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I want my virtual!


dansouth

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I was very impressed by Bill Busch's use of the Yamaha VL-1 on "July 4th". Are there any instruments currently available that can produce these patches? Would a Motif with a VL expansion card be able to do something like this?
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Well, Yamaha Motif should able to produce those pathces through the VL-expansion board. The only thing I do not know is how many pathces this board has from the original machine. I think, that if you have sufficiant funds, you should go for the original - Chick Corea is not advertaising it for nothing.

 

Faruk

Fat But Fast
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I have a VL1m, and my advice is, if you can find one, buy it even if it's a bit expensive. The VL-70m, and the VL expansion board, have the same kind of expressivity if played with a breath control, BUT they have a slightly more limited voice channel and editing, obviously only one voice, and maybe something different in bit-rate processing... I can't be sure, but my ears tell me the VL1 is worlds apart. Richer, warmer, and smoother. Plus, it has excellent onboard effects; actually, the only onboard effects that I have ever used in a recording.

I know Yamaha also makes a soft version; a *polyphonic* VL! Definitely worth checking.

 

marino

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I own a Yamaha MU100R which has the VL board built in. I was disappointed to find out that it only stores 6 custom presets, and that the plugin card doesn't allow you to edit the sounds itself, just the control of the sound. I thought maybe the VL70m was better, but I just picked up a spec sheet about it and it has the same crappy memory capacity. I expect the PLG-150 board is the same. It has 256 patches and then another 64 that are variations of the others, and then the aforementioned 6 spots for user patches. The only editing that you get is how the instrument reacts to your controller, and that can be vastly different for every patch, but since it's a part-wise edit, you have to change it every time.

 

To make up for this royal pain in the butt, I just found out that Yamaha offers voice editing software so you can really fool around with it. The best functionality is for Mac only, but there's a basic thing for Windows. http://www.yamaha-xg.com/utility/vleditor.html

Here's a link to a bunch of links on the VL synths: http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~andrew/wind/#synthesizers

 

If you really want to get into physical modeling, my advice is to either find a used VL1/7/1m(that's the best one) or to start playing with Tassman. Tassman is a software synthesizer (stand-alone, VST of DXi) that does physical modeling synthesis and there's a review of it in this month's keyboard mag. It is bundled with Cakewalk's Sonar, and it also has a downloadable demo.

 

Other PM synths are available through the korg Z1/MOSS board for Triton/Trinity, and on the Korg Oasys card, and the Creamware Pulsar card.

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This is what I'm talking about! Given that they have already invested heavily in this technology, it would not cost them that much to come out with a full-powered VL expansion board or rack mount VL unit. I'm not going to spend money on one of their half-baked cards. Six programs is an insult! Memory is cheap!

 

What's the news on a software version from Yamaha? Is it a soft synth?

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