To be fair to Lounge Lizard - I've actually bought it now
Bugger. (that's Aussie for "oh no, how unfortunate".
*Despite* having just bought Lounge Lizard, I'll be ordering the Pianoteq Rhodes and Wurlitzer add-ons. They are both ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL!!!!
Greg.
]]>By the way, my activatiuon code it's not working.
]]>I don't think we will see so early a add-on for a Rodes piano, cause Pianoteq basic technology it's just for strings, at the present time, and Rodes piano use small metalic plaques instead of strings.
Haha, think again!
]]>Still, Scarbee is based on samples and can't be fine tuned. It also uses up a lot of resources. The best MODEL so far is probably Mr Ray 73 mkII which is about 90% there. This guy also has a superb Hammond simulation called VB3.
]]>BTW. Vintaudio had the clunkiest sounding Uprights I ever bought. I heard about a new one recently but I am too used to the Honky Tonks I use. No jive IR's, just pedal down harmonics and sounds like your sitting on the bench.
These days there are too many " Chorused " Pianos that are just lame. Even a real recording of a Grand Piano treated by an Eventide Ultra or Eclipse won't cut it.
Uprights are just what they say....Upright and klunky. Perfect for many styles.
I get a kick of Cats that use a perfectly tuned, pristine " Grand " Paino preset from their Motif for Blues and Rock..........yecchhhh.
I found it very playable indeed, and got some very usable sounds of it.
So, I if I were Pianoteq, I really wouldn't make a priority of trying to do a tine-based electric piano emulation! There's no need. There's already a splendid one on the market.
However, there's NO emulation of a battered old upright piano anywhere Come on guys, do the necessary!
]]>The sustain pedal problem was a bug that was present until the very last version (you just bought).
The funny was that they wanted money for this update, so you had to pay to get this new version without the bug !! everybody in their forum was mad about it and so was i.
I just send them a bug report presuming i didn't know anything about it was corrected in the new paid update ;-) The support was nice to me and gave me a free link to the new bugfree Lizard with new features version.
Yes, but I noticed the problem in the trial version of EP-3 (but to a far lesser extent than previous versions). After installing the purchased version, the problem went away in both the trial and purchased versions. And yes, I've seen the forum posts. Support haven't replied to me regarding this issue yet, although now that the problem has gone, it's a bit academic.
And yes... Lounge lizard is just great ! a little like Pianoteq.
It doesn't sound exactly as the real thing but it is SO playable like a real instrument :-)
Indeed!
Greg.
]]>And at last, talking electromechanical instruments, i would really wote for a Clavinet replica.
+1!
]]>To be fair to Lounge Lizard - I've actually bought it now, and the intermittent very loud/harsh note problem has disappeared entirely. Not sure what was going on with this, because I can no longer reproduce it in the trial version either.
I wish it had some pedal down ambience - I'm sure the Pianoteq team would do this well if they ever did decide to work on electric pianos.
Re: Scarbee, I don't doubt it's better for a second. But, FWIW, I actually own a real Wurlitzer in poor condition, and I would MUCH prefer to play L.L.
Greg.
The sustain pedal problem was a bug that was present until the very last version (you just bought).
The funny was that they wanted money for this update, so you had to pay to get this new version without the bug !! everybody in their forum was mad about it and so was i.
I just send them a bug report presuming i didn't know anything about it was corrected in the new paid update ;-) The support was nice to me and gave me a free link to the new bugfree Lizard with new features version.
And yes... Lounge lizard is just great ! a little like Pianoteq.
It doesn't sound exactly as the real thing but it is SO playable like a real instrument :-)
And at last, talking electromechanical instruments, i would really wote for a Clavinet replica.
]]>I wish it had some pedal down ambience - I'm sure the Pianoteq team would do this well if they ever did decide to work on electric pianos.
Re: Scarbee, I don't doubt it's better for a second. But, FWIW, I actually own a real Wurlitzer in poor condition, and I would MUCH prefer to play L.L.
Greg.
]]>Tried it again (Lounge Lizard) - I think they've tweaked it since I last tried it, and I'm now very impressed indeed - it's seems more playable - I actually *want* to keep playing it now, whereas before I found it a bit frustrating.
You just tempted me to go and try it again too. I agree, it is playable, but I just don't think it compares to the Scarbee sounds. Scarbee's Wurli sound in particular has such a wonderful and dramatic change in tone over the velocity range. It must be possible to model that!
