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Desktop Control Synthesizer with Analog Physical Modeling (groove box)
Awesome synth desktop module/ groovebox. Compared to the Roland D2, which I’ll call “the good groovebox”, this is “the evil groovebox”. The patterns are very aggressive, stylish and actual. The 5-note polyphonic VA engine is very powerful and full. The drum sounds are also very good. Edgy and “underground”, this machine is perfect for Industrial, Techno, Electro and many other genres.
Yamaha AN200 audio demos
These are the three factory demo-songs in the AN200 – they do a good job at capturing the huge variety of styles achievable on this machine:
This is my favorite instrument, and the one I feel I’ve developed a personal style on. I play it through a Hammond PR-40 Tone Cabinet with reverb, not through a Leslie – I feel it better preserves the character of the organ — but that could change in the future.
I pretty much play in the old Jimmy Smith style, with a lot of swing, or in the hard-bop vein. My favorite drawbar settings are the jazz standard 888000000 on the swell, and 838000000 on the great manual, soft 3rd harmonic percussion with fast release, and C3 chorus, but I experiment with alternate settings, depending on the song I’m playing.
Hammond C-3 audio demos
I played these three examples on my 1968 Hammond C-3 + Hammond PR-40 tone cabinet:
This is a sample CD from a German company – Stand By Music Pro. – that I bought in early ’90s. I used it quite a bit and built a few very good velocity-switch Hammond patches on my Roland W-30 at the time.
This is an audio CD containing B-3 notes, sampled every semitone.
Here’s the on board demo:
Stand By Music Pro. B-3 Organ – The Legend audio demo
Alpha Dance II is the sequel to Best Service’s Alpha Dance, one of the classic techno-dance CDs of the early-mid 1990s.
Alpha Dance II comes in two CDs – one that contains the audio format, and the other one containing the Akai CD-ROM portion of this collection. There is a generous 300MB of samples, all geared for dance production.
This collection was produced in Berlin in 1995, and naturally the style best suited to it is mid-90s techno-house. All the elements needed in a dance production are present, including liquid house organs, superb sequencer lines, analog-sounding and evolving pads, several different types of synth FX, bleeps, zaps, sub bass, vocals, acoustic and electronic percussion loops, lead synths, basses, vocoders, and more!
The nice thing about this CDs is that the samples were all recorded very dry and clean; that gives the users the ability to apply their own effects and production tricks.
Check out the following demos of individual patches from Alpha Dance II:
Best Service Alpha Dance II audio demos
The original factory demo song. This song will give you an idea of how much you can do with just a sampler and a well-produced sample CD like this.
And here below I’m adding some examples of the single sounds contained in the Akai CD-ROM. All examples were played from Propellerhead Reason 3’s NN-XT sampler, going through the RV7000 reverb (running programs matched to the nature of the samples) – going through the default Mastering Suite.
Thanks to the blindfolded Goddess of Luck, I won this keyboard in a raffle at a Mars Music (great store unfortunately no longer in existence) Keyboardist Night years ago. It is comparable to the Casio CTK-601. This is a useful auto-accompaniment keyboard, capable of some respectable sounds and rhythms. It sits at the lower end of the EM-series, but holds its own compared to its bigger brothers and sisters.
Roland EM-10 audio demos
Roland EM-10 specs
Other useful features found in this keyboard include:
Metronome button
Transpose button
Chorus/Reverb on-off button
Arrangement mixer
Style Manipulator (a great feature, allows to mute/add parts and exchange parts with other on-board styles, effectively mixing and customizing your own rhythms
Keyboard velocity on-off button
One Touch button (automatically recalls preset accompaniment and sound setting suitable for the style chosen)
“Intel”ligent harmony button (adds harmony to the solo voices, played automatically as you play the melody)
“Organ” mode (EM-10s’ for “split” section L+R)
Variation button that allows to recall variations of the standard GM set on board, for many sounds (i.e., pressing preset tone A57 (SyBas101) and then the Variation button, allows to get access to variation sounds “SyBass3” and “SynthBs1”
Powerful on-board speakers
Colorful panel scheme.
This keyboard is both GM (General MIDI) and GS (General Standard), and features “Style Morphing” (style manipulator).
Bottom line: an inexpensive keyboard with quality GM sounds, interesting rhythms, and all-around fun to play – perfect for the beginner, intermediate player, or for piano-bar, and entertaining at family parties.
This set is basically an omnibus edition of the popular “Creative Essentials” series of sample CDs that Zero-G published during the ’90s. The quality is high, the price (like the earlier, individual CDs) is right, and is a great collection – very inspirational. This collection is over 7GB/9000 samples.
It’s hard to find faults in a collection this big, that comes at a relatively low price (around $100). There are plenty of great dance/pop/rock loops, instrument loops, percussion, synth lines, vocal samples, and even some gorgeous Indian vocal samples. If you own Reason, check out this product.