latest vintage key plugins vs. real things

[blakbeltjonez]

i thought the early Steppenwolf stuff was done on a Lowrey organ with a Leslie.... i recall seeing that somewhere.

Yeah, but my favorite b3 recordings are in mono (or more accurately, panned hard to one side in the stereo field). I was listening to Steppenwolf, and the guy may not be a Jimmy Smith, but I was curious to see how he got such a spacious leslie sound. I switched between the speakers, and there was nothing of the organ coming from one side, not even room sound or leakage.

On another note, it's interesting to me that our hearing is MORE three-dimensional, or I guess "omnidirectional" would be a better word... than our vision. We have two eyes so that we can perceive depth, just as we have two ears. However, our eyes focus the same general direction and are designed to train upon a single point in space. We cannot see behind us without turning around, and our peripheral or side-vision is limited at best. We can only focus on one thing at once with a great degree of precision.

With our ears, however, they are capable of operating independently of one another unlike our eyes. They actually point AWAY from one another and are on the sides of our head, so that sounds behind us are picked up with relatively the same degree of intensity as in front of us, although our pinnae do dictate a slight forward tilt to our hearing response.

Now someone mentioned earlier about a leslie cabinet throwing sound all around the room and being a three-dimensional experience. The larger any instrument is (drum set, piano) the more this will happen. A trumpet puts out its sound from a very small area... but even a trumpet has a more diffuse pattern of output in its lower register and a more focused one in its higher register.

Anytime we record something, we are "flattening" it. When it is picked up, it is generally picked up either from one point (mono) or two points (stereo) but there isn't a microphone that i'm aware of that is capable of being at every point in the room at once. This means that all of the depth of the sound is condensed into one or two points at recording/sampling, and is reproduced from one or two points (mono or stereo). Generally, stereo speakers are near one another, pointed in relatively similar directions, focused on a single point (as are our eyes). Any way you slice it, this is incapable of producing the complex relationship of the instrument with its environment. If we had two little television screens hooked to each of our eyes representing a visual stereo image then it might work. For our 'omnidirectional' ears, not a chance!

SO the long and short of it, when you sample something you are "flattening" it. I can't explain why yet, but when you then put this in the context of a recording of other instruments that are real instruments, it sounds like it was 'flattened twice' even if it was never reproduced on ANYTHING after it was sampled initially and before it was reproduced on your speakers.

[YOUR KONG]

Even when I'm in my basement doing laundry, I go in there JUST TO TOUCH THE KEYS of the Wurli.

Totally. It's like playing a real piano vs. a convincing synth. A live instrument is going to vibrate and play you right back.

[Slider]

I own a few software instruments.
I also have a real B3, Rhodes, Wurly, ect.

The NI B4 is pretty cool for messing about.
I think the Leslie sim is where it really goes wrong.
The actual tonewheel emulation is pretty dang close. You can almost smell the dust burning when you play it. The reverb and other Farfisa type organs are way cool too.
Good point made about the mono thing too.
When you record a Leslie sort of far away, it gets this very special unique sound.
The software is never going to emulate that.
Micing a Leslie is way to much fun to ever be replaced by software anyway.

NI's Elektric piano has a really good Rhodes sound. I sometimes use it instead of the real thing, mostly because I can piano roll edit my bad playing into something worth keeping. I can also transpose it, allowing me to look like I can play keyboards in a key other than C.
The NI EP wurly sound is not all that great.
The lounge lizard wurly sound is better, which isn't saying much.
I agree about the Lounge Lizard not being all that realistic, but cool sounding anyway.

Mellotron? never again will I struggle to make one of them stay in tune for more than 10 seconds.
Yeah, the quirks are kinda cool, but life is too short to be repairing mellotrons every 3 months.
The lack of velocity allows them to still sound authentic when using samples.
I like the Pinder samples or M-tron, and you get all the tapes too.
How many mellotron owners have more than 3 tape sets.
Who wants to actually change them?
How many Optigons have a full library of all those crazy clear records?
My computer has all of them sampled ready to play. Pretty cool.

[hammertime]

That's interesting to know. Enormous sounding leslie though. It's wierd how things panned hard left and right (Check out the drums on the first Doors record), can make things sound alot more spacious.

i thought the early Steppenwolf stuff was done on a Lowrey organ with a Leslie.... i recall seeing that somewhere.

Yeah, but my favorite b3 recordings are in mono (or more accurately, panned hard to one side in the stereo field). I was listening to Steppenwolf, and the guy may not be a Jimmy Smith, but I was curious to see how he got such a spacious leslie sound. I switched between the speakers, and there was nothing of the organ coming from one side, not even room sound or leakage.

On another note, it's interesting to me that our hearing is MORE three-dimensional, or I guess "omnidirectional" would be a better word... than our vision. We have two eyes so that we can perceive depth, just as we have two ears. However, our eyes focus the same general direction and are designed to train upon a single point in space. We cannot see behind us without turning around, and our peripheral or side-vision is limited at best. We can only focus on one thing at once with a great degree of precision.

With our ears, however, they are capable of operating independently of one another unlike our eyes. They actually point AWAY from one another and are on the sides of our head, so that sounds behind us are picked up with relatively the same degree of intensity as in front of us, although our pinnae do dictate a slight forward tilt to our hearing response.

