The Harpsichord Monologues

[Radagast]

Dream On by Aerosmith uses a harpsichord.

[Sundown]

Quite funny … 😀

 

One of my favorite songs is “Scarborough Fair” (Simon & Garfunkel), but the harpsichord part is terrible … It nearly ruins the track. It’s as it John Meszar got his moment and decided to go all-out.

 

Todd

[Chummy]

I think you're on to something and didn't realize it.

 

You complain about harpsichord yet ackowledge it's underused in modern music.

Go on then, use it and do your own thing with it. It's definitely going to be sounding unique than.

a couple of years ago I composed a short piece in which I layered a harpsichord and a celeste sound, + a big echo reverb. Very lush !

[AnotherScott]

Bringing this back to mind, I was curious about what the EP sounds were like on the Casio CDP-S360.  I found one reviewer who posted a 5-part youtube series on the keyboard. Three of those videos were dedicated to specific sounds... one video was for acoustic piano sounds, one was for pipe organs, and one was for harpsichords! So there's at least one person who thinks piano, harpsi, and pipe organ are the most important sounds in a board. Ironically, the CDP-S360 lacks a dedicated harpsi button. 😉

[AnotherScott]

On 2/3/2023 at 3:44 AM, stoken6 said:

OT tangent but: any source of double-speed piano samples in case I need to cover that song? 

 

On 2/3/2023 at 9:15 AM, AnotherScott said:

If you look at the workstation-style boards that allow deep (wave level) editing, I wonder whether any of them allow you to stretch the samples up an octave from their original pitch in such a way that they sound like a tape recorded sound being played twice as fast. I just tried, using the Note Shift parameter in a single Element within a piano sound on the MODX, and it's too smart... it maintains fidelity to the original regardless. I don't know if they are "invisibly" switching to different samples, or if they are using a quality digital algorithm to change pitch without the expected change in tone, or if there's a still deeper level of editing that I didn't get to. But maybe there's some way to do it, if not on MODX, then on other sample-based boards.

 

I found that the MODX does give you the chipmunk sped-up recording effect if you program the pitch bend to bend up 12 semi-tones. Of course, holding the pedal in place while playing may not be optimum, I guess you could use tape! 😉 I wonder if using the pitch envelope function might work for this. It's parameters are not in semitones, but if it isn't quite in tune, you could probably build the pitch adjustment into the patch as well.

[CyberGene]

I’m a sucker for good harpsichord sounds. Most keyboards come with some laughable attempts at harpsichord, and even the ones that are well sampled, such as on the Yamaha pianos, exhibit way too short a release and create a machine gun effect on trills. We recently found a free harpsichord soundfont on my forum and converted it into SFZ format, so that it can be played in the free Sforzando player and I tweaked it further to solve the machine gun effect that was present in the SF and it’s my go to harpsichord now: