Piano vs Keyboard

[Ludwig]

But synths have their own value, when they are not trying to impersonate another instrument and this is where I think they belong.

I could not agree more. Back in the days of the Juno, DX7 and Polysix instrument makers prided themselves in developing sounds that had never been heard before.

Then came sample playback and all the manufacturers worry about is how good the guitar sounds, how realistic the piano sounds, does the violin sound authentic. I already have a guitar dang it; I don't need a keyboard for that.

Then comes general midi. Oh boy, a new keyboard with 128 sounds just like the other general midi keyboards by the other companies. "Hey, our 128 sounds are better than your 128 of the same sounds!"

I want my synths to play sounds no one has ever heard before, just like it used to be. Sorry for the diatribe.

[fingerpikingood]

you can make your own sounds any way you want using Frequency modulation just like the DX7 did, except nowadays you have even more freedom with it and you can add more effects to it, using a program such as FM8. really cool program. you can make any giant number of sounds you've never heard before.

you can even load in some DX7 presets and then edit themto your liking.

the DX7 was really quite simple in how it worked, and the possibilities for sounds you could create were not incredibly varied, i mean you could make distinctive sounds with it, but still you were quite limited. FM8 has many more features, i think more frequencies you can modulate, more precise ways in which to modulate them, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

if this is the kind of thing you like, then I really think you should go out and buy this. it comes with a bunch of presets of course. but the ability to make your own sounds from scratch is huge.

the learning curve is a little steep at first though. they use complicated words like frequency modulation, and stuff like that, and everything looks so technical in the editing pane, with graphs and buttons and stuff, but once you kind of know what everything does it gets much easier and is in fact not as complicated as it seems when you first look at it.

you could probably find videos on youtube for it, as well as some tutorial stuff for it. it comes with helpful ressources too like tutorials and stuff. as i remember, i haven't used it in a little while from the sound producing point of view, but i seem to recall a tutorial of sorts that showed you how to make an instrument from scratch.


not only does it play sounds you've never heard before, it plays sounds nobody's ever heard before.

you can do cool stuff like making 2 sounds from scratch and then blending them together to get some of the character from one you like and some from the other. this program is really cool if DX7 style (frequyency modulated) synth sounds are your bag.

as for me, ya i like those, but i also like midi drumkits that sounds incredibly real, and pianos that sound incredibly real, and cellos and violins and trumpets and saxes. because i can't learn that many instruments. and i don't have enough money to buy all of those, nor hire an orchestra to play for me.

in the DX7 days though you were basically stuck with frequency modulated sounds for midi, so you had to use those cheap imitations of the real thing. and i found DX7 sounds actually quite boring. you can make much more exciting instruments with FM8.

also there's a bunch of other digital instrument software that comes in the komplete bundles. i think they're at 6 now.

you get FM8 a bunch of other different but electronic or digital typed sound making and tweaking devices. you get kontakt for real instruments, you get akoustic pianos for some pianos, you get guitar rig which is like having a whole collection of amps and effects for your guitar, you get battery also which is for drums and percussions.

so idk, if all that stuff interests you then that's something to look into as well.

the guitar rig stuff is really cool too, you can get a pedal for it too where you can map functions to it, and use it as your wawa. there's a bunch of presets that famous people used in certain songs, like jimi hendrix's little wing setup. a whole bunch of stuff like that. really cool, you basically instantly can make your guitar sound like anything you want.

of course there is the limitation of your guitar, like you won't get your strat to sound exactly like a les paul, but you can put your strat through amps and cabinets, choosing your mic distance and reverb and limiting and compression in kinds of setups similar to what they might have used on some songs you liked where they played a les paul. and all though you won't get all the way there, you can still get pretty close. 80s shreddingm, clean jazz, jimi hendrix, U2 style delayish stuff, pretty much anything you could think of

(this post was brought to you by native instruments) lol

[Marlinark]

Wow, very technical software as you said.

Is this compatible with most amps?
Do you need a type of midi hookup?

[fingerpikingood]

Originally Posted by Marlinark

Wow, very technical software as you said.

Is this compatible with most amps?
Do you need a type of midi hookup?

well really what you'd want in most cases for this is an audio interface. a box that plugs into your computer usb or firewire and in there you can plug your midi so you can control it with a piano keyboard, and also it's good for recording guitar or vocals. i got an edirol ua-25ex second hand almost new for 150$ CA roughly 70quid two inputs for 1.4 inch or phantom power xlr mics. also with midi in the back.

there's a headphones jack on the one i have, not sure how that would work through an amp, but also there are outputs on the back that are stereo either digital spdif or RCA or also 1/4 inch.

so you could feed that for sure into your amp.

trhe other advantage of such hardware is that it allows for low latency recording. iow you could feed your guitar through your guitar rig software, and then use equalizers on it, and compressors limiters, reverb and all that good stuff, and hear your sound with all those effects on it, with a track playing in the background, without any delay between your playing and your hearing what you're playing.

of course for this, a powerful computer is also pretty key.


if you don't get an audio interface though, then you won't really be able to feed it out through an amp unless you get a cable that switches from small headphone jack into 1/4 inch, which would be ok i guess.

and also you'd want a midi input for playing the sounds with your keyboard.

