breezybellows
Well-known member
A stranger was kind enough to film me playing.
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How convincing is this sound?
- Thread starter breezybellows
- Start date
My first thought was a really small organ or harmonium.
Then I saw it was the Evo. I don't know the instrument you were trying to imitate well enough to judge whether it might be convincing.
Then I saw it was the Evo. I don't know the instrument you were trying to imitate well enough to judge whether it might be convincing.
breezybellows
Well-known member
I need to keep it as a secret
Dingo40
Been here for ages!
Sounds like a woodwind ensemble to me. 
We all know what instrument you play...
breezybellows
Well-known member
I've needed around with a student flute. This definitely sounds better that the sound I got out of it. So that's the best flute sound that can come out of my house.
breezybellows
Well-known member
The box made is wood and it does use air in some capacity.Sounds like a woodwind ensemble to me.
At this end it sounded like a cheap 45rpm vinyl record being played on a portable record player in a school hallway at lunchtime!
Something definitely got lost in transcription before it came out of my studio monitors.
Do listen to good recordings of James Galway and/or Jane Rutter if you would like to hear what good flute playing sounds like.
Something definitely got lost in transcription before it came out of my studio monitors.
Do listen to good recordings of James Galway and/or Jane Rutter if you would like to hear what good flute playing sounds like.
micahcowan
Active member
It sounds believably like a pair of flutes, something I never thought I'd hear myself say of a Roland instrument. But I think the very wet "hall" reverb effects do a great deal to muddy the sound's more obvious shortcomings. I don't think it would work as well if you were trying to sound realistically like brass (I find Roland sounds to be particularly bad at that, personally).
I have a (craptastic) FR-1xb, and plan to get an FR-8xb next month. I might play electric piano sounds on it occasionally, and organ, but it'll be rare indeed for me to touch the orchestral stuff I think. Roland just makes that stuff sound so very "muzak". The drums-and-double-bass thing so many seem to love on there isn't really for me, either. I'll probably mostly be keen on enjoying the variety of unique accordion sounds that wouldn't otherwise be attainable in a single instrument. That and the crisp, clear free bass that's mostly only found in the acoustic world on instruments I can't quite afford (yet).
I have a (craptastic) FR-1xb, and plan to get an FR-8xb next month. I might play electric piano sounds on it occasionally, and organ, but it'll be rare indeed for me to touch the orchestral stuff I think. Roland just makes that stuff sound so very "muzak". The drums-and-double-bass thing so many seem to love on there isn't really for me, either. I'll probably mostly be keen on enjoying the variety of unique accordion sounds that wouldn't otherwise be attainable in a single instrument. That and the crisp, clear free bass that's mostly only found in the acoustic world on instruments I can't quite afford (yet).
Ventura
Been here for ages!
AND here is another guy who thinks Rolands suck for sound but is gonna buy one anyway
well Sir, you are certainly not alone, and in keeping with those other
guys, the recommendation is usually to buy one with someone elses "sounds"
pre-loaded into the beastie..
well Sir, you are certainly not alone, and in keeping with those other
guys, the recommendation is usually to buy one with someone elses "sounds"
pre-loaded into the beastie..
micahcowan
Active member
Well, it's mainly their orchestral (and piano) sounds that suck (and it's not limited to their V-accordions). AFAICT their accordion sounds are just fine. I have problems with the complete lack of nuance in how they seem to handle phrasing/expression, but the base sounds themselves are fine to me (this is less true of my FR-1xb than of the 4x and 8x, which seem to use a completely different/at least slightly-more-complex sound "font" engine. As mentioned, I think the sounds I'll get from playing the free bass will be substantially better than my experiences playing acoustics have been (the ones I can get my mitts on - I've certainly heard good ones on recordings).
I'm a lot less unhappy with the sounds I expect to make on the (newer) Roland, than with the fact that I don't feel the joy while playing them - actually I haven't touched an 8xb, but have played with a Bugari Evo PA, and given that it's the exact same synthesizer in there (and presumably better keys/box), I'm fairly confident in my impressions from that applying to the 8xb). It will nonetheless be a much more versatile instrument than the others I have, and won't require nearly so much maintenance.
breezybellows
Well-known member
I use orchestral sounds very often especially on the bass side and when I'm playing free bass. When I first started using orchestral sounds, they were dismal. I've been slowly building my UPGs by trying different combinations and adjusting parameters. There has been significant progress (there are is a notable increase in the number of people that walk up to me to say that it sounds good).
I take free bass lessons from Joe Natoli who makes his Evo sound really good. I'm fact he had a master class last week about programming UPGs and he made a rock and roll demonstration with a lot of brass in it. It sounded just like a real band.
