Hey there PeWe,
In my book there are two kinds of Keyboards- Ones which are good in
the studio And ones that sound good with a band. The M12 / Expander (
and other analogs) do both pretty well.
I think, nearly all of my hardware instruments do it well, in the studio and in a band context, it´s all gear from the 70th ´til end of 90th. But the racked gear is somewhat bulky.
Im sure you know that on stage with a band your
always fighting for sonic space with guitar players. You need an in
your face keyboard which can compete.
I use to stack/layer my 3 keyboard controllers w/ the patches from the rack-modules in such situations and in addition I split the keyboards into zones which itself contain the info for the layers. I do all this w/ the PMM88E only via midi including all volume, pan and controller offsets, splitpoints, velocity switching and program changes. The memory of each keyboard/ module contains a selected library of patches which rarely changes (depends on music to perform),- so, w/ the experience w/ this library, I can do fast selections of combinations of sounds/presets which fit best for a part of any arrangement and I know which sounds work well in a band context or unison w/ guitarlines p.ex.. Not all the tonegenerators are in use then for each tune, just these which fit best. For me, this is a more comfortable way to do things compared to be forced to squeeze all the needed sounds out of 1 or 2 keyboards, which is a more complex programming job ending up in not having all the ideal patches available and unsatisfying usage of 3rd row substitute/filler sounds as also the keyzones become very small then.
B.t.w., I tried that with software @home in the hope to work w/ only the keyboard controllers and a computer/host,- no chance.
Nothing has the calculation power needed to run so much software (w/ the exception of using 4 or more Receptors maybe) and there are so many restrictions and limitations by all the different software instruments as also the host. The simplest things don´t work as expected,- some have probs w/ prg-changes, others have only a PB range of 2 semitone steps and eventually the next choice is one octave. Some work w/ samples and introduce too long loading times (and this is sometimes also the case w/ the modern "standard" hardware instruments which offer high quality grand pianos p.ex.). If you use a desktop computer and Brainspawn Forts p.ex., you get no aux-sends,- what a mess w/ all this stuff.
Often when I listen to a
recorded keyboard track all by itself It may sound awful. But mixed
with Guitar/Bass/Drum everything sounds great.
That´s it ! You may have a hi-fi-like and expensive sounding patch which makes you smile if you play it alone, but often, a poorer sound w/ a limited frequency range is the much better choice. It makes no sense if all patches in a layer cover the whole frequency range each. I also like layers, made from different devices, much more than layers made from the same machine because everything has the basic characteristic sound of the same hardware then. A good example is the Korg M1 or M1R(ex) modules. These have a general peak @ ~4KHz and nothing over 10KHz,- so you know where you can use it and where not.
Also the Korg SG Rack ( rack module of the SG Grand which Brian Auger uses ontop of his Bee ...),- it sounds not impressing compared to the hi-end pianos,- but in a rock band it works and cuts thru.
My V-Synth is cool and
does some amazing things but with a band it seems to always be
lacking. BTW Roland fixed that switching between complex patches with
the FX on with the V-synth.
All the time, I see V-Synths on stage w/ loud bands, the keyboardists play distorted guitar patches,- even Jordan Rudess does.
One exception, I´ve seen Barbara Thompson Paraphenelia w/ Jon Hiseman (Colosseum) on drums. This was a more quiet jazz like band w/ a violin player in addition. The keyboardist performed on a Kawai MP8 stage piano and the V-Synth, mostly for the ethno-like and atmospheric pads. That worked well in that context, but all sounded very polished and there was enough space in the music for this.
"schrieb" (german word) means "wrote",- must be a leftover from a header created by this german Thunderbird version here.
B.t.w., I also have probs to write between the lines here,- didn´t found out why up to now.
To keep the Oberheim topic, today morning, I tried to integrate the Sonic Projects OPX Pro 1.1 virtual synthesizer into my rig,- same result as described above: PB-Range 2 semitone steps ( the manual says a 3rd !) or a octave and it doesn´t respond to midi CC7 volume controller. This is so annoying,- this thing sounds extremely good basically, but I cannot use it w/ my Xpander and all my other hardware instruments together because they are all programmed w/ a PB range of a 5th,- and you don´t get a balance because of the CC7 bug.
Not using the hardware means wasting your time waiting for updates. I become a grandpa until it´s perfect. I´m sure, next update comes w/ tons of new features but only a few fixes,- like all the software I have.
Please excuse my ignorance but what does schrieb mean?
Karl