps. Relax, their fi rst commercial release, is excellent. “Power” is a stunner, replete with dubstep wobble bass and a hefty dose of 808 handclaps. (dasracist.net) LORI KENNEDY

TYCHO Dive San Franciscan Scott Hansen (a.k.a. Tycho) is a designer and an electronic artist, and his work

in both realms can be described the same way: completely sun-drenched. Mellow, melodic synth harmonies swirl into beats coasting around the 70 bpm mark. Dive sounds soothing and somehow “hopeful,” exuding optimistic vibes. “A Walk” actually feels like a walk, and it’s absolutely stunning. (tychomusic.com) LORI KENNEDY

EPIGENE A Wall Street Odyssey Never more timely, this sprawling rock opera is a three-part trip through the crash and rebirth of a

trader on Wall Street. Sean Bigler’s creation is part populist manifesto and part social commentary, and rich with melodic and lyrical vision. Both Bigler and keyboardist/vocalist Bonnie Lykes play a big role on synth, piano, and vocoder. This ambitious progressive rock project merits multiple listenings and pays great dividends. (epigenemusic.com) ROBBIE GENNET

RAINBOW Live in Germany 1976 Live in Germany is a time capsule of explosive rock featuring a classic Rainbow lineup and the unsung

keyboard work of Tony Carey. Stellar performances from Ronnie James Dio and Ritchie Blackmore may stand out front, but Carey’s less fl ashy role on keys supports without overwhelming. From the slamming opener “Kill the King” through lengthy versions of “Mistreated” and “Stargazer,” Carey’s B-3 work energizes the rock and provides texture to softer sections. (eagle-rock.com) ROBBIE GENNET

34 Keyboard 01.2012

BEFORE JIMMY SMITH, THE HAMMOND B-3 ORGAN WAS PRIMARILY HEARD in churches, baseball stadiums, and skating rinks. Inspired by organist Wild Bill Davis and others, Smith spent the better part of 1953 “woodshedding” in a warehouse where he honed the sound that would come to define him. The topics explored here only scratch the surface of Smith’s playing, but they’re a great place to begin investigating why he was the fi rst—and is still the biggest—reason anyone uses “jazz” and “organ” in the same sentence.

5 WAYS TO PLAY LIKE

Jimmy SmithBY EMMET COHEN

JAZZ » IMPROVISATION » CHORD DOCTORPLAY

35 01.2012 Keyboard

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36 Keyboard 01.2012

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F13#11Ex. 3. The Big VoicingTh is big band-style voicing typifi es how Smith would have played an F13 chord: with the root on the bottom, a tritone interval marking the chord’s third and seventh in the middle register, and the color tones on top. In the treble staff , the notes actually form a G7 chord, which in the key of F translates to (in ascending order) the ninth, sharp 11th, 13th, and root.

& b 44 œ œb œ ŒF7

Ó œ œ œ œbB

b7

œ jœb œn œ œ ŒF7

Ó ‰ Jœb œ œ œ œb œ ‰ jœB

b7

jœn œ œn œb œb œ œ Œ3

& b ‰ œ œ œ jœ œn œb ‰ jœbF7

œn œb œ œ œ œ œAmin7

b5 D7

b9

jœ œn œb œ .œ jœGmin7

œ œ œn œb œb œ œ3

C7

œ œ œb œŒ

F7

Ex. 2. Solo DevelopmentRepetition is extremely eff ective in Smith’s improvisations. He usually starts with a simple idea, and then develops it. Th e initial statement in the fi rst measure—three quarter notes from the blues scale—is embel-lished in the third measure. We see it again in diff erent forms in measures 5 and 11. To practice, take a three- or four-note idea and, for example, add or subtract notes from the beginning, middle, or end of the phrase. Switch the note order and alter the rhythms.

& b 44 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œF7

jœ œn œb œb œ œb œ œ œ œ œ ˙

Ex. 1. Bebop and BluesJimmy Smith famously incorporated both blues and bebop idioms into his melodic lines. Here, the pickup, the fi rst measure, and the third measure use all use scale degrees from the F Mixolydian scale, while the second measure takes notes from the blues scale. Smith interweaves these two sounds seamlessly.

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38 Keyboard 01.2012

Play along with audio examples and watch Jimmy Smith videos.


Ex. 5. Call-and-Answer CompingTh is example shows how Smith might play a solo phrase on the upper manual, and then respond to it using a diff erent sound on the lower one. Unlike a pianist, an organist uses the right hand to solo and comp, rapidly moving between upper and lower manuals, while the left hand is busy walking the bass line.

? b 44 œ œ œ œnF7

œ œ œb œn œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œCmin7 F7

œ œ œ œB

b7

œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œF7/C F7/B

bœ œb œ œbAmin7 D7

? b œ œ œ œbGmin7

œ œb œ œC7

œ œ œ œnF7

œ œ œb œnC7

œ Œ ÓF7

Ex. 4. Bass LinesAlthough Smith would often play bass with the organ’s foot pedals on ballads, faster tempos involved him walking the bass with his left hand. Smith pioneered tapping the pedals underneath his left-hand bass to create extra attack and drive on each quarter note. On a typical 12-bar blues, Smith’s bass lines often stayed in a one-octave range, forcing him to think about how many chord and non-chord tones would connect his chord changes. Practice this by setting a “target” note on the downbeat of each measure, then fi lling in the rest of the quarter notes with half steps, whole-steps, and other chord tones.

“The Hammond sound most closely associated with Jimmy Smith is achieved by pulling the fi rst three upper-manual drawbars out all the way, and adding third harmonic percussion set to fast decay,” says Emmet Cohen, a fi nalist in the 2011 Thelonious Monk Competition. Sometimes, Smith pushed the 5-1/3‘ drawbar in a couple of clicks, and sometimes he added vibrato/chorus at the C3 setting. He almost always kept the Leslie at slow speed.

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40 Keyboard 01.2012

CONSIDERING HOW DIFFICULT SOLOING OVER CONSTANTLY CHANGING CHORD progressions can be, you’d think it’d be a breath of fresh air to solo over just one chord or mode. On the one hand, that’s true, but on the other, it can be extremely challenging to keep a one-chord solo interesting over an extended length of time. Here are a few tools to help solve that problem. The concepts involved come in three main categories: melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic. We’ll focus on the melodic methods this month; next time, we’ll tackle the harmonic and rhythmic ones.

One-Chord SoloingBY JOHN NOVELLO

PLAY JAZZ » IMPROVISATION » CHORD DOCTOR

PART 1

1. Intervallic PlayingTh e idea here is to restrict yourself to certain intervals during a solo. Th ese restrictions create a variety of interesting structures, which further break down into fi ve subcategories:

In Ex. 1a, we decide on a certain pattern of strict intervals, such as perfect fourths or minor seconds, and pretty much play just that combination. Although this approach will some-times take us out of the key center, the intervals’ inherent patterns still make melodic sense and add color and tension.

In Ex. 1b, instead of a strict pattern as above, let’s add in a little spice by throwing in altered and/or inverted intervals. Try any fourth (perfect or augmented) and any second (major or minor) as well as their inversions:

perfect and diminished fi fths, and major and minor sevenths.

Ex. 1c is similar to examples 1a and 1b, ex-cept that you occasionally give relief to the inter-vallic pattern for various musical reasons with a foreign interval that’s not part of the pattern—then you resume the pattern.

Ex. 1d employs recurring intervals. Th is is simply repeating the same interval in any pat-tern, in or out of the tonal center. Th e interval can also be altered or inverted.

In Ex. 1e, we just freely combine all of the above. As an aside, though intervallic playing works especially well over one chord or the tonal center, adding much-needed color and tension, it can also be applied to any set of chord changes.

2. Scale StrategiesOne of my favorite techniques involves building alternate scales that nonetheless work with the chord over which I need to solo.

Ex. 2a is what I call “scales within scales.” I simply start a new scale that begins on any note of the scale that goes with the chord over which I’m soloing. In this example, the scale is E sym-metrical diminished, which starts on the third of Cmaj7#11. Th is gives me more improv material for soloing over that chord.

In Ex. 2b, instead of playing in the proper scale or mode, I superimpose a diff erent scale over the chord change. Th en, when the chord changes, I change to another superimposed scale, and so on. Th is works best with strongly identi-fi ed scales like whole tone, symmetrical dimin-ished, pentatonic, and blues.

In Ex. 2c, I experiment with varying the intervals of the chromatic scale. This scale states no tonality of its own, but really adds a lot of color and variety. It works best if you start on a chord tone, play chromatically, and then land on some other chord tone. This keeps things musical.

41 01.2012 Keyboard

Ex. 1e. Freely Combining Intervallic Techniques

Ex. 1d. Recurring Intervals

Ex. 1c. Occasional Foreign Intervals

Ex. 1b. Altered and Inverted Intervals

Ex. 1a. Strict Intervals

42 Keyboard 01.2012

& 44 œ œb œ œ# œ œb œ# œC7#9 œ œ œ# œ# œn œ œ# œ œ œ# œn œb œ œb œn œ œ œb œ œ œb œn œb œn

Hear John Novello put this lesson into action.


“The goal of correct practice is freedom to express yourself musically, with-out doubts and reservations tripping you up in the moment of improvising, ” says John Novello, whose method The Contemporary Keyboardist is consid-ered the gold standard of modern keyboard instruction. “If you do enough thinking during practice, you won’t overthink when performing.” Learn more from John at jazzkeyboardlessons.com.

On Practicing

Ex. 2c. Chromatic Scale

Ex. 2b. Superimposing Scales

Ex. 2a. Scales Within Scales

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44 Keyboard 01.2012

VOICE LEADING IS THE ART OF MOVING FROM ONE CHORD NOTE TO THE next, often (but not always) with as little motion as possible. The choices we make in connecting our chords can help to defi ne our musical styles, and give a com-mon chord progression an uncommon sound. (I learned about voice leading from a plethora of great artists, but I give special credit to jazz guru Charlie Banacos.) In Part I of this lesson, I’ll begin with one of the most common types of chord pro-gressions found in a myriad of jazz, pop, Latin, and R&B songs, the venerable ii-V-I-VI progression. In Part 2 next month, we’ll delve into more advanced techniques involving slash chords, the blues, Latin vamps, and more.

Voice Lead Like a ProBY CLIFFORD CARTER

PLAY JAZZ » IMPROVISATION » CHORD DOCTOR

PART 1

Ex. 1 is what a musician who is new to sev-enth chords might play if he or she saw these chord symbols on a lead sheet. Notice that the chords are in root position, make no use of upper extensions like ninths, 11ths, and 13ths, and there’s no attention to voice lead-ing at all.

To introduce some, let’s play ii-V-I progres-sions with the chord’s root in the left hand and two-note voicings in the right, as in Ex. 2. Notice the voice leading here: the seventh (F) of the ii mi-nor chord (Gmin7), moves to the third (E) of the V dominant chord (C7), and the seventh (Bb) of the V dominant chord moves to the third (A) of

the I major chord (Fmaj7). After you get comfort-able with this in all 12 keys, you can add more chord tones, but often, two-note voicings are all that you need, especially when accompanying guitar or other polyphonic instruments.

Ex. 3 uses a voice leading tool known as keeping common tones to facilitate smooth motion between chord changes. Th e top note is the same for each voicing, i.e. it’s common to each chord. In addition, the structure here has the same properties as in Ex. 2 with regard to the movement of thirds and sevenths, and includes the color tones of the ninth, 11th, and 13th.

Ex. 4 takes this same chord progression, and with those same color tones I’ve created a chro-matic scale with the top voice of each chord, using the notes F, F#, G, and Ab, which are scales degrees 7, #11, 9 and b5 of each respective chord.

Ex. 1. No Voice Leading

Get audio examples of this lesson and catch a video of the author shredding live with Richard Muller.


“When moving from one chord to another, every note counts. Each note should help the progression stand as a melodic statement in its own right,” says Clifford Carter, who has appeared with James Taylor, Betty Buckley, and Brian Ferry. Most recently, he can be heard on Michael Franks’ Time To-gether and saxophonist Bill Evans’ Dragonfl y.

