Synthesizers

[Loopydude]

@Freejooky

For Loopydude - my friend has one of those, and I was genuinely surprised by the quality of the sounds. I thought many of the “instruments” sounded as good as the Korg Triton and Yamah motif workstations, and those cost 4x what the Alesis does! I was especially impressed with its Rhodes sound (always a great measuring stick for a ROMpler).

I agree completely. The thing can be had for $900 if you find a sale, it’s got 88 weighted keys that feel really nice (they impress my wife sufficiently that she’ll deign to use it, and she’s quite the piano snob), and some of the samples are simply fantastic considering the price. Anyone looking for a starter synth should take a serious gander at the QS8 lineage of Alesis synths, IMHO. I’ve monkeyed with softsynths, but I just don’t think in terms of computer keyboard strokes, mouse clicks, and little graphs of timing and pitch; though I suck at it, I’m a very tactile musician, and if I think in visual terms, I think on a staff. I was so disappointed that Garageband (Apple’s cheapo sequencer-, sampler-, softsynth- and recording-studio-in-one package) has no standard music notation option. Most of these softsynths are completely mysterious to me, as a result of their (to me) unintuitive interface and visual output. Give me black and white keys I can fumble over, pound on, lightly tap, or sweep my fingers across.

For the OP, I think good digital synths/keyboards ought to have keys with some sort of weighting to give them more of a piano feel, fine velocity sensitivity with wide dynamic range so you can really play expressively, “aftertouch” (which you can turn on and off), and some other effects like the ubiquetous pitch-bender and some jacks for pedals like sustain. I guess for real electronic brainiacs who can compose straight onto sequencers and do all the fancy looping, etc. purely mentally and visually, most of the equipment I’m describing is superfluous, but if you’re big on kinesthetics, a mid-range synth with decent feel and responsivity will make you so much happier than a piece of junk that makes some cool noises but is essentially built like a toy.

[pulykamell]

[QUOTE=edwino]
I have an Ensoniq ESQ-1 which is in the gray area between retro and intolerably dorky, but more on the dorky side of things. It may be really cool in about 5 years, but the sound coming out of it is so mediocre that I sometimes doubt it.

[QUOTE]

Hey! The ESQ-1 is actually a pretty cool synth! It has a decent reputation among synth afficianados. I never owned one, but I borrowed one to pair up with my Korg M1 and I was really impressed by the cool sounds the ESQ-1 could produce.

As for the piano vs synth playing question. There are similarities, of course, but it’s different. It’s like playing organ vs. playing piano. They require slightly different approaches, they have different techniques associated with them, etc.

The biggest difference (unless you get weighted keys) is, of course, the feel. You can play faster, use different techniques (palm glisses, smears, etc.) that you can’t do on a weighted keyboard. Plus many of the newer synths offer you additional expressive freedom such as aftertouch – you can push into the note as you play it to add vibrato, bend, apply a filter sweep, etc, to it.

Then, if you have a polytonal synth, you have to realize that approaching it with a fully chorded piano style is probably going to end up sounding like mud. (Unless you use piano or electric piano sounds.) Even when playing an organ like a Hammond B3, you have to strip down or spread out the voicings to make it sound good. So you’ll have to adjust to that. If you get a monophonic synth, you’ll have no choice but to.

You also will eventually want to learn how to use the pitch and vibrato wheels (or joystick on some synths) on the left side of your keyboard. Yet another expressive option not available on pianos. It’ll take a bit of practice to learn how to use it effectively.

Then, with analog synths, there’s also the real-time control of your sound envelope which gives you yet another aspect of your playing you can sculpt.

Myself, I’m a piano player who has played synths for a long time. I personally find it a very different mindset, and I’m much more comfortable behind a piano. Being a good synth keyboardist takes some different sets of skills.

[Freejooky]

Yeah, I’m actually not that big on having weighted keys on a keyboard unless I’m playing something that’s emulating a rhodes/wurlitzer or real piano.

The minimoog comes to mind - its keys have a particularly springly, non-piano feel, and I always play it with one hand on the pitch and mod wheels and the other playing the keyboard. Add to the fact that it’s monophonic, so i’m ususally playing funky leads or farty basslines, and the entire playing style is different than a weighted, hammer-based instrument.

[edwino]

@pulykamell

Hey! The ESQ-1 is actually a pretty cool synth! It has a decent reputation among synth afficianados. I never owned one, but I borrowed one to pair up with my Korg M1 and I was really impressed by the cool sounds the ESQ-1 could produce.

Huh. Go figure. I’ve never been that good at engineering sounds but, I was never overly impressed by the waveform bases and standard patches that came with the instrument. It seemed to me to be a bridge instrument before ROMplers really took off (it has a sampled piano for instance but it is I think an 8-bit sample) and analog waveform generators were first moving to digital, thus losing some of the analog warmth (although some of the modulators IIRC are still analog). As a player of mostly blues and funk (only recently more into electronic), IMHO the piano, electric piano, Rhodes, and Hammond factory patches (which of course form like 90% of what I would want to use) all stink. It does have one “good” electric piano patch built in, but it is has really bright sound right out of late 1980s soft jazz (think the theme song from “Doogie Howser.”)

I did learn to use the synthesizer, though, and I have some manuals still sitting around. What is pretty cool is that there are 3 independent waveform generators which can each be routed through their own LFOs; these are then all modified in an envelope modifier and VCF. Add this to a large screen which makes it easier to use. Maybe I’ll mess with it again and see if I can make it do some nice cool sounds. Especially since I have been on a little electronic kick with the resurgence of 1980s flavored bands like The Killers and Franz Ferdinand.

[pulykamell]

@edwino

As a player of mostly blues and funk (only recently more into electronic), IMHO the piano, electric piano, Rhodes, and Hammond factory patches (which of course form like 90% of what I would want to use) all stink. It does have one “good” electric piano patch built in, but it is has really bright sound right out of late 1980s soft jazz (think the theme song from “Doogie Howser.”)

Ah, well there’s your problem. You don’t want to use the ESQ-1 to emulate other instruments. You want to use it to make its own sounds. For a digital keyboard, it has an incredibly warm sound.

Read up on your darling little keyboard here. It gets a 4.6/5 user rating. I remember it having some very nice synth bass sounds and some pretty decent pads.