Things Kurzweil. Who is blown away by Kurz EP's?

[Jazzmammal]

Theo, you do have a way with words. ROM melodies?? What in hell are you talking about, ROM melodies? Examples of practical examples?? You mean the built in midi files Kurz uses to demo the sounds? That's not what these vids are except for that one time where Erik is specifically talking about that. Both vids are real guys playing the thing live in real time.

 

I love how you put the word great as "great" implying they're anything but great. What do you want out of a keyboard, dude? Pure perfection? That ain't happening any time soon. Even in the real world no two Rhodes sound the same just like no two B3's sound the same either.

 

Bob

[earl the pearl]

I use an older sp76 with the vr09 and was looking for a great rhodes sound. Any suggestions for settings/tweaking?

[Dana.]

I use an older sp76 with the vr09 and was looking for a great rhodes sound. Any suggestions for settings/tweaking?

Considering the two boards, no wonder you're looking. Does the VR have the "Pure EP"? That's as "great" as it gets. You may want to check the VR threads to see if people have posted tweaks to the Rhodes sounds.

[Delaware Dave]

Theo, What in hell are you talking about..

Bob, that IS the $64K question ...

[TFC]

Bumping this old thread.

Hi i'm new here and found this a very interesting thread.

The story is as follows. My son is at Edinburgh University, and although he is doing a Scottish Literature and Linguistics joint degree, he is also continuing his music studies by side along courses. He has been finding it difficult to access the rehearsal pianos at the uni especially near exam time, as the "Real" music students need priority on the pianos, so I decided to buy him an 88 weighted piano for his flat, nothing outrageous was needed as he would get some access to the practice suite. I looked at entry level Yamaha 105, casio Priva 150x etc etc. I tried them and found them fairly ok. I then came across a like new Kurzweil pc1x. old technology I know, but managed to buy it for a really good price. When it arrived I was stunned to find the CD Rom unopened, the sustain pedal still with it's protector and the screen still with it's protector on it. It needed a lithium backup battery which was easy. But then I was even more stunned to find that it is maxed out on upgrades. Classic keys ROM block, GM, extra memory etc etc. Mint condition. OK it's not a 9 GByte multisampled piano, does not have USB midi, and is way more than my son will ever need,and he has no interest in synthesis, so limited editing will be just fine. But gives him the option of midi playback of scores from Sibelius. He is delighted with it, it is basically NOS. The piano sounds are great, more than good enough for practise, and the action to my mind is excellent, and bears comparison with my Pleyel(RIP sadly)upright grand, which has an excellent Renner action. Now my son is back a uni but I still have the pc1x till a flight case comes, so naturlly I needed to give it a once over, just to check all is well you understand lol. So that is where this thread comes in. Price BTW well under 300 GBP.

I have auditioned all the patches, and played with some editing, concert grand through a Leslie for instance, which is a dead giveaway as me being interested in Richard Wright and Pink Floyd.

Echoes. I love the mellotron flute sound from Nights in White Satin, the Wurlies etc etc. But here is my major dissapointment.

In Classic Keys there are so many classic patches, Steely Dan, Doors, Genesis, Bowie et al. It is no longer solvable since old technology, but why since he was a Kurzweil user for so long, are there no Richard Wright patches. I presume that a little in depth searching will find me some out of the 600 odd available, but since there was a programmer in this thread some light could be shed on the reasons. Hopefully Mr Weiser will see this bump to the thread

I would also be very grateful for a few suggestions for some onboard Floydian type patches before I have to pass it over to my son.

[nickd]

Hi TFC and welcome to the forum.

 

Try searching using Google (not the forum's in-built search engine) and you'll probably find various discussions here of using Kurzweil keys for Pink Floyd.

 

Also, this site may well give you everything you need: http://www.ksetlist.com (look under "P" :-))

[TFC]

Hi nickd, thanks so much excellent links.