Chords as Melody

Ex. 4. Chromatic Melody on Top

Ex. 3. Keeping Common Tones

Ex. 2. Two-Note Voicings with Left-Hand Roots

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45 01.2012 Keyboard

SYNTH SOLOING » LIVE » DANCE » ROUNDTABLE » BIZ

WELCOME BACK! LAST MONTH, WE GOT A GOOD SUSTAINING ENVELOPE TOour sound and learned to set up various forms of modulation. We’ll return to that in an upcoming column to discuss performance techniques, but this month, let’s get right into pitch-bending.

Get audio examples of these pitch-bend techniques.


46 Keyboard 01.2012

Bend Me, Shape MeI like to divide the analysis of pitch-bending into three concepts: direction (up or down), distance (maximum pitch range bent), and duration (the the time it takes to reach that destination). When you listen to great lead synth players (or great guitar players), try to focus your ears on these three aspects. For the following examples, we’re going to stay simple, and assume that your pitch-bend control is set to bend up and down two half-steps, which equals a whole tone. Th is is the most common default on synth patches, check for yourself on the sound you’re practicing with and be sure it is set this way. For all of these examples, we’re going to be playing some version of the riff in Ex. 1.

Positions, EverybodyIf you’ve never used a pitch-bend wheel, you may not know how to hold your hand to operate

it. One popular method is to use the thumb of your left hand on the wheel, resting your hand on the side of the case of your synth. Th e main advantage for the position is that your thumb is a strong, fl at surface to control the wheel with, and it’s easier to “fl ick” the wheel, a technique we’ll discuss later. I’m actually not a fan of this method, because it forces you to move your whole hand over when you want to use the adja-cent modulation wheel, which seems like a lot of wasted bodily motion.

I much prefer using my left hand’s index fi n-ger on the pitch wheel so that I can then put my thumb on the modulation wheel—I can keep my hand in this position without moving around. Try them both and get comfortable with the one that feels the best for you. If you have a joystick (as on most Korg synths) or pitch/modulation paddle (as on most Roland keyboards), place your left hand’s index fi nger on the left side of the lever and your

thumb on the right side. With most joysticks, moving them left and right will bend the pitch down and up, respectively, where as moving the stick up or down will add modulation.

One more note: Th e following techniques assume that whatever pitch-bend controller your keyboard has, it’s of the “springy” variety that returns to the center when you take your hand away. Th at’s true of most synths but not all—vin-tage Minimoogs are a notable exception.

Bending Up to a PitchIn this case we play a note a whole-step below the desired pitch and then push the wheel or joystick forward to bend that note up into the desired pitch. So, looking at the example we have two opportunities to bend up a whole step, using the G before the A on the second eighth-note of beat 1, and playing a D which we’ll bend up into an E on the fi rst beat of bar 3. Look at it notated in Ex. 2. Th e diagonal line shows the bend between the notes, and the note with the dia-mond head is the pitch produced by the bend itself.

Th is also gives us a chance to see two techniques for bending. For the fi rst bend we’ll play the G, hold

KNOW

THE ART OF SYNTH SOLOING

Pitch-BendingBY JERRY KOVARSKY

47 01.2012 Keyboard

it, and in time we’ll push the pitch-bend control forward to bend up to the A, and then release the device to center to come back to the G. Try that fi rst part of the phrase a few times until you feel com-fortable with it. Th en continue on, and for the fi rst beat of bar 3. play a D and at the same time quickly move the pitch-bend control forward so you don’t hear the D, only a quick slide into the E. When you let off the note, also release the control so it returns to center in enough time for you to play the notes that follow it without any bend.

Bending Down to a PitchIn this case you play a note a whole-step above the desired pitch, and then move the pitch wheel or joystick towards you to bend the note down a whole step into the desired pitch. Looking at Ex. 3, the best places to use this technique are to play the Aon beat 2 in the fi rst bar and bend it down into the G on the second half of the beat, as well as doing a quicker downward bend of the D on the second sixteenth-note of beat 4 into the C that follows it.

For the fi rst phrase, be sure to let go of the pitch-bend control when you let go of the sustained

Different types of pitch-bend (and modulation) controls, left to right: Conventional wheels, Korg joystick, Roland paddle, and Nord’s “clothespin” wooden pitch stick.

G pitch (the bent A note) before you play the follow-ing E on the second half of beat 3. Th e second bend phrase is trickier; the C pitch is very short, and you have to let go of the pitch-bend control quickly enough that the E that you play at bar 2 doesn’t sound like you’re “swooping up” into it. A little bit of this may be okay, but practice releasing the wheel or joystick so that you get it clean.

In both of these cases, I’ve chosen places to do the bend that don’t cause me to play notes that seem strange in relation to the riff —I’m choosing common notes from the scale, mode, or riff as my bend points. Th is is the easiest way to conceptualize when to bend for now.

The Bend as Grace NoteA bend doesn’t always have to be heard as a discrete pitch. Moving the wheel or joystick just below center before you play a note and then releasing it along with the note produces a small “scoop” that adds nice character to a phrase. Th is bend works well with almost any distance from below, but start with a very small movement, say, less than a half-step. It also sounds best on newly attacked notes, so you may

have to break up your legato phrasing. Try it on the fi rst note of the phrase, or the G on the second half of beat 1, the A on beat 2, the Eb on beat 4, or any note in bar 3. Don’t do them all in the same pass, just pick one each time and get a feel for it.

Doing the same thing but starting with the pitch-bend control slightly above a note before releasing it can also work; I fi nd this most eff ec-tive at the start of a phrase.

Flicking the wheel or joystick upward or down-ward and then quickly releasing it is also a very cool eff ect. In our example riff , fl icking upward works well on any note except the natural E. (Th at’s my taste—you may like them all.) Flicking downward works on any note in the phrase. As before, try the riff repeatedly, choosing only one note per pass to fl ick at. A common technique is to fl ick/bend the last sustaining note of phrase—be sure to grimace while doing it for the full eff ect! You might have caught on that I slipped in the concept of bend distance into these last few ex-amples. We’ll continue with these techniques and more next month, and off er some more exercises to get your bend chops in shape. Enjoy!

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5 THINGS I’VE LEARNED

About Pleasing the CrowdBY JEFF KAZEE

1. Hammond as Horn SectionHorns can be an amazing addition to a band, but they often occupy the same sonic space as the Hammond organ. On fast rock tunes, I often use the Hammond as a faux second horn section, answering their riff s with punches of my own in the cracks. Th is creates a ping-pong rhythm that can help a song climb higher on those extended jams towards the end. I prefer fast Leslie speed for this.

2. Go Off the Set ListNot only do the Asbury Jukes have over 175 original tunes, we also know countless covers and aren’t afraid to pull from outside the set list. Did a famous musician die that week? We might play a musical tribute to him or her. Gigging in Baltimore? We might add Graham Parson’s “Baltimore” to the set.

3. Resist the Urge To FillIn our band, chances are that Guitarist 1 is fi lling, and if he isn’t, Guitarist 2 is. Often times, I channel my inner Benmont Tench and keep it simple. Ever hear a Tom Petty solo section and wonder where

the rest of the solo went? Sometimes, the best fi ll is the one you don’t play.

4. Dialogue with the SingerExtended spoken intros over music can make the diff erence between a good show and an unforgettable one. Often, I complement Southside Johnny’s narrative with compelling musical conversation, guiding the volume and pace of the band via riff s that react to his words and tone. Watch your singer’s body language—it will let you know if the two of you are telling the same story.

5. Entertain ThemWhile some in the audience might know all the words to your songs, many of them don’t and are waiting for you to win them over. Even the smallest interaction with your fellow musicians and audience members can go a long way.

KNOW SYNTH SOLOING » LIVE » DANCE » ROUNDTABLE » BIZ

SOUTHSIDE JOHNNY AND THE ASBURY JUKES’ MIX OF LOUD GUITARS, thunderous brass, a fantastically salty singer/storyteller, and rocking piano and Hammond B-3 has inspired me since I joined the band in 1998. Here are the fi ve most important things I’ve learned playing in my band that I’m convinced will help you play in yours.

“When you fi nish reading this page, go learn three new songs,” advises Jeff Kazee, who produced and played keyboards on Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes’ latest release Pills and Ammo.

Watch Jeff play with Early Elton, his Elton John tribute band.


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48 Keyboard 01.2012

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Put the Freak in Frequency ShiftingBY FRANCIS PRÈVE

Phaser AlternativePhasers add animation to pads and whooshes, but for something more subtle and spacious, try a touch of frequency shifting. Th e key is that a little goes a long way, so setting up the eff ect parameters requires restraint.

Step 1.In any soft synth, create a simple saw pad with the fi lter wide open. You can use one or more oscillators, but for demo purposes, I used a single-oscillator patch so you can focus on the sound of the shifter.

Step 2. Begin by setting the wet/dry mix to 50/50 and off set the frequency shifter’s main frequency parameter by 1kHz.


A COUPLE OF ISSUES AGO, I WENT DEEP INTO RING MODULATION, SHOWINGhow the sidebands they generate can deliver a heavy “WTF factor” that’s perfect for techno and electro tracks. This time, we’ll look at frequency shifting, which is a cousin to ring modulation but with different applications. Sometimes called “single sideband modulation,” frequency shifting is accomplished via a wide range of approaches, but one of the most common is a confi guration of two ring modulators. This is why you’ll often fi nd frequency shifting and ring modulation in the same plug-in, like Apple Log-ic’s Ringshifter (shown) or Ableton Live’s Frequency Shifter. Not to be confused with pitch-shifting, the end result is that the harmonics (instead of the main frequency) are shifted up or down, resulting in cool effects like subtle phasing or wobbles.

Step-by-step audio examples.


50 Keyboard 01.2012

It’s important to use a very small value, because this will determine the overall rate of the phasing eff ect.

Step 3.To further animate the stereo field and give the effect more depth, add a tiny bit of LFO modulation. Here, we used a depth of 0.41Hz

and a rate of 0.01Hz. These are extremely small amounts, so pay close attention to your settings.

Pitch Wobbles in Drum GroovesFrequency shifting can also generate crazy wobbles in percussion loops. Grooves with lots of pitched drums

like toms and congas work best. I’m using the drums from my track “Flotsam,” which include no shakers, rattles, or cymbals. To avoid phase-shifting or ring mod eff ects, the wet/dry balance is 100% wet, so we hear only the frequency shifter. Th e main frequency parameter is at zero so there’s no base eff ect—everything is driven by the LFO sweep. To keep things rhythmic, the LFO rate is tempo-synced to a half-note and its depth is set to 240Hz.

1. Matt Lange on time stretchingOne of my favorite sound design tricks with Kontakt is to emulate old school time stretching. Th e trick is to create a loop in the wave editor and set its length at about 1,000 samples—a good starting point. Press a key, and the sample should be looping pretty quickly, and it might even be buzzing a little depending on the material. From here, assign your controller’s modulation wheel to modulate the loop start point, which can be found under the “Mod” tab in Kontakt’s Source panel. If you now move the mod wheel while holding a note, the start point of the loop will slowly evolve according to your control, all while the start point is looping quickly: very easy, controllable time stretching! While I recommended the mod wheel because everyone has one, don’t be afraid to try LFOs, envelopes, or MIDI CCs out of your DAW


52 Keyboard 01.2012

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as sources. I personally like to map loop start time and loop length to controllers. Note that Kontakt must be in “Sampler” mode so it loads the loop into RAM for processing. Direct-from-disk (DFD) mode won’t work for this technique.

2. Morgan Page on digital camera audioBelieve it or not, I like to sample with my Canon Elph camera. It’s got an amazing compressor! I use this to document crowd reactions to new music at shows and snap good quasi-HD video footage. Th e audio never distorts and is always nice and crisp. It’s great because you can record how the music is physically interacting with the space and bouncing off the walls. I still want to try using it to sample a live band, or maybe using it to re-amp some drums, guitars, or vocals.

3. Boom Jinx on multiple synths for chordsTo the extent you can call bouncing a sam-pling trick, here’s something I like to try when laziness is not a part of the equation: If I’m ready to commit to a chord progression, I’ll try having different synths play differ-ent sounds for each individual note in the chords. This can give you sounds you’ll never hear coming straight out of a single synth, especially when you blend different types of synthesis.