As I mentioned in my other posts on the 8X, you need to "dig in" to what Roland has made available with "software hooks" that can taylor the tone to what you want. I don't know who would buy a Roland with the configuration it came with from the factory. As a start, get the Richard Noel User Programs.
If you like organ sounds, you will like the 8X. The designer has a designated memory section in the 8X for the B3 tonewheel organ. The exact layout of the drawbars, percussion, and vibrato duplicates what is on the B3. In my opinion the tone/sound is better than the original Cordovox (Lowry organ) or any other accordion/organ. Of course you have to appreciate the "B3 sound" or all bets are off.
See, that's where the FR-1b is so much better than than the FR-1xb: it has a really good drums-and-double-bass in comparison. Which is by virtue of having no internal amp and speakers, so you are forced to forego the puny FR-1xb speakers that work somewhat for an accordion bass (if you don't pick the Alpine sound) but certainly cannot deliver on drums and double bass that both move a lot of air.
Wanna swap? I'll throw in a reasonable amp… My main use of the FR-1b is as a MIDI entry device, and the FR-1xb would be a bit more convenient due to its built-in speakers (I don't need them to sound good as much as to sound at all) and USB connections. On the other hand, the FR-1xb is heavier.
It's probably at best very marginally relevant for FR-4xb, but the bellows expressiveness problems I have with the FR-1b are totally exacerbated in single-reed free-bass registrations. Now the FR-1b got a freebass only with firmware V2.0.0, so maybe the patches it uses were never intended for freebass use. But my general impression is that accordion is not necessarily the strongest instrument modeled by Roland, and similar to the difference in quality (for essentially all manufacturers) between string ensemble and solo violin, using sparse accordion registrations (which are typical for free bass use) tends to showcase the weaknesses more than fuller registrations do.
So I think there may well be at least some parallels with my experiences even on current-day instruments.
micahcowan
Active member
I was actually speaking of what I've heard from the 8xb. But in the specific case of drums-and-double-bass, it's less about the sound itself, and more that I dislike the sound of drums and bass that only ever play their hits at exactly the same time (either as each other, or as chord notes in some other instrument). It sounds too "canned" to me.
Improving the orchestral sounds by using well-crafted user programs won't really solve things for me, either. Certainly you can improve things quite a bit in that way, over Roland's limited ability to reproduce natural, organic instrument sounds - but you won't begin to approach realistic enough for me to consider using them, in general. Aside from software capabilities, the real limitations are physical - it isn't possible to express what real instruments can do, using a keyboard (in on-the-fly performance - you can analyze and massage things later, or (more likely) edit the crap out of things, using either hyper-realistic modeling, or (more likely) a crapton of high-quality samples, and get pretty dang close with a lot of work). For example, a glissando played on a keyboard doesn't sound anything like gliss on strings, or on a clarinet. You'll can't really get a keyboard performing with a clarinet sound, to do justice to the opening notes of Rhapsody in Blue. This is the main reason I don't tend to play orchestral sounds on keyboards (in live performance).
But even limiting myself to software, I strongly suspect Roland's software hooks aren't enough to produce a grand piano sound I'd want to use. I've never heard software piano that I couldn't immediately tell was software piano, excepting a couple of systems that used significant instrument "modeling" features, and I doubt that Roland included anything like that in their accordions.
That being said, I probably would use things like a light pad (probably strings) to back up an accordion sound, and some keyboard+accordion combos (like electric piano) sound good. For the most part, though, if I'm playing accordion, I want the sound of an accordion to feature very heavily - at least solo. If I'm playing in a band, I might choose differently sometimes.
Yeah, I mean that's probably still true on the 1bx. At least as bad, anyway - but I consider that a general problem of the instruments, that even the 8xb's "dynamic bellows expression" features don't do much to resolve (but perhaps it's more poorly represented by the Bugari Evo? I haven't played a bona fide Roland FR-8xb). But on the plus side, and this is on my 1bx, I find that the timbre of the free bass notes are far, far better than I get in my compact (at least), every note sounds quickly, and as fast as any other note, and the buttons are more responsive. Some of this honestly comes down to not really accurately representing the feel and limitations of an authentic, acoustic instrument (of any quality), and I don't really want to play free bass so exclusively on the Roland that I become "spoiled" on it, because for all these advantages, the Roland still won't beat the overall expressive sound of a single-reed free bass in an acoustic, played skillfully on a quality instrument, and I like my playing to "sing". Be that as it may, a "quality' free bass is not what I currently have access to, and in the meantime playing a full-keyboard digital instrument is likely to bring me more free-bass "joy" than the Nemo II's free-bass experience can.
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