modern ep presets.

[bluzeyone]

Just wondering what you guys think of them. Different boards call them different things..ex. Dx ep, sparkle ep, modern ep, ect. While each of them mentioned are slightly different from each other, they have a very similiar characteristic as well. They all seem to have very pronounced tines and are chorus heavy.

I myself dance around them on the preset menu preferring the old vintage suitcase or 60's barky and mellow tones. I noticed some pros really love the mod sound tho. Just wondering where all of you sit on the subject.

[J. Dan]

Whatever the song calls for.

 

Personally, I like a gritty dry wurli. But if it's a ballad, it'll more likely be a Rhodes dripping in chorus.

[jerrythek]

It has it's place, depending on the tune, style of music you play. I lean towards many varieties of real-sounding Rhodes and Wurli, but I use a PX5S sound I created (Modern Keys) when my band covers this tune:

 

 

Jerry

[CEB]

Presets often suck in a live stereo situation when the mains are 30+ feet apart. First thing I generally have to do is edits the effects. Strip off chorus and reverb then see what is left. then build from there.

 

I don't like what happens with the panning Rhodes patches when things start to bounce back and across a 40' span either.

 

They all sound great through my stage amplification or a pair of cans.

 

Running mono is easier.

[J. Dan]

Running mono is easier.

 

[mate stubb]

There is no place in the world for DX EP sounds. Never Ever again. Nope. Nein. Nyetsky comrade. Put it in a trebuchet and fling it against David Foster's wall.

 

An authentic Rhodes sound with chorus on the other hand can be lovely.

[CEB]

I liked the DX7. The EPs were killer. It could nail classics such as Wing Beneath my Wings and Peter Cetera love ballads once he went over to the dark side. It had a nice action also.

 

 

 

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view6/2426913/scrubs-head-explode-o.gif

 

This still cracks me up.

[Dave Weiser]

Trying to get away from the fake/digital EP type of sound is what inspired/began my sound design career.

 

Back in the 90s, this sound (along with the dreaded "Strat-clav) was pretty much the only choice on the menu.

High quality , super-realistic vintage keys were hard to come by on workstations back then. My Ensoniq KT76 did a pretty good job.

But in the 90s my buddies and I all picked up real Rhodes and Wurlies whenever possible, usually from someone who was moving or getting married.

 

So when I started at Kurz back in 2000, my personal mission was to create a bunch of realistic EP presets for myself. The timing was lucky - soon after I was hired, Kurz started two cool projects that I got to work on: ROM4 Vintage EPs for K26 and ROM2 Classic Keys for PC2.

 

The only tune where this type of sound doesn't kill me is this:

[video:youtube]

(I and believe technically Kirkland was playing a DX7 guitar preset, not an EP. That's what he said in the interview with Keyboard Mag at the time.)

 

Of course while working for companies, Broadway shows and private clients I've had to create plenty of digital sounding EPs. And I don't mind them so much now, though I still never use 'em in my own playing.

 

 

 

[richforman]

You need all of the above to be a versatile working cover-band keyboard player. Most of the music that I personally most enjoy listening to and playing is from the 60's and 70's and favors the older/dirtier/barkier Rhodes and Wurli type sounds, but many 80's top 40 tunes call for the sparkly shimmery "dx" ep type sounds, and the closer you can come to recreating the original sound and vibe, the happier your bandmates and audience will be.

[CEB]

I am listening to as much Santana as possible just to absorb as much as I can stylistically.

 

Chester liked to used what sounds like DX style EPs as part of some the the layers he would use. They work but I don't like it when used on material from the 1st three albums.

 

[video:youtube]

[ProfD]

It really comes down to how one plays and the type of music. A variety of EPs works for me including the DX EP.

 

I'll layer DX EP with darker Rhodes and Wurli to add sizzle. It sounds great especially on groove-centric music.

[Dana.]

The only tune where this type of sound doesn't kill me is this:

[video:youtube]

(I and believe technically Kirkland was playing a DX7 guitar preset, not an EP. That's what he said in the interview with Keyboard Mag at the time.)

Whoa. That's revelatory... at least for me. I always thought it was a modified EP or vibraphone/marimba/bell sound. Regardless, it's a badass solo that's as much as a testament to Kenny's prowess on pitchbend as it is his playing.

[bluzeyone]

It really comes down to how one plays and the type of music. A variety of EPs works for me including the DX EP.

 

I'll layer DX EP with darker Rhodes and Wurli to add sizzle. It sounds great especially on groove-centric music.

 

There's an idear I'm gonna put on the shelf and try asap.

[jerrythek]

Sometimes I'll take a DX-type EP sound, high-pass filter it and layer it into another sound just to get a bit of bright tine-ish tone to add to a layer. It's a quick/down-n-dirty tweak when making blended sounds.

 

Jerry

[Sundown]

I can understand the need if you're a live performer doing covers, but otherwise I would say that this particular sound belongs on a "must die" preset list.

 

I don't mind an electic piano sound that has a synthetic quality, but the DX emulations are played-out. That thin, piercing tone need not be repeated again...

[Bucktunes]

The only tune where this type of sound doesn't kill me is this:

[video:youtube]

(I and believe technically Kirkland was playing a DX7 guitar preset, not an EP. That's what he said in the interview with Keyboard Mag at the time.)

IIRC, that same issue of Keyboard Magazine had an accurate transcription of this solo, complete with bend indications. Even transcribed, it was a bear to learn. Kirkland was a monster!