4. Josh Harris on sounding like vinylI like to create musical samples that sound like they were lifted off of an older record, particu-larly when I work on a disco house track, or a track that’s built around a musical sample. I’ll play-in the bass, keys, maybe some guitars, and then bounce the four- or eight-bar idea down as a sample. The sample is mixed and treated to sound like a record of 25 years ago. I use filters and compression to color it and give it that legit sound.

Exotic Sampling TricksBY FRANCIS PREVE

THE FIRST THING YOU DO WHEN YOU GET A SAMPLER IS TO RECORD YOUR roommate or pet, then play a riff on your keyboard for a cheap laugh. After a while, you get into looping and modifying your samples with various synthesis features. What happens when you’re a pro? You push the limits and come up with really creative approaches to manipulating audio. Here’s what our round-table has to say on the topic of exotic sampling tricks.

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1. Raise the BarIf your fundraising campaign hits its goal, congratu-lations! How much time is left on the campaign? Th ere still may be ample time to maximize your funding, especially if you’re off ering good pre-order incentives. My Kickstarter campaign reached its goal with several days to go before pledging would be closed. In the project description and blog updates, I announced a new target, off ered new rewards, and described what the additional funds would be used for.

2. Make It an EventWhen describing my campaign to people, I would often use analogies, comparing it to an NPR fund drive or a telethon. On the last day of my campaign, I took the telethon model to heart and performed live online for most of that day. Using a webcam and a free account at Ustream.tv, I played from my living room, taking time to let people know about the few hours left to pledge. Keeping with the interactive


54 Keyboard 01.2012

nature of the whole process, I took requests and answered questions coming in from the live chat on my Ustream channel, and kept an eye on what was coming in on Twitter and Facebook as well. Th e result? I exceeded my original fundraising goal by nearly double. Remember, most of these fan funding platforms are all-or-nothing (if you don’t hit your ini-tial goal, no money is collected) so if you’re in danger of not meeting your goal, it pays to be creative, and most of all, proactive.

3. Take Your Fans Along for the Ride If you’ve completed your musical project by the end of the funding campaign, you can go right to the fulfi llment stage in step 4 below. However, for many of us, including myself, much of the project is still to be completed after the fundraising is over. Backers have pledged money in good faith, and while they may be patient, it’s important to let them know how

things are going. Herein lies another opportu-nity to strengthen your relationship with your fans. Kickstarter provides an update section in which you can post blogs, photos (such as those above), video, and audio, and it gives you the option to make these materials accessible only to project backers. You can create a session diary and post photos and videos of your ses-sions, guest musicians, gear, and so on. You can also post previews of the audio tracks, demos, outtakes, or whatever you’d like to share. Don’t be shy—backers will enjoy an exclusive behind-the-scenes look.

4. Send the RewardsIf you’re off ering downloads, you must arrange a method of delivery. You can send fi les via email or a cloud service, but you may need a more ro-bust solution. Th ere are plenty of free sites such as mediafi re.com, or more comprehensive sites such as bandcamp.com, which off er a variety of audio formats for download. If you’re shipping physical goods, you can print postage online through the U.S. Postal Service, UPS, or FedEx. It might not be as glamorous as the studio, but you can share photos of your packing party, too. Take your fans on the whole journey, and they’ll never forget it.

Fan FundingBY TOM BRISLIN

LAST MONTH, I DISCUSSED THE INCREASINGLY POPULAR FAN FUNDING (OR crowdfunding) model for launching your own projects. Drawing from my own experience running a campaign on Kickstarter.com (which operates similarly to services such as PledgeMusic.com, Rockethub.com, IndieGoGo.com, and others), I outlined the steps I took to raise the cash to make and release my upcoming album. So what comes next?

THE POWER OFUpdates for listeners who helped the author (1) fund his solo album included behind-the-scenes pho-tos such as the Bösendorfer piano he played (2) and his “mission control” recording setup (3).

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PART 2

In the world of sampled instruments, EastWest/Quantum Leap looms large in more ways than one. Th eir libraries are usually high-concept projects, and as such, Hollywood Brass holds a whopping 150GB of content that arrives on its own 500GB internal SATA hard drive—so make sure you have a free drive bay in your computer. Sonically, Holly-wood Brass (HB for short) generally aims toward a diff erent application than Mojo (page 58) or Broad-way Big Band (page 60), that is, more toward the scoring stage than the bandstand. Th ere are no reed instruments such as saxes, but the tons of solo and ensemble horns on off er were pristinely recorded in EastWest’s own storied recording studios. More-over, you can dress up the sounds with the luscious onboard convolution reverb, using impulses derived from those same studios and other locales.

OverviewHB relies on the EastWest Play engine, a sample player whose simple interface makes access easy.

VIRTUAL BRASS » SYNTHESIZER » KEYTAR » SOFTWARE PIANO » APP

THAT’S WHY WE’VE COMPILED THIS ROUNDUP. SOME PACKAGES AREstrictly brass, others include saxophones and other woodwinds, and another practically throws in the whole darned orchestra pit. Still another eschews samples in favor of physically modeled brass and reeds. Some head-to-head comparisons are inevitable, but it makes more sense to focus on what’s special about each set, which will give you a better idea of which collection is best for you and your music.

Play divides into two pages: the Browser, from which you load your instruments, and the Player, which off ers tweaking, MIDI channel assign-ments, mix parameters, and other adjustments.

Each instrument is sampled from four mixable mic positions: Close, Mid, Main, and Srnd (sur-round). Th e close-mic version loads by default; you can add the other positions afterwards. If you’re running on limited RAM, be aware that each posi-tion is a separate set of samples and increases the load. Likewise, the “Vint” switch reloads alternate samples from the same positions, but captured through a vintage ribbon mic. Th ese sound creamy, warm, and intimate, and seem in general to have a bit less room ambience than the standard mics. Th e Vint switch aff ects all mic positions together.

Articulations and ControlMIDI control is relatively sparse. You can use messages of the non-continuous, switch sort to engage monophonic true legato, simulated

56 Keyboard 01.2012

Bold as BrassBY MARTY CUTLER

Say goodbye to wheezy, cheesy brass and sax sounds.

legato on polyphonic instruments, round-robin sample alternation that avoids the dreaded “machine gun” effect, and portamento. Some patches are only marginally velocity-sensitive, relying instead on modulation and other CC messages to alter dynamics. That makes sense musically, and provides a more continuous sense of loud and soft, but it can take a bit of time for keyboardists to get used to.

According to the manual, key-switching is not yet supported, although it is promised in an update. Although there are enough expres-sive controls supplied with velocity and the modulation wheel for HB to do well as a live instrument, my take is that Hollywood Brass is meant to appeal primarily to the desktop composer. To fully take advantage of HB’s extensive library of expression, you’ll want to record parts into a sequencer, splicing the various staccato and legato instruments and special effects such as trills and flutters as separate tracks.

I tried to create my own velocity-switched trombone, taking advantage of the Play engine’s multitimbral capabilities. Looking to build a sustained trombone that would move through slides and then falls with successively higher ve-locities, I loaded patches, set them for the same MIDI channel, and limited the velocity ranges of each so that they had mutually exclusive values. However, the values I set applied globally to any-thing on that channel. Updating the Play engine

EASTWEST/QUANTUM LEAPHollywood Brass Diamond Edition

REVIEW

57 01.2012 Keyboard

with presence, and the detailed recording of the samples captures the low-end tubas, cimbasso, and bass trombone in all their brash, rich glory. In the solo category, the instruments have a beautiful, detailed dimensionality, the rips and fl utter-tongue articulations are powerful, and the ensemble horns are fat with a tasty stereo spread that you can accentuate with the Play engine’s neat stereo doubler. Trumpets are warm and mellow, but never shrill. Th ere are fold-ers of special eff ects ranging from comedic to downright spooky, and while these might not be useful for Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in Eb, the menu of insectile triple-trumpet clusters in “3TP Rises and Oddities” would serve nicely as under-score in a horror movie.

I would’ve hoped for more jazzy instru-ments, especially in the trumpets, whose tones are too well-mannered for jazz and pop. Th at’s consistent with EastWest’s stated mission for HB, which is for it to be a composer’s tool for soundtracks. Although it might not be best for complex, realtime control in live performance,

so that you could do splits and layers of any kind would make the instrument a more fl exible real-time performer.

SoundsTh e HB library truly evokes the silver screen. Burnished, epic-sounding horns have varying de-grees of room ambience sampled in even with the convolution reverb turned off —there’s nothing anechoic about HB. As good as the reverb may be, I prefer auditioning the instruments in this state.

Comprising the library are varieties of French horn, trombone, trumpet, cimbasso, tuba, and “Low Brass,” which is a combination of low-range instruments playing in octaves or in unison. Where applicable, these break down into ensem-bles ranging from two to up to six horns (in the case of French horns) and solo instrument rendi-tions. All instruments further subdivide based on their playing techniques, such as mutes, accents, staccato, and marcato articulations.

By and large, the sound quality is gorgeous; the recorded ambience imbues the instruments

Hollywood Brass is indeed a fi ne choice for the desktop or studio composer who scores for fi lm, TV, commercials, or video games.

PROS Realistic, expressive, and beautiful sounding brass with lots of articulations. Great sounding, built-in convolution reverb.

CONS Key-switching not yet supported. Articulations require separate MIDI tracks and recording.

FORMATS Mac or Windows. AU (Mac only), RTAS, VST.

BEST FOR Classical orchestration and fi lm scoring.$995 | soundsonline.com

58 Keyboard 01.2012

If you’re looking for great-sounding brass and reeds for pop, funk, and big-band arrangements, Vir2’s Mojo is a great place to start. Th e compila-tion of brass and reeds is dripping with attitude and a very human touch—which is to say that the samples appear to favor realism over slav-ish consistency. Artifacts come and go from one keystroke to the next, so for example, one sus-tained trumpet note sounds ever so slightly more tremulous then the next round-robin sample of that note. It pays off , producing ensembles which seem to have diff erent musicians rather than the same player cloned several times.

InstrumentsMojo lets you work practically any way you want. You can create solo instruments and set them up for legato performance—an essential way to avoid the note overlap and retriggering that tips your hand as a keyboardist and not a real horn section. You can build multi patches out of individual horns, which is great for complex, individually articulated brass ensembles. You can also choose from a nice batch of multis that already have ensembles laid out across consecutive MIDI channels. If RAM is low, or you’re in a hurry and just want a single brass-section patch, Mojo has you covered with a bunch of single-MIDI-channel instruments comprising diff erent combinations of brass and woodwinds.

As with most sample-based brass sections, the most realistic way to recreate an ensemble is one instrument at a time, each on its own MIDI track, and add bends and other articulations in a separate recording pass. Mojo—which loads

into Native Instruments Kontakt or uses the included Kontakt Player—can load instruments in just this way. On off er are trumpet (including Harmon mute and cup mute), piccolo trumpet, fl ugelhorn, trombone, bass trombone, clarinet, and baritone, tenor, alto, and soprano saxes.

Th e neat trick for both single instruments and multis is the ability to specify the number of players for a given instrument, so if you want to thicken up the horn section, a turn of the dial will give you more of any instrument you choose. In a multi, this lets you set up, for instance, two trombones, four trumpets, two alto saxes and a baritone sax, or any other combination. With a single patch, you simply get more of that instru-ment, whether solo piece or ensemble. If you’re expecting a simple replication of voices to sound keyboard-like or mechanical, you’ll be happily wrong: From one keystroke to the next, instru-ments evidence subtle tonal diff erences, and you can humanize note onsets and tuning . More so than most humanizing features I’ve heard, the results can be subtle or even create the sound of a downright amateur section if that’s your goal.

In UseMojo off ers “lite” patches of its single instru-ments to help you conserve CPU resources. With 14GB RAM in my 2.83GHz, eight-core Mac Pro, I put Mojo through its paces on a dense, big-band, horn-section MIDI fi le that consisted of fi ve saxes (two altos, two tenors, and one bari), four trumpets, and four trombones. I deliberately stripped the fi le of all MIDI control changes ex-

cept for pitch-bend. Using the full-sized patches in MOTU Digital Performer 7.24, tracks played back at the high end of the CPU meter, occasion-ally straying into the red, and causing DP to bring up overload messages with a buff er setting of 64 samples. After a bit of futzing with Kontakt’s memory management, and setting a buff er of 256 in DP, the track sailed along without a hic-cup, never reaching into the red. Playing a solo horn against that track—even from my MIDI guitar—felt comfortable and musical.

