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'Tweaking' Voices

PostPosted: 23 Jul 2019 23:48
by Hugh-AR
Have you ever wondered why when a professional demonstrator plays the keyboard you have .. it never sounds the same as yours! Well, it is probably because when you play you just use your keyboard 'as is', playing with the 'default' voices. The demonstrator knows the keyboard he is playing inside out and will use the keyboard's technical features to adjust things to his liking. Looking at what a modern keyboard can do I reckon it would take months to get to grips with everything it can do. Certainly with my AR organ I am still finding out 'technical' things I can do with it .. and I have had it since 1998! So I suppose one should say that if you have bought a keyboard with so many features available to you .. but just press a button or two and 'play' then you are not really getting the best out of a keyboard you spent so much money on.

Here is a DEMO of how you can 'tweak' those voices to make them sound more realistic. This video deals with 1. 'Reverb'; 2. Adjusting the 'timing' of when a group of several instruments come in (ie. not having them all come in together); 3. .. and he does mention the 'tuning' of individual instruments but doesn't follow that up. Now that third one is pretty important .. to me at any rate. I would have stringed instruments like a Violin slightly 'sharp'; and brass instruments slightly 'flat' (to sound more like a real brass band). A solo Trumpet I would set slightly sharp. Jazz musicians do this to great effect. I say 'sharp' and 'flat', but it is by a minuscule amount that the ear doesn't really pick up. It just makes the instrument sound 'brighter' or 'duller'.



Any opinions on any of this .. please post!

Hugh

Re: 'Tweaking' Voices

PostPosted: 28 Jul 2019 22:27
by Hugh-AR
Now here's an example of a Vibraphone with 'reverb' on it. I don't have a Tyros 5 so don't know whether the reverb is the 'default' one, or whether it has been enhanced as in the YouTube video above. But to my way of thinking, the setting for this is perfect, and makes the instrument a real pleasure to listen to. I have taken this DEMO from JohnT playing April Showers. I believe this is one of Jon D's Registrations ?? There is also some 'pan' between left and right that just adds to the whole listening experience.

Click on the LINK below to listen, and then press the 'back button' to get back to this Topic
DEMO of 'reverb' on a Vibraphone

Re: 'Tweaking' Voices

PostPosted: 29 Jul 2019 13:37
by dentyr
Hello, Have listened to the video and quite frankly I can't hear any difference. It is just a cacophony of noise. The T5 must have a different arrangement; if you save an edited voice on the T4 it is saved in the user group. He said it was saved in the extended memory???
I try to be very careful with multitude of voices as they tend to swamp the song.
Regards, Den.

Re: 'Tweaking' Voices

PostPosted: 29 Jul 2019 17:40
by Hugh-AR
Hi Den,

I agree. Too many instruments all playing together, which just make a cacophony of noise! And although altering the timing of when they come in would separate the instruments out a bit, I didn't really go for that! In a real band I'm sure all the instruments playing together would all come in at roughly the same time! I reckon it would have been more to the point if he could have altered the 'footage' of those instruments so they weren't all playing at eg. 8'. Have a 16' one, and a 4' one. And also, if you had several instruments playing together, I would PAN them so their sounds were coming from varying degrees to the left and to the right, and not all coming from the same place. That would separate the sounds out a bit.

Hugh

Re: 'Tweaking' Voices

PostPosted: 01 Aug 2019 00:35
by Hugh-AR
Going back to the first point he made in the video above .. REVERB. Now I'm not suggesting you should use Reverb all the time right through a piece, but it can be used to create a mind blowing dramatic effect. Listen to this clip here of Don Wherly playing Is It True What They Say About Dixie. In this clip Don is playing (a) Trumpet and backing with REVERB = 6, followed by Saxophone with REVERB = 6; then (b) the same piece with Trumpet and backing again with REVERB = 6, but this time followed by the same Saxophone and backing with REVERB = 20. And what a difference that makes to the piece! Really makes one fall off one's chair (well, it does me at any rate!).

Click the below to listen, and then press the 'back-button' to return to this page
Dixie REVERB DEMO by Don Wherly

If you want to listen to the whole piece, here it is below. The Trumpet is on REVERB = 6 at the start; and then everything else in this Medley is on REVERB = 20.

Do a right-click to open this up in a New Tab
https://app.box.com/s/54dqmotahh5d2ckamtl7hdp8up7fe1im

Hugh

Re: 'Tweaking' Voices

PostPosted: 27 Jan 2020 21:19
by NativeAngels
Following on from the Tweaking Voices, on my Korg Pa700 starting with for an example a grand piano sound there are a lot of things that can be tweaked to transform just one. Reverb as mentioned earlier, if you don't have access to a sustain pedal, you can add some more release to the sound. Adding some delay will again change the sound.
Adjusting the cutoff of the sound (Brightness if you're a Tyros owner), lowering will make the piano sound softer raising will make the piano sound brighter.