The Quilcom SIM-EP: Vintage Electric Piano simulator

[Spogg]

I'm practicing the Strangler's Golden Brown already! (it's one of my favourite pop tunes of all time, despite the slightly iffy druggie connotations of the lyrics.)

Apparently the Stranglers had to tune their instruments a little flat to match the harpsichord. Real harpsichords are tuned a little below A440 and often not equal temperament traditionally.

Yes, I’ve been finding out more stuff!

Anyway, thanks for reminding me about that song. Now I can find a midi file and continue to have copyright claims on my YouTube videos.

Cheers

Spogg

[kortezzzz]

Such a great tweaking options (hammer, damper, the sympathiser, all the rest) This one rocks! thanks for sharing, Spogg. Wonder if it would be a good idea to mix the oscillators sound with some real ep or piano samples for maximum realism. Not that the oscs sound bad or something, but maybe a mixture with a real sample would add some more magic to the sound. By the way, is it recommended to mix samples with synthesis for piano\ep instruments? I have an idea to take a real piano\ep samples, add it with a synthesis system like yours and then use kinda drawbar system that will mix the amount of the gain of each harmonic separately at 9 frequency ranges (for instance, 10% synth-90%sample at 2 2\3', 50%synth-50% sample at 1 3\5' and so on).

[Spogg]

Thank you kortezzzz!

Yes of course you could do exactly what you suggest, and mixing in samples could enhance the authenticity (I think!). I didn’t take this approach because I wanted to avoid samples of any sort to see what I could achieve with a pure synthesis approach. That was the challenge I set myself.
Feel free to adapt my EP in any way you wish and I’ll be very interested to hear anything you come up with.

Regarding recommendations for Piano and EP synthesis, I’m not sure there are any. I never came across an agreed “best way”. Sampling is the most prolific way but Physical modelling, like in Pianoteq https://www.modartt.com/ can be successful too, but involves far too much maths for me and my basic experimentations didn’t produce convincing results (as per my Quilcom PMS), even though it can produce all sorts of interesting sounds.

A method that you could experiment with is Sampling and Synthesis, pioneered by Roland with their D-50 which inspired my Quilcom Q-50. Here you take the a sample of just the attack phase and crossfade it into a synthesised sound for the sustaining portion. Of course the attack stage is baked in, so won’t change its timbre at different velocities except by dynamic filtering.

Cheers

Spogg

[kortezzzz]

Well that might be a very interesting project. I'll have some time at the upcoming weekend, so I'll give it a try. Let's see what would come up . Anyway, I must say that I was very impressed by the EP. This is one of your best shots ever. So decided to give its skin a little funky touch. Unfortunately, I have no access to 3.0.6 anymore (out of memory issues ) so the shared file will work only with the latest alfa. Keep them coming!

https://pasteboard.co/IXweILP.jpg

FSM download link (FOR LATEST ALFA ONLY!)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fPdbF ... LZX21de3pX

[Spogg]

That looks simply AMAZING! I love the Wurlitzer styling.

Such talent!

Thank you so much.

Cheers

Spogg

[Spogg]

I’ve fixed a couple of things.
Denormals issue in the Sympathiser in C-VERB mode and wrongly synced Phasers in Bins 2-4. Now at version 1.002:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nh8ydo61qwh5l ... 2.zip?dl=0

Also updated the first post.

Cheers

Spogg

[Spogg]

Many thanks to KORTEZZZZ for making my Epiano look brilliant and “pro”.

I was going to add an image but now I’m getting the dreaded Sorry, the board attachment quota has been reached message. I've emailed Malc.

His version has just one pre-routed FX chain but you can select whatever effect(s) you want. Otherwise operation and features are the same.

I finally got around to checking it out properly and fixed a few issues I found. These are listed in the change log in the schematic. It also now has the new bug fix for the Sympathiser applied. The schematic is made with the current FS4 alpha, and the zip includes 32 and 64 bit plugins. Here’s the link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e4yisoya4ih07 ... Z.zip?dl=0

It sounds the same but looks SO much better than my efforts.

Cheers

Spogg

[wlangfor@uoguelph.ca]

I wanted to congratulate you from a pianists perspective, this plugin is above par.

However, sober-ingly there is a relevant bug which you may wish to attend to:
In a monophonic tense, this is a very stable plugin.

Yet if you are to use the lower octaves in tandem with the higher octaves; the lower outweigh, overpower and cause a great deal of feedback. Obviously, you would not wish players to change their style to suit this.

Perhaps with the right resonance and some filtering with perhaps for instance a one pass 24db HP filter with a very gradual grade would be ideal to create bass that is not entirely disarmed and is able to co-operate with the higher octaves.

Two thumbs up , but please try some filter combos. I will dl the alpha schematic and try some combinations and provide in this post if I'm able.

Robert