In Apple Logic, CPU load didn’t seem to light-en appreciably when I used larger buff ers, and the instruments felt quite playable at settings as high as 512 samples. Driving Mojo from a MIDI track of funk-brass parts from Twiddly Bits yielded equally slick results, albeit with only a single alto sax, tenor sax, trumpet, and trombone. Th at provided a good opportunity to crank that knob I mentioned, doubling the reed players and quadrupling the trum-pets and trombones. Th e sound was fat and animated.

VIR2 INSTRUMENTSMojo

5901.2012 Keyboard

hit the Learn button, and hit the key to which you want to remap that articulation.

For the most part, Vir2’s programmers have done an excellent job of providing realistic ar-ticulations. Switching directly from a relatively “straight” sound to an aff ected technique can often sound abrupt and contrived, but Mojo manages to pull it off convincingly most of the time—trumpet doits, subtle crescendos, realistic, one-fi nger trills, falls, glissandos, and more.

Th ere are also folders of instrument eff ects, full phrases and riff s, and even a folder of patches optimized for wind controllers. With all that, there are still a few instruments I’d like to see: tuba, euphonium, and French horn are missing. I’d also like to see a wider variety of mutes for trumpet and trombone. Nonetheless, Vir2 Mojo presents a solid, great sounding pallet for pop, jazz, and funk styles.

ArticulationsSimply playing back my recorded tracks with just notes and velocity sounded terrific. Effec-tive round-robin programming literally keeps it real. The generous supply of key-switched articulations can be a bit daunting for playing live, especially when you consider that Mojo uses MIDI continuous controllers quite a bit as well. For example, you could key-switch to engage legato mode, then alter the legato time or other qualities with series of consecu-tive CC numbers. That’s a lot to remember. If you’ve ever felt like you’ve forsaken your keyboard for the cockpit of an alien space-craft with more controls than you have digits, you’re not alone. Fortunately, Mojo conveniently lets you assign your own key-switching scheme. Just select an articulation,

PROS Great sounding, versatile library with articulate brass and reed instru-ments. Easily confi gurable key-switch-ing. Expressive MIDI CC assignments. Convenient expansion of players for each instrument.

CONS No French horns, euphoniums, or tuba. Higher sample count can strain at lower buffer settings.

FORMATS Mac or Windows. AU (Mac only), RTAS, VST, and standalone. Loads into NI Kontakt or uses included Kontakt 4 Player.

BEST FOR Big band, pop, and funk.$499.95 list | $449.95 street | vir2.com

60 Keyboard 01.2012

Broadway bands need to be chameleons, chang-ing mood, tonality, and even genre on a dime. Broadway Big Band’s (BBB hereafter) sample con-tent is almost 75 percent larger than Vir2 Mojo (page 58), and small wonder; BBB goes consider-ably beyond supplying brass and woodwinds, including an assortment of drums, percussion, string bass, banjos, xylophone, and even ukulele.

Although brass and woodwinds take cen-ter stage, none of the instruments are after-thoughts, and each contains a thorough helping of key-switched articulations and round-robin samples. Furthermore, horn sections feature multiple brass and woodwind “players,” each with their own alternating samples, rather than ran-domized iterations of a common sample set.

Standout SoundsEach of the brass and reed instruments off er multiple versions of the same axe. You’ll fi nd four, fi ve, or sometimes even six diff erent mic positions, and that’s great for altering the tim-bre and ambience of the instrument. Brass and reeds also have legato or polyphonic versions. Weighing in at about half the sample count of the legato instruments, the poly ones are somewhat less complex.

Nevertheless, they’re handy for things like a gig-ready stack of saxes, trombones, or trumpets, and for just getting a part down in a single pass.Played very softly, saxophones have a soft, breathy attack. With stronger velocities, the at-tack gets more aggressive, but never takes on

that unnatural organ-like sound. Yet for funk horn parts, the attack was always strong enough to “speak” accurately. Even better, the staccato and staccatissimo key switches were perfect for those tight, Brecker Brothers sorts of parts. Th e high end of many other sampled saxes sound tweezed and goofy—that’s defi nitely not the case in BBB. Harder hits in the highest octave progressively refl ect a real player’s eff orts to pull tone from the high end, and those notes evince a subtle smear into the target pitch at some veloci-ties, topping it off with a screaming tone. Th is section has attitude.

Trumpets are every bit as satisfying, with controls for fl utter, growl, vibrato, and four dif-ferent plunger setups. Likewise, turning the stem

FABLE SOUNDSBroadway Big Band

62 Keyboard 01.2012

articulation on or off on the Harmon-muted trumpet can switch its character from comedic to dark to searing to Miles Davis-like. Sampled trumpets usually gravely disappoint, but this one delivers the goods.

As with Mojo, tuba, euphonium, and French horn would be welcome additions, but again, you tend not to hear those in the funk, pop, and swing styles on which BBB is focused.

ArticulationsKey-switching in BBB is extensive, with a patent-ed system covering many non-standard behav-iors—for example, some keys act like a shift key in combination with other notes. BBB provides incredible diversity and realism of articulation, perhaps the best I’ve seen, though playing it all in real time might involve more appendages than you have—at least if you intend to master every key-switch.

What’s most impressive about the ar-ticulations is how well integrated into their respective instruments they are. Many other libraries give you a sense of leaping between entirely different instruments rather than working the tonal qualities of a single one. In BBB, however, key-switching is more than an on/off activity. For example, in some instru-ments, holding down a certain switch will cause legato notes to smear smoothly into the target pitch. Other switches serve as triggers for glissandi and falls. Very sensibly, growls can switch on and off over an already sus-tained note.

Round-robin programming is deep, with mul-tiple cycles for every velocity level. Th at creates far more realistic tonal variations in tone than one or two cycles. No less useful is the Dump/Reload tab, which lets you free up memory by unloading articulations you don’t need.

Th ough mastering all the key-switching

takes some time, you can jump right in and get a ton of mileage from the smooth mod-wheel crescendo and a couple of carefully chosen key-switches. You’ll defi nitely want a 61-key (or longer) controller!

In UseI subjected BBB to the same note-dense MIDI tracks as the other products in this roundup. In Kontakt, audio latency was the same as Vir2 Mojo, although BBB has significantly smaller sample loads—not that you’d guess that from listening. I was mightily impressed by the remarkable live character and authenticity of the sounds, which jumped out at me as though I was sitting in the middle of the orchestra pit. Apart from ensemble arrangements, solo instruments were expressive and convincing, owing in part to smooth, musically integrated release samples, and tremendously expressive modulation wheel control. Here, the default setting created crescendos and diminuendos that realistically changed timbre as well as volume for the instruments. Of course, you can assign a different controller to this. In fact, you can change the default assignment for practically every expressive aspect of BBB—even velocity response.

I wish more software instruments would fol-low BBB’s lead and put an octave-shift button on the panel. It remaps the samples accordingly so

as not to pitch-shift the instrument beyond its real-world range.

At nearly $2,500, Broadway Big Band doesn’t come cheap, and likely won’t be your go-to brass and reeds for classical projects. Nonetheless, with such a painstaking focus on injecting life and a musician’s attitude into each and every note, Broadway Big Band easily rises to the top of the heap for jazz, pop, and funk.

PROS Enormously expressive brass and reeds. High-quality supplemental instru-ments. Unique key-switching system with modifi er keys. MIDI control is ex-tensive, musical, and confi gurable. Deep round-robin programming provides tre-mendous realtime authenticity.

CONS Mastery of complex key-switching system requires some time. No tuba or French horn. Full version is expensive.

FORMATS Mac or Windows. AU (Mac only), RTAS, VST, and standalone. Loads into NI Kontakt or uses included Kontakt 4 Player.

BEST FOR Jazz, pop, funk, rock, and big band.$2,495.95 list | $2,295 street | Lite ver-sion: $499 | fablesounds.com

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• Direct Performance Recording to the internal Song and Pattern sequencer

• Extensive keyboard controller features for all major VSTs and DAWS

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64 Keyboard 01.2012

Perhaps one of the best-known producers of sample libraries targeted for virtual orchestra pits and fi lm scoring stages, Vienna Symphonic Library continues its expansion of expressive, classi-cally oriented instruments with Dimension Brass.

ArchitectureDimension Brass is just that—no saxophones, other woodwinds, jazz horns, or anything other than classically-oriented brass instruments. You get an assortment of trumpets, trombones, horns, and a group of low instruments: a few bass trombone s and tuba, all of which are clean, dry, and gorgeous in their detail.

Th e Vienna Instruments plug-ins and stand-alone software are elegantly suitable for desktop composers and live musicians alike, drawing on conventional key-switching and a few seriously in-novative tricks in the service of natural, articulate instrumental performance. Th e core environment of Dimension Brass and other Vienna libraries is a performance area they call a Matrix. Basically, this is a multitimbral aggregation of patches that you can combine in any order you wish, and it can parcel out the sounds in several ways. You’d be tempted to call it a “multi,” but it’s actually a sub-order below that, as you’ll see. Most useful for live performance is the ability of a Matrix to load an entire instrument and its associated articulations and map them to key-switches.

When you drag your choice of instruments into a Matrix, it becomes a cell, essentially a com-

ponent of the Matrix, or you can drag or double-click to load an entire Matrix with all articula-tions loaded into cells and key-switches as signed. Th e resemblance to a Multi ends here, and this is where things get a bit more complex. You can layer as many Matrix fi les as your computer’s memory can bear, but they’ll occupy a single MIDI channel. Th at’s fi ne for creating stacks, but when you want to load instruments for diff erent MIDI channels, you’ll use an additional program called the Vienna Ensemble. Th ink of the Ensem-ble as a rack with a submixer and each instance of Vienna Instruments as one sound module in that rack.

Vienna Ensemble works standalone and also as a plug-in. So, to create a multiple horn ar-rangement in Logic (for example), where you’ll need to defi ne a multitimbral instrument and the number of channels, you’ll want to create an instrument track for Vienna Ensemble fi rst, then load a Vienna Instrument from inside the plug-in and assign each one to its own Logic track. Th is is inarguably a bit complex (in a large part because of the way Logic handles multitim-bral instruments) but it has its benefi ts: With each instance, you can insert third-party instru-ment plug-ins directly into Vienna Ensemble, rather than the host program. Th is requires Vienna Ensemble Pro; the free, non-Pro ver-sion hosts only the Vienna Instruments. The workaround, of course, is to send instrument outputs to an aux track.

In UseWith a buff er setting of 128 in MOTU Digital Performer, I loaded a section from a General MIDI composition for brass and assigned eight separate voices: two trumpets, three trombones, and three horns. Th at’s eight instances of Vienna Instruments, each with the full set of articula-tions. As the music ran its course, DP’s perfor-mance meter never went over 50 percent. Feel-ing lucky, I reduced the buff er to 64. Th e meter bumped to about 75 percent, but things started to pop and click, letting me know that I was pushing the audio engine too far.

I then moved the buff er back to 128, and put all instruments to Omni mode so that the patches, most of which are polyphonic, would play all their voices at once. Th is sounded ugly, but the point was to be a stress test. DP sailed through it with the Performance meter still hov-ering around 50 percent. In short, you have to

VIENNA SYMPHONIC LIBRARYVienna Dimension Brass

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son: Never use a spring-loaded wheel or joystick as a controller; it just moves back to the starting cell whether you want it to or not.

More FeaturesIt’s worth noting that you can upgrade your Vi-enna Instruments Player to a Pro version. Th is adds more realtime capability to Dimension Brass, including an automatic voicing feature that separates the instruments as you play. Th e Pro version includes patches designed to take advantage of these enhanced features; it’s soni-cally appealing to pick an auto-divisi patch and hear the voices spread over the stereo fi eld as you play your keyboard. You also get a nice sounding, programmable reverb, and a very organic sound-ing pitch humanization feature with an intuitive graphical interface that lets you draw your own pitch profi le over time—the way most acoustic instruments actually behave. Dimension Brass ships with a fully functional, time-limited demo.