Now someone mentioned earlier about a leslie cabinet throwing sound all around the room and being a three-dimensional experience. The larger any instrument is (drum set, piano) the more this will happen. A trumpet puts out its sound from a very small area... but even a trumpet has a more diffuse pattern of output in its lower register and a more focused one in its higher register.

Anytime we record something, we are "flattening" it. When it is picked up, it is generally picked up either from one point (mono) or two points (stereo) but there isn't a microphone that i'm aware of that is capable of being at every point in the room at once. This means that all of the depth of the sound is condensed into one or two points at recording/sampling, and is reproduced from one or two points (mono or stereo). Generally, stereo speakers are near one another, pointed in relatively similar directions, focused on a single point (as are our eyes). Any way you slice it, this is incapable of producing the complex relationship of the instrument with its environment. If we had two little television screens hooked to each of our eyes representing a visual stereo image then it might work. For our 'omnidirectional' ears, not a chance!

SO the long and short of it, when you sample something you are "flattening" it. I can't explain why yet, but when you then put this in the context of a recording of other instruments that are real instruments, it sounds like it was 'flattened twice' even if it was never reproduced on ANYTHING after it was sampled initially and before it was reproduced on your speakers.

[???????]

besides if you owned a real mellotron the tendency would be to use it on everything which would ruin it. In fact, mellotron and sound-alikes have been far too ubiquitous lately.

A mellotron is like one of those vintage T-shirts that's trendy.

A sampled mellotron is one of those fake vintage T-shirts from Old Navy.

But that's just my opinion!

[syrupcore]

nice looking lowry for 50 bucks in Clackamas http://portland.craigslist.org/msg/187779558.html

that hammond is still at william temple and its 35 bucks. there is a god awful noise coming out of it that I'm sure some one handy can fix. it played it a bit today and it SCREAMED. It sure weighs as much as a b3.

[syrupcore]

maybe $5 is more your speed? In Battle Ground,WA
http://portland.craigslist.org/msg/187777158.html

[YOUR KONG]

Also, I wasn't suggesting the grandmamma organ from cl as a 'b3 substitute' but rather as an affordable (free) electromechanical keyboard instrument which will have shitloads more character than any plugin i've ever heard or seen.
Personally, i'd go for 'grandmamma sound with character' over 'sterile-but-good B3" any day!!

Oh, ok. Yeah, totally! I think the person who referred to the Shins made a good point - I listened to that CD today and the organ is obviously fake but funnily it never even bothered me (someone who should care) because DAMN those are good songs!

I mean, a "real" organ would have probably sounded...y'know...more real, but to fit into that sonic space in the track it would have been EQ'd into a shadow of its "real" self anyway.

Which goes back to the whole "Well, if you're not Emerson Lake & Palmer, then..." Is the organ the lead instrument or is it just providing texture to singer-songwriter stuff?

[inverseroom]

A sampled mellotron is one of those fake vintage T-shirts from Old Navy.

But that's just my opinion!

But a sampled mellotron still sounds great, whereas those t-shirts look like shit.

[???????]

ok okay flawed analogy

Made sense to me at 3 am last night!

[alex matson]

Here's a tune I just played on by my friend Kurt. 'Yesterday and tomorrow' - first tune.
Is it the real thing or a plugin?
http://myspace.com/kurthagardorn

[???????]

Here's a tune I just played on by my friend Kurt.
Is it the real thing or a plugin?
http://myspace.com/kurthagardorn

This is dangerous to my credibility but i'll bite. It sounds fishy to me! Maybe I just don't know what it's supposed to be. Accordion? Harmonium?

As someone who once played accordion in a touring band for a year (yikes!) I can tell you that sounds nothing like an accordion *to me* (of course no offense intended). The phrasing isn't consistent with accordion idiosyncracies and not a human alive (or at least not me) is capable of the sustained durations of some of those chords with that apparent volume without changing the direction of the bellows.

I have less experience with the harmonium so maybe that's what it's supposed to be? Or maybe it's neither?

In any case, a reed keyboard instrument generally offers resistance to the fingers of the performer and I just don't hear *that* here. It sounds like it was played on an unweighted keyboard controller. Of course to hedge my bet i'll say that we all know it's hard to hear anything on that myspace player...

I'd love to be proven wrong! I get a kick out of stuff like that. If it's a real instrument i'd love to see a pic of it!

[syrupcore]

hey, that hammond at william temple is a T582-a. It's the internal leslie that's making all the racket. I'm 99% sure that's an easy mechanical fix. sounds like it needs a little oil and it's hitting up against something or other. it's really lovely but bring 7 friends. If I could get it up my steps, I'd own it.




Will

[???????]

lovely! Long live the grandma organ!

A semi-rare track is Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye "Hold Me Oh My Darling."

AWESOME grandma organ on that track!

[alex matson]

Uh.....the track contains simply drums, guitar, upright bass, and wurly. But if you think you hear a harmonium plug-in, enjoy! I was just asked to play "nashville skyline" styley. Originally there were four tracks of trance synths and an acidy lead line too...I don't know what happened. Same with my smokin' distorted B3 solo too, dammit.