[GovernorSilver]

The only tune where this type of sound doesn't kill me is this:

[video:youtube]

(I and believe technically Kirkland was playing a DX7 guitar preset, not an EP. That's what he said in the interview with Keyboard Mag at the time.)

 

Wow! Thanks for a reminder of what a great track (and great album!) that was.

 

I'm also a fan of the first Chick Corea Electric Band album, which had DX up the wazoo.

[bluzeyone]

I can see even with a little tweakn that it can be an effective solo tone, but I've tried using it in different comping situations and I just can't get into the vibe. It just feels too slammy or or aggressive to get my rhythmic groove on. Mebbe I'll do some layering or put a a phaser on it. Just glad to see others have on their 'unwanted list'.

[CEB]

Right now I am using EPs out the wazoo. On the first 3 Santana records if Gregg was not playing organ he was playing EP. The handful of non Santana tunes gave a lot of EPs like ARS's version of Spooky.

[stoken6]

I liked one patch on my old KS32 ("05 Encore" iirc?). A very modern/bell-like EP - a bit like vibes but warmer and with less of an inharmonic content. Not like a DX7 EP - much more organic sounding.

 

Ideal for the first dance, or the ballad at the end of the night as the lights come on and the cleaners start clearing away...

 

Is it heresy to say I love Kenny's playing, but not that patch, on the Sting track?

 

Cheers. Mike.

[aellison62]

It really comes down to how one plays and the type of music. A variety of EPs works for me including the DX EP.

 

I'll layer DX EP with darker Rhodes and Wurli to add sizzle. It sounds great especially on groove-centric music.

 

This is exactly what I do to brighten or give bite even to certain acoustic piano programs. It gives an extra level of dynamics.

[jerrythek]

It really comes down to how one plays and the type of music. A variety of EPs works for me including the DX EP.

 

I'll layer DX EP with darker Rhodes and Wurli to add sizzle. It sounds great especially on groove-centric music.

 

This is exactly what I do to brighten or give bite even to certain acoustic piano programs. It gives an extra level of dynamics.

 

Yes, I do the same, but I prefer to hi-pass filter the DX sound to remove some of the "body" of it, as it makes the piano sound more phasey. I only want the upper bell tone.

 

Jerry

[Al Coda]

 

I'm also a fan of the first Chick Corea Electric Band album, which had DX up the wazoo.

 

That were the times when Rory Kaplan programmed the TX816s for Chick Corea, Steve Pocaro, Ricky Lawson and Michael Jackson.

 

Michael Boddicker had excellent DX7mk II patches too.

 

Yamaha FM isn´t only the stock e-piano patches or the stock DX patches at all,- but too many musicians use stock presets and doodle and that´s what Chicago and David Foster did w/ the e-piano patches what made these patches famous.

 

A.C.

 

[Synthoid]

There is no place in the world for DX EP sounds. Never Ever again. Nope. Nein. Nyetsky comrade. Put it in a trebuchet and fling it against David Foster's wall.

 

Well OK then!

 

I have to confess, I have a combi in my old Triton that uses a DX7 rhodes with a deep string pad. Sounds great!

[Bill H.]

I wouldn't exactly call DX style EPs "modern" since they've been around for over 30 years now. Whether it's your cup of tea or not, it's a firmly established sound category. Among other things, it's heavily used in P&W music. I personally tend towards the Roland SA sound more than the over the top heavily chorused tinkly stuff, and more often than not I'll use it as the base of a layer.

 

I wouldn't want to give Mike Martin and others involved in product sound design the impression that DX and SA EPs are not important anymore. They are.

[Theo Verelst]

Yamaha themselves, with whatever unknown benevolent programmers that were and are part of their sound making arsenal, appear to have both lines of thought still: making interesting simulation sounds (SY99, some Physical Modeling, Spectral Component Modeling), and redoing even their own non-sample based success sounds (80s style wide and rich e-pianos is more my association with some DX e-pianos, of which there are more than a few), and, like in the recent CPs, paying attention to mixing in strong and appropriate effects and distortion simulations.

 

A lot of the plowing around in sound design space is doomed not to come full circle by denying the difference between an ordinary sample set and a "living" instrument where the waveforms are never like a piece of tape in a Mellotron with volume control, but way more varied, and way more convolved in the sense of dynamic note-correlation non-linear tine-connection, many order feedback lines,

and even being prepared for mix effects (by dedicated (E.E. type) self signal correlation properties).

 

In more normal language: samples are static, and will bore soon, not matter what. In the Kurzweils (and I sure knew guys in the end of the 80s who rather lug and play real e-pianos), the V.A.S.T. does (or should do, maybe better put) deeper stuff than adding low-pass and some modulation. the DX operators create variation because all operators could be influenced by modulation and velocity, which creates a lot of complex variation (some people here might not know the variation of epianos available on the original DXes besides rom bank one).

 

Since DA converters, DSP and memory have become cheaper and cheaper, it is increasingly easy to create a rompler, but that doesn't teach the general audience how to make interesting musical instruments work, and how to play them.

 

I think in epianos I discern other dimensions: the tube distortion degree, being aimed at a chorussy wide sound or a dark bark sound, or containing "new" elements to create excitement, or some fun coming from an emulation on a synthesizer. So I think a lot of "dimensions" getting discussed are more the result of glorifying shortcomings than main musical directions worthy of renewed attention.

 

T.