As a host program, Vienna Instruments is a bit dense with separate apps: the Ensemble, a 64- or 32- bit service, and even an app to change the brightness and contrast on the main screen if you you’re using Dimension Pro. I can’t shake the

work pretty hard to bring Vienna Instruments down. All the same, I set the buff er to 1,024, and played. Th e feel was a bit spongy, but I was able to compensate. Th ings were pretty playable from buff ers of 512 on down.

ArticulationsDimension Brass really shines as a player’s in-strument. Th e patches are wonderfully expres-sive, and when put together in a matrix, they ful-ly come alive. Key-switches are logically laid out and are realistically and beautifully integrated. You can use the default settings or create your own, but the best news for those who like to keep both hands playing is that you have alternative means to change articulations. Th e instruments’ Control Edit section confers pitch-bend, velocity, speed (time between notes), and any MIDI con-trol change in addition to key-switching.

You can program the X and Y axes of the Matrix with independent modulation sources, so you can traverse each cell of articulation in any way you like. For instance, you might use the pitch wheel for one axis and key-switches for the other. It’s a brilliant way to switch samples, but it feels a bit like skating on ice at fi rst. My fi rst les-

feeling that they could combine most of this into the main interface.

All in all, Dimension Brass is a killer instru-ment for serious orchestral applications, whether they’re classical compositions or fi lm scores. Tak-ing the time to master its Matrix-based articula-tion system pays off with real-time performances that sounds as authentic as if you’d spent hours editing MIDI in a piano-roll window.

PROS Beautifully recorded, remarkably expressive orchestral brass. Virtually lim-itless controls for switching articulations. Outstanding realtime control. Realistic auto-divisi and pitch humanization when used with Vienna Instruments Pro.

CONS Uses several satellite apps, which can be confusing.

FORMATS Mac or Windows. AU (Mac only), RTAS, VST, standalone.

BEST FOR Orchestral music and fi lm scoring.$805 list | $765 street | vsl.co.at

66 Keyboard 01.2012

As they sing on Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the others. Although Arturia Brass 2 produces very realistic sounds with tons of real-time control, it uses physical modeling, not samples, for its sounds. Let’s explore what this means for your music.

InstrumentsBrass 2’s repertoire is less expansive than the sample libraries in this roundup; you get trumpet, trombone, and tenor sax—no bari-tone, alto or soprano saxes—and you can’t play the instruments below their natural range. Although Brass 2 has eliminated the ability to specify fanciful alternate materials such as glass and wood, plenty of new param-eters can shape instruments to a wide variety of musical styles.

As a keyboardist, you’ll be more interested in Brass 2’s Live section; as a desktop composer, you’ll fi nd handy uses for the Riff section. You can set up anything from a single instrument to a quartet. Brass 2 is four-part multitimbral, and you can play stacks as a whole or program individual parts responding to MIDI data from sequencer tracks.

All instruments play in monophonic legato mode, but you can craft chords in a couple of ways. You can build a stack with up to four notes, tuning instruments to intervals. (Ad-ditionally, you can assign a MIDI channel to add scale corrections.) The other method is pseudo-divisi: It assigns the four voices to the notes as played, with each instrument, low through high, in any order you choose. You can also divide up the voices with (for instance)

two instruments in unison or in intervals, and the other two allocated to two notes of a chord. There are plenty of other possibilities, and the ensemble presets give you some good examples. “Funest Ebrass” [sic.] sounds like the Portsmouth Symphonia meets Weather Report after an absinthe binge, thanks to deliberately overzealous application of the humanization feature. Solo instruments include “Blue,” a sub-tly muted trumpet that evokes vintage Miles Davis, the fat honk of “Street Sax,” and the startlingly realistic “Jazzmaster” trombone.

Physical ModelingTh e things you can control are fundamentally dif-ferent from most sample libraries. Programming and customizing your own sounds is stupidly simple, and aided by an elegant user interface.

ARTURIA Brass 2

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Audio examples and performance tests of all these virtual brass instruments.


Select sax, trumpet, or trombone, then choose a mouthpiece and a Type, which is a preset for body construction and material. You can specify types of attack, mutes where appli-cable, and even multiply the instrument up to four times—this seemed to add more presence rather than create the impression of a section. At sensible settings, the humanization creates subtle but palpable variations in pitch, timbre, and even articulation.

Th e modulation matrix lets you assign MIDI controls to various playing artifacts: attack, breath pressure, mute position, plunger posi-tion, noise, growl, vibrato, and volume. Assigning vibrato frequency to a control adds a nicely de-terministic but human touch. Some of the most interesting sounds happen when you over-modu-late and “break” the instrument. I got some really cool “Bitches Brew”-style eff ects by randomizing noise and growl.

Finally, you can add a sense of ambience and placement in the Spatialization section. Drag-ging a graphical stem in the box gives the sonic impression of moving instruments around the room. At that point, I discovered the elusive Chorus Mode—it’s mentioned only once in the manual but never described thoroughly. I set up a four-instrument solo trumpet and discovered four stems in the “house.” Th e multiples of the instrument simply beat against each other due to subtle tuning diff erences, but it’s a remarkably powerful eff ect.

RiffsRiff Mode is essentially a built-in step sequencer with a library of brass patterns in diff erent styles. You can paint in your note data for each of four parts in a piano-roll-type window, and paint in a variety of modulation choices along the sequence’s time line. Th e destinations are the same expressive features you’d control in real time. Th en, you can drag the sequence data into a MIDI track in your DAW. Riff s are limited to two-bar phrases.

In UseI tested Brass 2 with the same big band MIDI fi le I’d used with Mojo and Broadway Big Band, albeit with fewer parts, as a single instance of Brass 2 would not have the capacity for 13 instrumental parts. Not surprisingly, instant gratifi cation wasn’t forthcoming. Th e ensemble sounded

unconvincing and accordion-like. Th at isn’t Arturia’s fault; as a physically modeled instru-ment, Brass 2 requires a bit more information than simple notes to evidence a bit of humanity. Expression-wise, Brass 2 is essentially a blank slate, so you’ll need to add the attitude via MIDI controllers. On the positive side, all of the expression is mapped to realtime MIDI control-lers—and in such a way as to fall right under your fi ngers without the need for key-switches of any kind. In fact, you can instantly set up an instrument to respond to a MIDI keyboard, keyboard plus breath controller, or an electronic wind instrument such as the Akai EWI.

With a buff er of 64, the four-part big-band track ran smoothly—even though the CPU meter in MOTU Digital Performer was mostly pegged. At 128, the tracks ran just under the red, and when played, the responsiveness of the sounds was still superb.

If you can put up with a few puzzling hic-cups in the software and the documentation (as examples, a help balloon that reverses the high and low note range settings and the manual’s occasional naming inconsistencies), you’ll find that Brass 2’s realtime expression is unmatched by any sample-based product. It doesn’t quite meet the “aural Photoshop” ac-curacy of the best sample-based libraries, but

as amazing as those may be, Brass 2 gives you one important thing the others can’t match: totally continuous musical expression, which can often go further in creating realism. One of the earliest criticisms of physically modeled wind instruments was that playing them as a keyboardist had a long learning curve. Artu-ria Brass 2’s most outstanding grace is how it brings immediate and innate expressive capa-bility to the keyboard.

PROS Natural, realistic, and easy-to-play expression for keyboardists. Extensively customizable sounds. Riff section cre-ates parts and patterns for MIDI tracks. Four-part multitimbral.

CONS Only three main instruments. Single instruments are monophonic only. Minor interface and documenta-tion glitches.

FORMATS Mac or Windows. AU (Mac only), RTAS, VST, and standalone.

BEST FOR Playing like a keyboardist but sounding like a trumpet, trombone, or sax—in any musical genre.$249 list | $199 street | arturia.com

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OverviewThink of the Solaris as a virtual modular synth that you patch using the internal software rather than a fistful of cables. Indeed, if it were a modular system, it would be humon-gous, with four oscillators, four filters, seven envelope generators, and five LFOs offering greater complexity than off-the-shelf hard-ware synths. Playable controllers include a 29-inch ribbon, an X/Y joystick, and enough front-panel knobs and buttons for fast access to more than 1,250 parameters. The 61-note synth-action keyboard supports velocity and channel aftertouch. Real wood side panels add a touch of class.

Although it can sound so convincingly analog that the fi rst time I powered it up, I thought it was, the Solaris is completely digital—which lets it change personalities to suit your needs. Several

REVIEW VIRTUAL BRASS » SYNTHESIZER » KEYTAR » SOFTWARE PIANO » APP

JOHN BOWEN HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF SYNTH AND SOUND DESIGNsince the early ’70s, contributing to synths from Moog, Sequential Circuits, Yamaha, Korg, and Creamware. In 2007, he began demonstrating his own prototype, the Solaris—one man’s dream of the perfect hardware synthesizer. After years of anticipation and collaboration with German manufacturer SonicCore, his dream is now a reality.

synth architectures are available, including three types of vintage analog modeling, sample play-back, and vector and wavetable synthesis. For eff ects, you get delay, chorus/fl anger, phaser, and three-band EQ.

The Solaris is not multitimbral; you can’t play more than one preset at a time, and it doesn’t receive on multiple simultaneous MIDI channels. Bowen hopes to add a four-part multitimbral mode someday. Polyphony is ten voices—not generous by modern standards, but the Solaris’s 32-bit, 96kHz audio engine gives it a pristine sound that sparkles with per-sonality. Bowen says polyphony could double with an OS update.

Th e Solaris stores all presets, samples, arpeg-gio and sequencer patterns, and the operating system on a CompactFlash card. CompactFlash has been around since 1994, and though it’s ceded

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PROS Wonderful sounds. Ex-quisite audio quality. Multiple synthesis types and extremely fl exible modulation routing. Plenty of visual feedback and hands-on control.

CONS Not multitimbral. No true multisample mapping. Limited polyphony. Expensive.

Snap Judgment

SolarisBY GEARY YELTON

JOHN BOWEN SYNTH DESIGN

popularity to the SD format, it’s still robust. With a suitable card reader, you can hook up to your computer to back up all your patch data or install OS updates you’ve downloaded.

The PanelTh e Solaris’ front panel has six backlit mono-

eters for each section—fi lter type, cutoff , and resonance, for example—and “Mod” lets you dial in modulation sources. If you want to route four sources to fi lter parameters, you can choose from dozens of modulators, specify another source to modulate the modulator (e.g., the mod wheel governing the depth with which an LFO varies the fi lter cutoff ), and select cutoff or resonance as the destination.

In addition to the buttons and knobs sur-rounding the display, other buttons access functions such as turning the arpeggiator and sequencers on and off, turning the four mixers on and off, bypassing the effects, and performing utility functions. I especially appreciated the Undo button, which returns the most recently changed parameter to its previous value.

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As the Oberheim Matrix-12 was to the ’80s, the Solaris is to today, only far, far deeper. To see it and hear it is to want it.

$3,999 directjohnbowen.com

Bottom Line

POLYPHONY 10 voices.

SYNTHESIS TYPES Virtual analog, wavetable, vector synthesis, user sample playback.

WEIGHT 33 lbs.

Key Info

chrome LCDs. Th e main display’s contents are controlled by a row of buttons above and two rows of knobs below. Th en, fi ve two-line text displays and their associated buttons and knobs are each devoted to one or two building blocks of synthesis: oscillators, LFOs, envelopes, and so on. One display lets you instantly access four fi lters and four amplifi ers, and another handles four mixers and four insert eff ects. All these dedicated displays are a brilliant solution to the age-old question: How can you quickly change dozens of parameters without scrolling through dozens of pages?

By default, the main display shows the cur-rent preset. Access to arpeggiator, sequencer, ribbon, output, and eff ects parameters is just a button-press away. Each text display has just two modes: “Main” is where you set basic param-

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Oscillators and FiltersMuch of the Solaris’ versatility lies in its four multiple-personality oscillators, each generating six types. Th e MM1 multimode type, for exam-ple, models waveforms ranging from old-school analog to sine waves that morph continuously into sawtooth or pulse. Variable waveshapes are so precise that you can dial up a pulse wave with a width of just one percent. Th e “Jaws” waveform stacks seven detuned sawtooth waves, obvi-ously emulating Roland’s SuperSaw. You can also specify a waveform’s beginning phase and hard-sync any oscillator to another.

