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| Rhodes for Halion |
Sample CD- Vintage 73 RhodesPurgatorory Creek - Rhodes for Gigasampler & Rhodes for HalionNow in Halion format - Buy it hereMost modern samples of the Fender Rhodes do not sound like the instruments that I remember. The better players all had "customized" action and had adjusted the tines to give less "bell" sound. This made the instrument less overbearing, allowing it to blend in better with ensemble playing. The bell tones would occasionally jump out during "comping" and were more of an accent than a constant occurence. I feel very strongly that this is the closest I have heard to capturing the true, usable timbre of the Rhodes when played by the better musicians like Herbie hancock, Stevie wonder, or Ray Manzarek. Like the original Rhodes, this instrument easily accepts external FX and has a wide variety of subtle velocity nuances due to its 4 velocity layers and separate "Release" samples. BACKGROUND ON THE INSTRUMENT AND SAMPLING PROCESSThe Rhodes piano sampled here is a late 1970's era 73-key Suitcase model. I rented this unit from a local pro rental shop. The sampling took about a week to complete. The recording was done directly from the harp, bypassing all of the preamp circuitry. This allowed me to get a much cleaner sample with far lower noise. The instrument was directly interfaced to a high-end 24-bit ADC. From that point forward all manipulation of the sample was done in the digital domain. Each note was sampled at four velocities. The release noise was also sampled for each note. The samples were normalized and trimmed. When all edits were complete, each sample was converted to 16-bit (dither applied) and saved as a .WAV file. There is no looping. Every note was allowed to decay naturally.THE PROGRAMSI provided three programs (all based on the same set of samples). Even though this is a 73-key instrument, I stretched the high E to high C. To my ear this sounded OK. The low notes were not as cooperative. They sounded awful stretched below the low E. Personally, having owned MANY 73 and 88 note Rhodes in the past, I think the original design of 73 notes was probably a wise decision. At the extremes, the tines lose a lot.The three programs are identical except for a lowpass filter applied. Standard Rhodes has a small amount of filter applied which subtly smoothes out the instrument. Soft Rhodes has even more filter applied and might be suitable for comping. Brighter Rhodes has no filter. If you're astute enough to look at the region mapping of the samples in the Instrument Editor you'll notice that not all of the samples were used. If you've played a number of real Rhodes pianos you can attest to the fact that these are each unique instruments. In fact, in comparison to other electro-mechanical keyboards of that era (Hammond, Clavinet, Wurlizer) the average Rhodes piano was far less consistent note-to-note. One note might bark wonderfully, while the next note sounded lifeless. The instrument that I sampled was no exception. I was told the instrument was in good repair and had been well maintained, but given the fact that it was 20 years old I did find inconsistency note-to-note. When confronted with a less than perfect note, I choose to borrow from a neighbor. In addition to eliminating the problem note, this tends to make the instrument sound more consistent.
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Stock#: 21660 Publisher: Purgatory Creek Code: bg002-PC1 Format/Platform: HALion Subject: Organ Year: © 2000 List: Sale: $59.00
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Copyright © 1996, 2007, MIDI Classics®, Revised 05/24/2007