]]>I'm feeling a little guilty for saying I "don't like Lounge Lizard". Too harsh. Being technical, I admire the achievement enormously. And I also like the sounds which it produces, and the incredible tweakability. Right now, there are two main aspects of it which bother me, though:
a) I can't seem to create an instrument which plays the way I want it to over the entire key range. May be able to be solved by using multiple instances but I have not tried that. Maybe they need to implement regions and allow the regions to be edited seperately.
b) Repeated notes with the sustain pedal sometimes cause very loud and harsh sounds. I know that this happens to an extent on the real ones too, but I do not think it's this pronounced. It really does bother me a lot - I am constantly on edge while playing it, cringing, waiting for it to happen.
Greg.
Tried it again (Lounge Lizard) - I think they've tweaked it since I last tried it, and I'm now very impressed indeed - it's seems more playable - I actually *want* to keep playing it now, whereas before I found it a bit frustrating.
Problem b) is still there, but it's not happening as often.
Greg.
]]>For louder rock music, rhodes for me was worthless. I played on 2 different 73's, 1 suitcase and the big ol' 88. The tines- just the plain old "spirit" of the rhodes does not work out so good for live playing with medium 2 loud music- no matter what amp or whatever it's going thru. It's very bell/vib like, the bottom 2 octaves are completely useless live, there are about 2 and 1/2 octaves on a rhodes that will fit ok in the live...keep in mind that I tried a billion different amp/blah combos as well...so anyway, a studio in chicago had 12 wurlys they were selling- I spent an entire day playing, testing each one. They all were the same model and they all sounded totally different- some were aggressive, some were more like rhodes/smooth, and I ended up getting one that had a whole bunch of bite. After many gigs, I finally found a good amp/fx combo for it which was the wurly going thru an echoplex, a russian-made smallstone phaser and a rotovibe pedal. My amp was a split roland jazz-chorus and a fender twin- and always I would further split by insisting on a D.I. Box. That combo sounded so fantastic- it cut thru 2 other fender twins with tele's and the big fat ampeg fridge. I did some recording at steve ray's old studio and well, studio is totally different (bad). Also recorded wurly at steve albini's (nirvana, page and plant, blah) studio and it sucked as well and im talking vintage U47's with whatever crazy this and that going thru some channel strips that had seen a lot of action. So anyway, the best digital hardware synth rhodes sound in my opinion is the s90es, the wurly sound is pretty ok- definately good enough for big clean venues- not as good in those intense sweaty places. I gig'ed a bunch with nords stuff and aside from the cool look and those wooden mod wheels, I honestly don't see the deal. My k2500 from 97 can out-weird the nord and the s90es imho can out piano out wurly, out rhodes (not to mention out horn, drum, pad, lead etc....) the nord stuff easy. As far as plugs are concerned, they mostly suck- I just use my yamaha and various amp-sims and get a good enough sound where most players could not tell if it was the real thing or not.
My genuine advice- I know that in the past 5 or so years the mechanical piano sound has totally come back into style. In the 90's the Moog sound came back, now it's all electric pianos and stuff. I would just go out and buy both a wurly and a rhodes and work on them- they are like older american gas guzzlers...they need work but they sure go fast. It seems goofy to me to whip out 1, 2 or 300 bucks for some plug-in when you can get the real thing for not that much more. I know everyone here knows this but I gotta say it again- I have about a gabillion virtual instruments- a few years back I was obsessed with giga-samples, I wanted not a triple strike something but something like that crazy EWQL 165 GB sampled stuff...what I have learned is that yes, for doing soundtrack - and commericals etc, that stuff totally makes sense but I make the living off of performing and record sales and nothing ever ever ever will beat the real thing so I tend to do what bands like rush or what the newer bowie does- I blatently use synth sounds because as wendy/walter carlos taught us, they are their own totally legit deal. I stopped chasing the terabyte sample dream of a real sounding fake violin years ago. I just go to a university and post fliers, print out the parts with sibelius or something if I want real real stuff. Those college kids are always glad to do that kind of stuff.
Sorry here, im totally rambling!
Yamaha90es- best rhodeswurly sound! really good leslie sim as well! The older synth samples of those keyboards did not seem to capture how uneven those instros are...they click and pop and rattle and that's why they sound so cool. I have a 500 buck mellotron plug and it totally sounds good in the song but still is lacking somewhere- I also had the luck and got 2 cut a tune on a real chamberlin and a real mellotron mk1 with the original tapes and live, with your person actually in front of the real thing, it's no contest those mellotron strings just sound so friggin cool that all you gotta do is press one key and you feel like a kid again. Anyway, sorry for the 2 long post.