Other oscillator types emulate specifi c vin-tage instruments. Th e CEM (Curtis Electromusic) type emulates the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, and the Mini type nails the Minimoog sound. When I compared it to my Moog Voyager’s output, I was impressed by its accuracy, but not at all surprised—Creamware’s Minimax is still one of the best virtual Minimoogs out there, and it’s part of the Solaris’s DNA. [Hardware that still runs Minimax and other Creamware-derived plug-in synths includes the Use Audio Plugiator, reviewed July ’09, and SonicCore’s new SCOPE system, to be reviewed next month. —Ed.]

VS Vector Synthesis borrows its 94 single-cycle waveforms from the Sequential Circuits Prophet-VS. (Bowen created most of them when he worked for Sequential in the

’80s.) This was the first synth that used a joystick to crossfade between oscillators—a technique called vector synthesis, which was later adopted by the Korg Wavestation. Simi-larly, the Wavetable oscillator type borrows 64 wavetables from Waldorf ’s vintage MicroWave, itself a descendant of the classic PPG Wave synth, which could step through dozens of wave-forms in rhythmic fashion to produce very dynamic sounds. So in addition to no-compro-mise virtual analog synthesis, you’ve basically got a Prophet- VS and a PPG inside the Solaris.

Another oscillator type plays user samples. You can load your own sample data in WAV or RAW formats to the Solaris’ CompactFlash drive, but you’re limited to a single sample for each of the four oscillators. An update could deliver true multisample mapping someday, but the Solaris can modify and mangle audio in so many ways that its user sampling is still quite useful.

Th e Solaris is the fi rst synth I’ve seen that implements the concept of Rotors, and I don’t mean a Leslie speaker eff ect. A Solaris Rotor is a mixer that cycles between its inputs at a rate determined by a control oscillator. Each of the Solaris’ two Rotors has four inputs that can be any audio or control source. You can either switch between inputs instantaneously or cross-fade between them. Because the control oscilla-tor extends from LFO to audio-range rates, you

can shift from four-step wave sequences to audio waveforms that are rich in sum-and-diff erence tones (that’s why the rotor controls are in the oscillator section). In short, Rotors let you program animated sounds you’ve never heard before.

Each of the four fi lters is a master of disguise. At one moment, it’s multimode, with a huge se-lection of types and cutoff slopes; at another, it’s accurately emulating the Prophet-5, Oberheim SEM, or Minimoog fi lter. Th e vocal formants setting very eff ectively re-creates fi ve vowel-like sounds, and you can shift between them with the joystick. Th e comb fi lter setting delays the signal to create a feedback or feed-forward loop and is useful for simulating plucked strings and more off -kilter sounds. Plus, because you can route any combination of fi lters in series or parallel and dynamically modulate them, you can build very complex, constantly shifting sounds.

Th e Solaris can process external audio routed through either its 1/4" inputs or its S/PDIF port. Among other things, you can fi lter them, apply eff ects, or use them as inputs for the Solaris’ enve-lope follower.

LFOs and EnvelopesLike a modular synth, the Solaris lets you use almost any signal as a modulation source, with three or four possible sources for each destination. Normal functions off er greater complexity than

The two audio inputs and eight outputs are all bal-anced. You’ll also fi nd optical S/PDIF, MIDI, USB, and inputs for expression and sustain pedals.

7301.2012 Keyboard

those of off -the-shelf synths; for example, the multi-waveform LFOs extend well into the audio range: up to 500kHz. You not only get four LFOs that can modulate practically anything, but a fi fth LFO dedicated to vibrato. You can delay LFO start times, specify phase angle and fade-in and fade-out times, and even route three more sources to modulate each LFO.

With seven envelope generators, the Solaris enters the sound-shaping realm of more complex soft synths and large-scale modulars. At fast settings, the envelopes are impressively snappy. Six of them add an initial delay stage that can postpone the attack as much as 20 seconds. You can apply velocity, the mod wheel, key tracking, or any of four external MIDI CCs to modulate the attack, decay, and release times and sustain level. Five envelopes are freely assignable; the sixth is dedicated to the four VCAs.

Th e seventh generates a loopable two-way envelope and off ers even more fl exibility. You can determine the loop’s start point and which stage plays when you release a key. You can also specify and modulate the levels and times for each of eight segments. Th is is useful for creating vector synthesis patches with droning oscillators and

for playing through wavetables in real time.

Controllers, Arpeggiator, and Sequencer Just above the pitch and modulation wheels, the joystick can control almost any two parameters (one for each axis) in real time. Its primary pur-pose, though, is to crossfade between four sound sources—the basis of vector synthesis.

Th e assignable ribbon can control two parameters simultaneously when you use two fi ngers. You can set its zero point as either the center or the left edge, or have the zero point reset to wherever you fi rst touch it. A hold func-tion maintains the ribbon’s eff ect on the sound even if you remove your fi nger. Ribbons are most often used to bend pitch, and this one lets you bend to any interval, even beyond the range of hearing. Two improvements I’d like to see: I wish you could program the rate at which the ribbon’s value returns to zero, and I wish it could change values in discrete steps. (Applied to pitch, this would sound like a glissando as opposed to smooth portamento.)

Th e arpeggiator off ers touches such as varying degrees of swing, a 32-note maximum

Synth designer John Bowen plays his creation at Frankfurt Musikmesse.

74 Keyboard 01.2012

length, and beat resolution ranging from a 32nd-note to eight measures. Th ough it can store 64 patterns, only four were loaded in my test unit. Editing software for the arpeggiator and sequencer is in the works, and more factory patterns will be preloaded in future units. In the meantime, the Solaris’ display is large enough to make editing a snap.

Th e analog-style step sequencer has four rows (or tracks, if you prefer) for controlling oscillator frequency, note velocity, or any other modulation destination. Sequence length can be anything from one to 16 steps, and each row can be a diff erent length. Because each sequence is a modulation source, you set up its routing at the destination. For example, to control oscillator pitch, you specify a sequence as a mod source in the oscillator section. Once that’s done, you dial in the value of each step in the main display. Th is scheme isn’t particularly intuitive, but it makes sense once you get used to it and allows for tre-mendous fl exibility.

With the sequencer enabled, any note you play will trigger the sequence. When you hold down a chord, each note in the chord follows the sequence. Unlike with the arpeggiator,

though, you can’t press Hold to keep a se-quence repeating.

Factory SoundsThe Solaris has four banks with room for 128 presets in each. You can store up to 128 banks on the CF card. My review unit came with 350 ready-to-play presets and a few more intended as templates for programming your own sounds. John Bowen expects more to be available soon. Sounds range from soothing and ethereal to ballsy and downright twisted. Basses of all descriptions are in ample sup-ply, and thick string pads are also abundant. Authentic-sounding Minimoog-style leads are especially plentiful, too. You’ll also find quite a few excellent presets that show off the arpeggiator. Because most factory sounds emulate analog synths, you won’t find realis-tic emulations of acoustic instruments, and that’s just fine with me.

ConclusionsMore than any other synth, the Solaris reminds me of one of my all-time favorites, the Ober-heim Matrix-12, in both its physical appear-ance and its routing versatility. But it goes way beyond the Matrix into territory previously explored only by modular synthesists. Despite the Solaris’ complexity, its comprehensive and well-designed user interface makes it relatively easy to program once you learn your way around.

Although the Solaris is totally based on digital signal processing, it certainly sounds like an analog synth. Given the Prophet-VS and PPG-like modes, it can sound digital as well, but its extended audio specs give even its digital waveforms a warmth (for want of a better word) that no other digital synth I know achieves. Sure, it’s a boutique instrument with a price to match, but it defi nitely stands out from the crowd. If you want to as well, get your hands on one.

Audio clips and up-close video of the Solaris synthesizer.


Schaaf’s new creation, the Accelerator, has had a similarly long development cycle, but it was ready for prime time when it started shipping. Th e Accelerator is a high-end virtual analog synth featuring multi-part sequencing and arpeggiators, impressive programming fl exibility, and modulation by tilting the keyboard along two axes, much like you might with an iPad synth. It’s also scalable: Adding one expansion card ups the base spec of eight voices and two multitimbral parts to 20 voices and eight parts; a second card bumps polyphony up to 32 voices.

HardwareTh e keybed feels solid and has a smooth, responsive synth action. Th e interface, however, straddles both modern and vintage (as in ’80s-style) synth design. Although recent performance synths have added dedicated controls for the most important parameters,


RADIKAL FIRST HIT THE SYNTH SCENE SEVERAL YEARS AGO WITH THE Spectralis, a 32-voice module that sported, among other things, analog and digital fi lters, sequencers, multisample playback, step sequencing, and drum programming. Its designer, Jörg Schaaf, is one serious synth player (his credits include work with Klaus Schulze) who set out to create the instrument he’d want to play. As a result, the Spectralis was a constant work in progress, not unlike a modular synth, where new ideas are added and perfected over time.

the Accelerator takes a hybrid approach by using endless knobs (a.k.a. rotary encoders) that double as buttons when you push them in. As a result, the interface isn’t overcrowded with knobs (though some synth players might prefer one knob per function), yet you can still access what you need quickly. Still, you should plan to spend a little time getting acquainted with the Accelerator’s interface.

Once you do, you’ll fi nd that the layout is straightforward: Turn a knob to change parameters, or push it in quickly to make a selection or step through menu pages. If you get lost, hold a knob down for two seconds to access the built-in help system, where a text description of what the encoder controls pops up on the LCD. In fact, no matter where you are in the menus, when you turn a knob, a small window pops up in the left corner of the screen to display the values you’re dialing in.

76 Keyboard 01.2012

PROS Excellent sound quality. Deep programmability. Con-tinuously variable oscillator and LFO waveforms. Excep-tional modulation capabilities. Built-in help menus.

CONS No editor/librarian software yet. Menu-oriented interface takes some getting used to.

Snap Judgment

AcceleratorBY GINO ROBAIR

RADIKAL TECHNOLOGIES

In some cases, there are two ways to get something done—either in the menus or by using the “Direct Edit” controller matrix. Five buttons—VCO, VCF, VCA, LFO, and User—select what the row of eight knobs controls does. For example, to edit VCO 3, press the VCO button three times. Now you have hands-on control over

By default, the left button of the pair above the pitch and mod wheels controls rotary speaker speed in the organ presets. However, I programmed these buttons to create sudden interval leaps in several lead patches.

While it became easier to edit Accelerator patches the more I worked with the instrument, I’d prefer to use a software editor. Unfortunately, the editor/librarian is still in development.

What’s in a VoiceWhile the multitude of features makes programming seem daunting at fi rst glance, the Accelerator’s overall structure is fairly logical. Each synth voice has three oscillators, noise, and the output of a ring modulator that uses oscillators 2 and 3. Th e oscillator’s waveforms are continuously variable from sine to square, making them perfect modulation targets.

In addition, you can add “time linearity modulation” (TLM) to each oscillator. TLM is similar to pulse width modulation, except that it works with any waveform, not just pulse waves. In essence, it divides the waveform into its positive and negative phases and lets you lengthen one phase while shortening the other, as the LCD shows a graphic of the waveform’s changing shape. You can independently modulate

77 01.2012 Keyboard

Sounds so fat you’d think it’s a real analog synth, but has a depth of modulation options only a virtual analog machine can offer at anywhere near this price.

Base: $2,195 directExpansion cards: $395 eachradikaltechnologies.com

Bottom Line

eight parameters (one for each knob): waveform, coarse tuning, and so forth. Need to edit VCF 2? Hit the VCF button twice. Th e LCD follows your moves, and parameters are printed on the panel so you won’t forget.

To go deeper into editing, turn or push the Page knob and cursor around the LCD with the up and down buttons. Th e three knobs below the screen change values.

Considering the multi-function controls, the Accelerator is easy to use in live performance. It has dedicated controls for octave shifting, bypassing the eff ects, setting the eff ect wet/dry mix, and dialing in arpeggiator and sequencer tempo. An Arp-Edit button calls up parameters that let you “play” sequenced parts using the knobs.