the thing that's important though is that your soundcard is compatible with asio drivers.

this is what audio interfaces are designed to do, but you can also get what's called ASIO4ALL which is a free driver download that is supposed to give ASIO support to regular soundcards. but this is hit or miss. i think audigy soundblaster cards support ASIO.

but if you have that, then ya, any usb midi plug should work i think.

if your card doesn't work with ASIO4ALL or come with its own ASIO drivers, then you'd need to upgrade it because you'll get a delay on your keyboard.

even a small delay is impossible to play with. well technically there will always be a small delay, and even in real like there is the delay of the time it takes the sound to leave your instrument and go inside your ears and your brain process it. but if you go less than 10 milliseconds of delay that's passable. if you can get i'd say less that 6 or 7 then you're real good. without ASIO you're looking at like 40.

[Ludwig]

FM is old hat. So much newer technology has evolved since then. I have tried FM8 and it is fun but I actually still own a TX81Z and I would rather pull it out of the closet and blow the dust off than play with a software simulation.

[fingerpikingood]

ya, i recently discovered the difference between digital and analog audio. digital audio actually cannot replicate square and sawtooth waves exactly right. maybe that's what you mean, idk, cause i'm not familiar with the TX81Z. what is it exactly? but still, i find the FM8 pretty cool and quite versatile as far as software goes. and as far as the limitations of digital over analog audio. I'd like to hear the same sawtooth fm synthesis algorithm, one through analog and one through digital though to see the actual difference in practice.

[el_macleod]

Originally Posted by Ludwig

I could not agree more. Back in the days of the Juno, DX7 and Polysix instrument makers prided themselves in developing sounds that had never been heard before.

Then came sample playback and all the manufacturers worry about is how good the guitar sounds, how realistic the piano sounds, does the violin sound authentic. I already have a guitar dang it; I don't need a keyboard for that.

Then comes general midi. Oh boy, a new keyboard with 128 sounds just like the other general midi keyboards by the other companies. "Hey, our 128 sounds are better than your 128 of the same sounds!"

I want my synths to play sounds no one has ever heard before, just like it used to be. Sorry for the diatribe.

Quoted for truth

[fingerpikingood]

there are loads of VSTs with loads of algorithms far more complex than the ones used for those relics, and you can tweak them and shape them, or create your own from scratch with far superior interfaces, and far superior control than with those old synths.

and on top of that you can sound much more realistic. ya, you have a guitar, maybe, but do you have a fully mic'd drumkit? and a full orchestra? and the exact reverb you get from playing in the sidney opera house?

you can get all of these and much more with VSTs.


there is only one thing those old machines and other analog instruments have over VSTs, and that's that they are analog.

digital, as you might already know, works in an on/off way. this can cause a problem for sound, which is not on/off, but a continuous wave of vibration.

so, digital works by taking samples. basically just points of data where only volume is recorded. the frequency of these points of data is called the sample rate. typically for CD and stuff this is at 44100.

but these are just volume signals recorded at one point in time, not sound. so for digital sound they must use those points and "connect the dots" using algorithms that figure out the only possible way to put sinusoidal waves between those specific combinations of points.

but not all sound is sinusoidal, there are sawtooth waves, square topped waves and stuff like that. which those algorithms do not recreated as waves in these shapes, the waves must be rounded and sinusoidal.

therefore, for those specific types of sounds are basically emulated in digital, whereas are real with analog systems.

that's really the only benefit of using physical analog systems rather than software VSTs, all other things being equal. well that and dependability from dropouts and stuff, but if your computer is strong enough, that should not be a problem. also, obviously you might like the sound of a certain piece of kit over the equivalents that have been constructed in software form, just like you mike like one analog unit over another. but that's not really a analog vs digital thing. just a general preference thing.

but basically if you want new sounds that you've never heard before, they're out there, enough for you to spend hours and hours experimenting with them. and an infinity more if you want to spend the time tweaking shaping or creating some yourself.

Fm8 might be starting to get old, but DX7 is much older, and Fm8 uses the same frequency modulation technology for creating algorithms, but in a far more complex way. there are other digital effects also. so much stuff that hasn't been played with yet. you can take Fm8 and build a sound, and then layer on top of it, some other digital sound you created with some other VST, and then run that through an amp simulator, and a distortion pedal, and a wa wa pedal, and then layer in some drumhits at the very beginning of every hit but use compressor to mute them out or shape them to only apply attack, or do that with a sample of sort of bell. then run all that through any kind of reverb, and then EQ the whole thing. the possibilities are literally endless. but ya, you'd have to build alot of these things yourself. but same for guitar, you need to layer a bunch of effects to get certain sounds. that's part of the art of it. although it might be cool if people did crazy layering like this of samples in order to create new sounds instead of just frequency modulation, kind of the way they mixed lion roars and elephants and i think whales to make the jurassic park dinosaur roaring, and then packaged those for sale as pre-made sounds for synths, but this might be a harder sell, because you'd have to explain it like, "buy my whole bunch of random sounds i created in a bunch of random ways, i swear they sound great" but still, it might be cool if things like that existed, i'll give you that.

[Chordy_Ordy25]

Keyboard handsdown! So much more versatile and portable. The self-recording feature that a lot of them come with is nice too.