 

[area51recording]

I've had an ME-1 for years. I don't really have a problem with the tone of either the APs or EPs (Having said that, the APs do sound a bit, boxy, to my ear) My one big problem with the APs was that they didn't to me have enough difference in velocity from loud to soft, no matter what I did w/the velocity setting on the keyboard I was using. When playing softly, they just sounded like a loud piano reduced in volume. They were ok in a band mix, the few times I used them, but I couldn't make them work for me in a solo context, because of that lack of tonal variety. Hopefully later iterations of these pianos fixed that issue....

[Dave Weiser]

I have auditioned all the patches, and played with some editing, concert grand through a Leslie for instance, which is a dead giveaway as me being interested in Richard Wright and Pink Floyd.

Echoes. I love the mellotron flute sound from Nights in White Satin, the Wurlies etc etc. But here is my major dissapointment.

In Classic Keys there are so many classic patches, Steely Dan, Doors, Genesis, Bowie et al. It is no longer solvable since old technology, but why since he was a Kurzweil user for so long, are there no Richard Wright patches. I presume that a little in depth searching will find me some out of the 600 odd available, but since there was a programmer in this thread some light could be shed on the reasons. Hopefully Mr Weiser will see this bump to the thread

I would also be very grateful for a few suggestions for some onboard Floydian type patches before I have to pass it over to my son.

 

Hi TFC,

I created many but not all of the 128 Classic Keys programs back in 2002 and would be happy to explain their context. (I had nothing to do with the other preset in the machine, they predate my arrival at Kurz back in 2000.) The purpose of that ROM option was to feature a new set of samples - CP80, Pianet, Clav (treble pickup), Mellotron (flute/string/choir), RMI Electra Piano (harpsi and piano stops) and ARP Solina string machine.

I also added some extra Rhodes and Wurly programs, but the samples for the those were included in the PC1/PC2 Base ROM. I didn't care for the Base ROM EP programs so I wanted to add some that I thought were an improvement.

 

So why no Floyd references? Actually I didn't realize/remember that there weren't any specific references until I saw this post. Those of us who worked at Kurz back then were and are huge Floyd fans. I've done a bunch of work for Jon Carin (for his work with Floyd, Waters and Gilmour) - he uses my EP sounds, I've got his CP80 that he played at Live Aid in my music room. Lots of love...

 

Honestly I think we just had better, more evocative name choices for any of the presets that *could* have applied to Floyd. First, consider that Wright didn't really use some of the instruments in the Classic Keys sample list, like Pianet, RMI, CP80 and Mellotron. He did of course use Clav and ARP strings on a number of iconic recordings.

 

To help you find the stuff that will work nicely for Floyd tunes:

 

The Bladerunner ARP and ARP Str+Oberheim programs will work well for getting sounds from Wish You were Here. The Bladerunner should get you the ARP sound (you might need to hit the buttons above modwheel to get rid of the octaves). The second preset should give you the synth - I believe you can move a wheel, slider or button to get rid of the ARP so you only hear the synth.

I recall we were going to name Bladerunner program "WishUWerHere" or something like that but Bladerunner won out.

 

In the EPs, there's a program called Pianet/Wurly Wah - one of the buttons toggles between Wurly and Pianet (they're pretty similar sounding). This should work nicely on the song Money. I believe Jon Carin still uses my PC3K wah Wurly sound for this tune (and in the PC3K it's named DarkSideEP or something). Wah is done with CC pedal and the modwheel. There should be a setting on the Pc1's global/master page where you can set the CC pedal to volume or wah.

 

And several of the Rhodes and Wurly programs should work for other Floyd EP tunes like Have a Cigar, Time, etc.

 

Several of the clav presets will work for Wish you Were Here.

 

In the Classic Keys user manual it says that Setup A14 "12Str Arp&Vox" was based on two songs - Entangled by Genesis and Wish You were Here. Can't comment on this one as I did not make it and don't remember it.

 

I do think we should have given at least one program a Floyd inspired name. Hope the above explanation helps and that you can find it in your heart to forgive our oversight!

 

 

[TFC]

Ha ha and thanks for all that Dave, "all sins forgiven"( Where eagles dare).

Guess i'll just need to buy the new Kronos incarnation and this

http://www.leadsounds.com/sounds-patches/korg-sounds/lds-002-the-endless-floyd-anthology.

can somebody lend me a fiver.!!!