78 Keyboard 01.2012

the waveform and the amount of TLM using any of the controllers. As if that isn’t enough, you can sync oscillator 1 to 2, or use oscillators 2 and 3 to phase-modulate all three oscillators. Th e potential result is some serious harmonic complexity.

Th e Accelerator’s four LFOs also have continuously variable waveforms, including a random setting. Th ree of the LFOs are polyphonic and used for modulating voice parameters, while the fourth is global. Th is lets you create patches where the modulation starts at a diff erent time for each note in a chord. Th e fi rst thing I did was assign a slow, random LFO shape to the output pan position, so that as I added notes to a chord they panned independently, but in tempo, within the stereo space.

Th ere are two main multimode fi lters (two- and four-pole varieties of lowpass, highpass, notch, and bandpass) per voice, and a separate fi lter dedicated to the noise source. In addition, a cool “String Filter” employs something like the Karplus-Strong method that’s typically used for modeling plucked strings. Th is version has been enhanced with high- and low-frequency damping and the ability to change the phase of the output. Together with its dedicated pitch envelope, the String Filter is well suited for emulating bowed strings, especially when combined with a little fi ltered noise.

Th e Accelerator’s envelopes are faster than those in the Spectralis, and it’s very much

evident in the factory presets. Th ey’re great for creating snappy percussion and punchy basses.

Savvy synth users will be happy to learn that the modulation capabilities in the Accelerator are extensive, with 50 modulators and 32 potential destinations. In addition to the LFOs and envelopes, modulation sources include pedal inputs, channel aftertouch, key-off velocity, a randomizer, and even a sequencer line.

One modulator that’s unique to the Accelerator is the position sensor, which can read the degree to which you tilt the instrument both left-to-right and front-to-back. Each axis can be assigned to any of the modulation targets. Although the keyboard is relatively lightweight, it’s not light enough for you to use position modulation as freely as you might with an iPad synth. If you dial in too much of it, you’ll hear the results as the keyboard shakes on its stand while you play—it’s that sensitive. (Th at actually worked surprisingly well for realistic pitch-bends on a Koto.)

Effects and SequencingOne of the fi rst things you’ll notice when playing is the high-quality eff ects processor, which off ers distortion, modulated delay, chorus, phase shifting, reverb, and a Leslie speaker emulation. Schaaf’s presets take full advantage of them, and the dedicated FX Dry/Wet knob is handy for dialing in a tasteful amount of signal processing in real time.

Th e Accelerator’s four stereo eff ects busses are dynamically allocated, and in the base version of the synth, one eff ect is assigned to each sound. Th is lets you change patches on the fl y without hearing a bump in the sound due to the eff ect algorithm being interrupted. Add one expansion card, and you can use all four eff ects busses at once.

Th e phaser and chorus sound particularly good, and lend a very ’70s sound to the brass and pads. I had the most fun with the rotary eff ect because the Accelerator off ers independent control over the upper and lower rotors. Just varying their rates creates a stunning eff ect, especially on external sound sources. Th e synth’s audio inputs can handle instrument- as well as line-level inputs, so I plugged my 12-string electric guitar right in and wallowed in the psychedelic sounds of the phaser and rotating speaker. It’s not clonewheel-grade Leslie emulation, but it’s very musical.

Speaking of trippy sound, the Accelerator has feature-rich sequencing and arpeggiating. Th ere are two arpeggiators and two sequencers in the basic model, upgradable to eight of each by adding an expansion card. Th e 32-step sequencer

POLYPHONY 8 voices, expandable to 32.MULTITIMBRAL PARTS 2, expand-able to 8.Oscillators per voice 3.Filters per voice 3.WEIGHT 19.8 lbs.

Key Info

The knobs—eight endless ones with fi ve rows of functions, plus three more near the LCD—felt like the “just right” amount for quick editing in live performance.

79 01.2012 Keyboard

Original audio examples and video overview.


has one row for pitches and chords, and three additional rows for parameter values. Although plenty powerful for songwriting in the studio, the sequencer is optimized for performance, allowing you to “play” parameters while it’s running.

Th e arpeggiator is equally gig-ready. It can play notes in several directions (including random), while dialing in the number of note repeats and octave leaps, as well as rhythmic values and gating amounts in real time. I spent hours playing Splits where I had an arpeggiated voice in one hand and a pad or brass sound in the other.

SoundsSingle sounds can easily be split into key ranges or stacked as a Dual. It’s easy to set up Splits and Duals on the fl y, and to store Performances, which contain all the parts’ settings, including those for the eff ects and arpeggiator.

Calling up a sound is old school—you select bank and program numbers. Th ankfully, you can save a series of ten patches (as well as assorted keyboard functions) in a chain, making it easier to step through them while playing. You can store up to 100 chains.

While there are many bread-and-butter patches in all categories, the current series of

presets veer more towards the creative aspects of sound design than instrument emulation. Keyboardists looking for electric piano timbres will fi nd just over a dozen, for example. You have about 200 user slots to save single sounds.

Th ere are 300 factory presets to start with, and the majority of them are musically useful while showing off the programming capabilities of the synth. So while the ten sound categories are conveniently banked by type—Bass, Organ, Sequencer, Lead, Percussion (meaning percussive keyboards), Brass, Arpeggio, Pad, SFX, and Drums—expect to do some archeology in fi nding sounds for a project. Once you do, put them in a chain for easy recall.

Standouts include “Brassy Pad,” which hints at “Crazy Diamond”-era Pink Floyd; the “2 Filters” bass patch that off ers Aftertouch expressiveness; and “Comb Flute 2” with its String Filter breathiness. Overall, the Bass, Brass, Lead, and Pad categories provided the most satisfying starting points for creative tweaking.

With the exception of a few kick drums, the big disappointment was the Drum category. Having only two multitimbral parts in an unexpanded Accelerator doesn’t allow kit building, as the most you can do is split the keyboard into two sounds such as kick and snare.

The Randomize feature is a cool patch starter. It automatically assembles (and names) a new sound by recombining parameters from existing presets.

ConclusionsTh e Accelerator is a powerhouse of programma-bility for musicians looking to create signature sounds, but geared towards immediacy and fun in live performance. Its overall audio quality is outstanding. Despite being DSP-based, it conjures realistic and powerful analog timbres when you want them, but easily moves on to the broader palette of sounds you’d expect from a digital keyboard. It’s a musically satisfying synth that has a sound all its own.

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OverviewOur test unit was glossy black—a request from me since the pearl-white model looked like it be-longed to Barbie. (No Ken jokes, please!) Ribbing aside, while the black AX-09 gives off a more seri-ous vibe, some of Roland’s promo materials show the white Lucina in the hands of teenage girls. If market research showed that a white fi nish made the AX-09 more attractive to this demographic, that’s laudable—lest women be shoved toward “girl-appropriate” instruments like piano, clari-net, and fl ute. It’s easy to imagine Japanese teens slapping Hello Kitty stickers on their Lucinas and bopping cheerfully onstage in school uniforms—only to transform into feral electro-punkers at the count-off . By gum, my daughters deserve the same opportunity.

Shall we get the bugaboos for pros out of the way? Th e keys don’t sense aftertouch. Th ere’s no dedicated sustain button; the modulation bar can be set to control sustain, but it’s an either/or prop-osition. A concession to desktop use removed the controls from the back of the neck, so unlike the AX-Synth, there’s nothing back there. Th e neck


THE KEYTAR IS MAKING A COMEBACK IN BOTH IRONIC AND UN-IRONIC CONTEXTS. Lady Gaga has several outlandishly customized ones, and they keep popping up everywhere. Aimed simultaneously at beginners, desktop music producers, and pros, the Lucina AX-09 presents, at the very least, a fresh take on the keytar, eschewing a guitar-like neck in favor of a cutout for the pitch ribbon and modula-tion bar. Let’s see what else it offers.

cutout is a little tight for those of us with larger hands, making both ends of the pitch ribbon hard to reach comfortably. Desktop considerations also put MIDI, USB B, aux in, headphone, and audio outs on the edge that faces the fl oor when the AX-09 hangs from a shoulder strap, which is less than ideal when playing keytar-style. I recommend using right-angle plugs for any audio or MIDI outs and pulling the cables through the shoulder strap to avoid spontaneous disconnection.

Th e placement of the D-Beam, Roland’s sig-nature gestural controller, has taken some fl ak in other reviews, but I don’t agree with them—with the mod bar set to provide sustain, you can make showy moves by sustaining a note and reaching across with your right hand to play the D-Beam.

Th ere isn’t much to recommend the AX-09 as your fi rst or only choice for a keyboard you mainly intend to use on your desktop, but I think Roland is trying to sweeten the pot: “You can also use it in the studio.” In that regard it succeeds: Th e idea that a touring musician can set this up with a lap-top in the hotel and then sling it around onstage is valid, especially for indies who live in the whirl-

80 Keyboard 01.2012

PROS Cool look and compact size. Many impressive sound presets.

CONS No aftertouch. Limited editing. Could use more synth sounds.

Snap Judgment

Lucina AX-09BY KEN HUGHES

ROLAND

wind of traveling, performing, writing, producing, and selling while on the move.

SoundsTh ey’re quite good. Surprisingly, they’re not espe-cially weighted toward the things you’d expect on a keytar; while there’s a healthy selection of leads, both analog-style and otherwise, there are also things in the “pleasant surprise” category, such as the crunchy overdriven Clav, swingin’ jazz organ, startling solo female voice, and Mellotron-style strings. In the “could do without” category: Th e harpsichord, church organ, jazz scat vocals, most of the brass/woodwind section, and santur.

You can save edited patches in one of 12 Fa-vorites slots, which are remembered even with the power off . Six “Special Tones” hint at Roland’s SuperNatural technology, in that they have more velocity-mapped multisamples with the mod bar and D-Beam off ering enhanced expression,

though they’ve somehow napped at midday through noisy home repairs, the quiet thunk-thunk-thunk of a synth played through head-phones wakes them up. So I appreciated that the AX-09 could play MP3 or WAV audio fi les from a USB stick and run on batteries, because I could throw on headphones and practice over a backing track somewhere else. Roland is, so far, the only company to put playback on a keytar. Songs are accessed in alphanumeric order by fi le name.

ConclusionsFor whom is the Lucina AX-09 best suited? If you’re a music student or in your fi rst band and want to get your feet wet with synths, think of it as a cool “my fi rst synth” with the keytar factor as a bonus. It’s just as attractive if you’re a weekend pro looking to add a step-out-in-front performance keyboard to your existing rig.

81 01.2012 Keyboard

A great “my fi rst synth” and a good choice for semi-pros and pros who want to augment their rig with a performance keytar.

Black: $799 list | $699 streetWhite: $699 list | $599 streetrolandus.com

Bottom Line

09 has USB; maybe an editor that accesses a deeper synth engine is a future possibility?

In UseTh is being an entry-level synth, the synth action isn’t Roland’s top of the line, but it’s fairly deluxe and better than I expected. Th e keys feel solid and stout, with a pleasing amount of resistance that shades toward the lighter side. Th e pitch ribbon responds to a light touch and stays slick even when your hands get sweaty. Th e mod bar has a fairly long throw so it’s easy to control the amount of modulation you’re applying. Th e two-digit LED is easy to read in all but the brightest stage light or sunshine. Roland includes a strap and even throws in a pouch for a wireless trans-mitter or iPod (not included).

When I’m not gigging, I’m a work-at-home dad. My studio is next to the kids’ room, and

Audio examples and video fi rst look!


but I’m baffl ed at the selection of sounds in this area. If I’m a teen in a band, what do I want with a violin, albeit a beautifully expressive one? As a semi-pro, I wished for choices like a pad with the D-Beam bringing in a layer of shimmer, or more lead synths. Th ere are two very good poly-synth sounds among the Special Tones, but they’re not heaps better than the already good sounds in the “regular” synth bank. Th e synth bass actually ap-proaches dubstep wobble if you activate the D-Beam and assign it to the fi lter. I like that.

Editing is limited to fi lter cutoff and resonance, envelope attack and release, portamento on/off , and reverb amount, but you can get pretty far from the original sound with just those parameters. Given the guitar-like posture of a shoulder synth, stompboxes are a natural idea for more sonic varia-tion, but with the DSP obviously already at work in the AX-09, I’d rather get that from within. Th e AX-

Th ough Synthogy doesn’t refer to it as such, Italian Grand is the mighty Fazioli F308, the only ten-foot concert grand in production. Upright Pianos con-sists of a Yamaha U5, a 1914 A.M. Hume, a “Honky Tonk Barroom” sampled from the 1915 Packard that used to be at the Cheers bar in Boston, and a “Real Tack Piano.” You can install each piano sepa-rately or all at once, and if you’ve already got another Ivory library installed, it will put these pianos in the same location. Both Italian Grand and Uprights are self-contained instruments; you don’t need the Ivory II Grands package to play them.

What’s NewTo start, Italian Grand now has up to 18 veloc-ity layers, and the Uprights have up to 16. While playing, transitions between dynamic levels felt seamless and natural. More realism is provided by the addition of release samples, creating real-istic “air” when you release a key. You can tighten or lengthen this eff ect or turn the release sam-ples off . I got spoiled, and wouldn’t want to play without them unless I really needed to conserve


IVORY HAS BECOME THE GO-TO VIRTUAL PIANO FOR COMPOSERS EVERYWHERE,not to mention those who use software in their live gig rigs. Most recently, Ivory II Grands—with its emulations of Steinway D, Bösendorfer Imperial 290, and Yamaha C7 concert pianos—won a Key Buy Award in our March 2011 issue. With Italian Grand and Upright Pianos now available with Ivory II specs and full 64-bit support on Mac and Windows (including Mac OS X Lion), I was eager to discover what mojo the latest features bring to two already formidable instruments.

computer resources. With any current machine—even an entry-level iMac or sub-$1,000 PC lap-top—and a sample-dense instrument like Ivory II, that’s all about RAM and disk throughput rather than CPU specs. We recommend a sepa-rate 7,200 rpm hard drive for Ivory’s libraries. Better yet, invest in a solid-state drive (SSD) and bump up your RAM past Synthogy’s requirement of 2GB, and you’ll be able to play with virtually full polyphony and happy abandon.

ResonanceTwo types of resonance are in Ivory II: Sympathetic and Sustain. Sympathetic Resonance excites com-mon harmonics in undamped strings, e.g., while holding down middle C, play a loud staccato C an octave lower. You’ll hear harmonics that middle Cshares with the lower C, like you would on an acous-tic piano. Ivory II captures this eff ect very convinc-ingly across both Italian and Upright pianos.

When I play an acoustic piano and hold down the sustain pedal, the whole sound feels larger, with the sounds practically swimming around the

82 Keyboard 01.2012

PROS Stunningly realistic and playable sounds. Lots of user control over sonic details such as sympathetic reso-nances and release samples. Tons of dynamic range. Mac and Windows compatible. Up to 1,000-voice polyphony with solid-state drives.

CONS Long install time.

Snap Judgment

Ivory II Italian Grand and Upright PianosBY TOM BRISLIN

SYNTHOGY

player’s perspective. With Italian Grand, Sustain Resonance creates similar harmonic excitement. However, when I turned its knob up, I started to perceive more distance from the source, not unlike a reverb eff ect. It seemed to be most realistic when I used a conservative amount and experimented with the various types of virtual soundboards (from clean to extra-resonant). With Upright Pianos, I had an easy time getting a pleasing setting.

Finer DetailsTo enhance realism, Ivory II has enhanced the soft pedal samples for both Italian Grand and Upright Pianos. Since the soft pedal operates diff erently on a grand piano than it does on an upright, it bears

custom tuning tables in addition to the expected stretch-tuned and equal-temperament options.

ConclusionsIf you want the Fazioli in a sampled format, Ivory II Italian grand is the best option going. I can see this being a top choice for many recording applications, and the rock-solid sample playback engine inspires confidence for live use. It’s a fun instrument to play and a convincing one to hear. Upright Pianos cap-tures the character and charm that’d make you reach for an upright in the first place. You do need a powerful host computer to get the most convincing emulations of both the Italian and Upright pianos, but if your machine can keep up, the results are among the most authentic re-creations available today.

83 01.2012 Keyboard

The Ivory brand continues to be the platinum standard of software pianos, and both Italian Grand and Uprights offer unique and highly desirable fl avors.

Italian Grand: $179 list | $169 street | $69 upgrade from Ivory 1.xUpright Pianos: $299 list | $269 street | $109 upgrade from Ivory 1.xsynthogy.com

Bottom Line

200Hz) without it sounding “EQ’ed.” Also, lid position is nicely implemented, with “real world” settings analogous to either a grand or upright piano. Timbre Shift transforms the piano sounds into new and strange tones, though it did use a bit more of the CPU. And fi nally, you can load

mentioning that these diff erences are addressed in Ivory as well. On a grand, the soft pedal, or una corda, shifts the hammers sideways so they strike only one string per note. Th at creates a noticeable diff erence in tone and power. Italian Grand indeed has a noticeable tonal variation, but I must admit it wasn’t what I expected. Th e soft pedal samples are indeed mellower, but there was a surprising increase in warmth and a perception of a longer decay rate from middle C and up. Perhaps this is a result of a more limited dynamic range for the soft pedal samples, but that’s just a guess. Whether or not Ivory II perfectly emulates the Fazioli F308’s behavior in this area, the soft pedal sound is enjoyable nonetheless. With the uprights, it’s more of a straight “soft” eff ect, emulating a real upright’s mechanism that brings the hammers closer to the strings.

You can now add pedal noise to any Ivory II piano, and it sounds as good (or as bad) as in real life. Plus, you can activate “random creaks and clunks” in the synth layer section, to get that old-timey eff ect on upright sounds. All Ivory II pianos do half-pedaling (if you’ve got a MIDI controller and pedal that supports it), and you can also assign a “Silent Key Velocity” level, beneath which your key-board will trigger no sound. I liked that resonances were still audible for the silent notes, as they would be on an acoustic piano.

Th e parametric EQ is a useful addition; it let me add some gravitas to the Italian Grand and Modern Upright sounds (a slight bump at

DjayBY FRANCIS PREVE

Two virtual turntables access the music library in your iPad’s iPod app. There are simple volume sliders for each turntable and an A/B mix slider for crossfading between the wheels o’ silicon. For newcomers, each turntable includes a Sync button, which does an excellent job of locking the tracks, but is only so-so at finding the downbeat. (Hey, that’s what your ears are for, right?) There’s even an automix


THERE ARE QUITE A FEW DJ APPS OUT THERE, BUT ONLY ONE OF THEM WON Apple’s 2011 Design Award: Algoriddim Djay. Make no mistake, other apps are quite capable—and new genre-bending apps like SoundTrends Meta.DJ can do more than simple DJing—but for vinyl-style spinning with a 21st-century fl air, Djay is the purist’s pick. There are iPhone and Mac OS X versions, but I’ll focus on the dedicated iPad version, as the iPad’s screen size and multitouch capabil-ity best emulates the experience of putting your hands on turntables.

mode that magically mixes tracks from your iPod library while you set up the Jäger shots. [It’s high time the EDM scene graduated to Fernet Branca. Set the trend, Francis! —Ed.]

Other amenities include EQ, on-the-fly looping on both turntables, three cue points per track, and get this: tempo-synced scratching when you use two fi ngers. Single-fi nger scratching is non-tempo-synced. Some might complain that there are no eff ects such as delay and fi ltering,

PROS Does vinyl-style DJing on your iPhone or iPad. Realtime scratching, both tempo-synced and freewheeling.

CONS No DJ-type effects such as tap delay or fi ltering.

Snap Judgment

No iPad app comes closer to having two turntables and a crate of vinyl.

$19.99 at iTunes App Store

algoriddim.com

Bottom Line

ALGORIDDIM

84 Keyboard 01.2012

but keep in mind that Djay is going for a purist vibe and there are several other DJ apps that do more contemporary eff ects.

It’s no surprise that Djay won that Apple Design Award. It truly is the killer app for classic vinyl-style DJing.

To beat-match tracks before mixing, Griffi n’s DJ Cable ($19.99) splits your 1/8" headphone jack into two mono mixes. Djay’s main mix goes to the left side, the cue mix goes right, and you hear each mix’s sound out of both speakers. Mono is a dealbreaker for a pro gig, but I’d use this for house parties, road trips, or any situ-ation where I didn’t have a proper mixer for cueing.

BUY THESOFTWAREYOU USE

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Respect yourself, your craft and the work

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buy the software you use.

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The International Music Software Trade Association is a non-profit organization that representsthe interests of music software and soundware publishers. One of our most important functionsis to advocate for the legal use of software in the music production and creation landscape. Wedo this primarily through public education campaigns. We are supported by our members whoare software and soundware developers, distributors, retailers and publications. We are fightingpiracy on moral grounds appealing to the good in all of us. We are trying to change behavior.

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Octavian - Keyboard CalculatorBitnotic

Available on the iTunes App StoreInstantly see and hear 500+ scales and 50+ chords on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Also features Circle of Fifths, scale modes, chord inversions, descending scales, and much more. Keyboard Magazine said of Octavian 1.1.0 (Jan 2010): “It’s a cheat sheet no key-boardist should leave home without.”

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TempestDave Smith Instruments

Available nowTempest is an advanced analog drum machine that generates its sounds using six powerful synthesis voices, and uses an innovative, performance-orient-ed operating system to create, edit, arrange, and manipulate beats in real time without stopping.

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GuitarJack Model 2Sonoma Wire Works

Available NowGuitarJack Model 2 is a high quality audio interface for iPhone 4, iPad 2, iPad, and iPod touch (2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation).GuitarJack features 60 dB of continuous level control, configurable Pad, Lo-Z and Hi-Z modes, and increased drive for headphones.

MSRP: $199

www.sonomawireworks.com/guitarjack/[email protected]

Product Spotlight S P E C I A LT Y A DV E R T I S I N G S E C T I O N

88 Keyboard 01.2012

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Buying or selling instruments through our Classified Ads offers you convenience, a big marketplace, and a wide range of instruments and prices. However, buying mail-order does have its drawbacks, too. Keyboard Magazine suggests the following guidelines to help the buyer and the seller in these transactions: 1) Get a written description of the instrument, which should include the serial number. 2) Get front and back photos of the instrument. 3) Get a written purchase agreement, with a 24-hour approval clause allowing the buyer to return the instrument for a full refund if it does not meet his/her reasonable expectations.

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An ad in Keyboard ’s Classifieds reaches more than 16,900* serious musicians for only $2.40 per word plus $7.00 for an address. Minimum charge: $25.00. Please underline words to appear in bold type and add $0.50 per every bold word. Please indicate clearly any words to appear in all caps and add $0.25 per every cap word. Each phone number, e-mail address, or website address counts as one word. Call for display rates. 3 months minimum schedule required. Deadlines are the 8th of the month, 2 months prior to cover date. Businesses must list business name in ad. All ads must be received in writing, paid in full in advance. All ads must be music-related.

Retail advertisers may not list discounted prices or percentages on specific models, unless items are used or discontinued. Advertisers must provide us with complete name, street address, and phone number, whether or not included in the ad copy (you may list a PO Box address in your ad, however). Mail ads to: Keyboard Classifieds, Attn: Contessa Abono, 1111 Bayhill Dr., Suite 125, San Bruno, CA 94066. FAX (if paying by MasterCard, or Visa): (650) 238-0263. For more information, call Contessa Abono at (650) 238-0296; E-mail: [email protected]. (*Audited circulation; does not include pass-along rate.)

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Classifi eds

89 01.2012 Keyboard

MAIN KEYBOARDKorg Kronos 88: $3,799

SYNCLAVIER DREAMIN’

90 Keyboard 01.2012

CODA

In the mid-’80s, you either had a Synclavier or you wanted one. Fully ex-panded with 128 voices and all the other options, the price could easily hit $200,000. What manner of insane rig might $200,000 buy today?

ANALOG SYNTHDave Smith Prophet ’08: $2,099

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DAWAvid Pro Tools HDX2 system with HD Omni interface: $16,999

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COMPUTERMac Pro with 12 cores, 64GB RAM, four 512GB solid-state drives, ATI Radeon 5870 video card, and dual 27” LED Cinema Displays: $16,398

janury01 2012

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