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  #1  
Old 01-07-2012, 09:46 PM
dontfret dontfret is offline
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Default State of the Art in Synthesis of Nylon String Guitar Sound?

I don't know how many here also have an interest in electronic synthesis of sounds but almost any nylon string guitar player will be able to appreciate how close they are now getting to the real thing. Or I should say, how far they have to go. Check out the video for Flamenco Nylon String Guitar on this page (you have to scroll a bit and select it - it's not the first one that plays on that page):

http://www.roland.com/video/page.cfm?id=1127578556001

Bear in mind that this is supposed to be state of the art, with Roland's "Supernatural" synthesis technique (whatever that is) combined with "Behavior Modeling" to emulate the technique of actual guitar players.

My opinion is that while the strumming sounds like strumming (although not the rasgueado we should expect for "flamenco") overall it is still very poor. I'm not knocking Roland - they make great stuff (I have one of their synthesizers) - but I do think they either still don't know how, or don't care to try, to create a truly authentic synthesized nylon string guitar sound. Maybe know one does. Has anyone heard better?

Last edited by dontfret; 01-11-2012 at 08:56 PM.
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Old 01-11-2012, 09:02 AM
dontfret dontfret is offline
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Null message received and lesson learned. I will never bring up the subject of synthesized nylon string guitar sounds again.
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  #3  
Old 01-11-2012, 02:02 PM
revive revive is offline
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It's not an easy task.... But in general these sampled/synthesized sounds are sufficient for most keyboard applications.

It's very unlikely that keyboardists would attempt to create a solo fingerstyle piece using sampled guitar sounds. If used for this purpose, off course one would find the sampled/synthesized sound lacking.

But if used to add guitar sounds to a full-band mix, the sampled/synthesized sound (if done correctly) may be good enough in most cases. Having said this, real guitar sound is always better than the 'fake' one, off course.

Speaking from my experience as a lifelong keyboardist...
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Old 01-11-2012, 02:24 PM
wcap wcap is offline
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We tried out a bunch of electric pianos this past summer. Most of the simulated instrument sounds on most of these instruments are seriously unsatisfying and a bit painful to listen to, in my opinion, and simulated guitar sounds are among the worst in my opinion.

The exception though was the top of the line Clavinova (well beyond our price range). Its simulated instrument sounds were very good. I actually enjoyed the simulated guitar sounds.

(Quite a number of these electric pianos do a WONDERFUL job with piano sounds, by the way, and you don't have to go to the top of the line to get a genuinely satisfying to play electric piano that actually sounds and feels like a real piano.... our favorites as substitutes for real pianos were some of the Kawai models.)
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Old 01-11-2012, 02:30 PM
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Many 3rd party samplings are better than what you'll find in keyboards/workstations.

Check this out:
http://www.pettinhouse.com/html/acou...r_konatkt.html
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Old 01-11-2012, 02:39 PM
revive revive is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wcap View Post
We tried out a bunch of electric pianos this past summer. Most of the simulated instrument sounds on most of these instruments are seriously unsatisfying and a bit painful to listen to, in my opinion, and simulated guitar sounds are among the worst in my opinion.

The exception though was the top of the line Clavinova (well beyond our price range). Its simulated instrument sounds were very good. I actually enjoyed the simulated guitar sounds.

(Quite a number of these electric pianos do a WONDERFUL job with piano sounds, by the way, and you don't have to go to the top of the line to get a genuinely satisfying to play electric piano that actually sounds and feels like a real piano.... our favorites as substitutes for real pianos were some of the Kawai models.)

Electric pianos are usually good only for their, surprise surprise, piano sounds.

The high-end keyboards/workstations, such as Yamaha Motif XF, Roland Fantom, Korg Kronos, have good acoustic sounds. Try the strings, winds, brass, orchestral, drum sounds. You'll be surprised. Nevertheless, guitar is probably a different story. I think it's still the trickiest & most difficult acoustic sound to synthesize.
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Old 01-11-2012, 02:59 PM
Kabalan Kabalan is offline
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NORD LEADare great synths,,
in my ensamble, my wife plays a beautiful spinnet harpsichord, for traveling we have problems to take the instrument,, so we try a NORD, this are from Norway,, NORD PIANO
have 3 decent harpsichord, samplers,, but not very sure about changing wood for plastic!
Since i am a composer, for the movie films i use samplers and for the guitar i been, for
years, developing process sound with delays, reverbs and pitch transpose. all this for the acoustic nylon and steel strings guitars,, i really have long organ sounds, create with this gear( tc, electronics, lexicon) for me much better than synth midi in the guitar.
Eblen
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Old 01-11-2012, 08:45 PM
dontfret dontfret is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by revive View Post
Many 3rd party samplings are better than what you'll find in keyboards/workstations.

Check this out:
http://www.pettinhouse.com/html/acou...r_konatkt.html
That sounds pretty good. As does this for nylon string guitar:

http://www.pettinhouse.com/html/pett...uitar_sam.html

But in both cases this is simply sample playback. There is some clever use of sample switching going on there, granted, but at the end of the day you're playing back a recording of someone else's performance of individual notes.

Roland claims they are doing actual synthesis. Maybe it's physical modeling, maybe it's some form of additive synthesis, maybe it's something else. If it was sample playback it would sound more authentic, I'm sure, just as the pettinhouse stuff sounds authentic. Roland has been big in this business for decades and they have very good samples at their disposal. The Jupiter 80 is one of their premiere boards. They wouldn't put second rate samples in it. So it's hard for me to believe that what you can hear in the video I linked to is sampled sounds.
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Old 01-12-2012, 09:49 AM
revive revive is offline
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I see... yeah, I imagine it'd be extremely difficult to come up with a realistic guitar sound just by pure synthesis / modelling. Although, again, to a keyboardist's ear and taste, that sound, although unrealistic it may be, might fit into certain musical situations. Examples: hip hop, dance/house, etc.
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Last edited by revive; 01-12-2012 at 09:55 AM.
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  #10  
Old 01-16-2012, 04:03 PM
dontfret dontfret is offline
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Here's an update: I've found a software synthesis product, in this case based on physical modeling, that IMO does a credible job, certainly much better than the Roland synthesizer hardware product I linked to in the original post. It can emulate nylon string as well as steel string:

http://www.applied-acoustics.com/str...stic/overview/
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  #11  
Old 01-16-2012, 04:43 PM
wcap wcap is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dontfret View Post
That sounds pretty good. As does this for nylon string guitar:

http://www.pettinhouse.com/html/pett...uitar_sam.html
This is quite impressive.
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Old 01-16-2012, 04:50 PM
wcap wcap is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by revive View Post
Electric pianos are usually good only for their, surprise surprise, piano sounds.

The high-end keyboards/workstations, such as Yamaha Motif XF, Roland Fantom, Korg Kronos, have good acoustic sounds. Try the strings, winds, brass, orchestral, drum sounds. You'll be surprised. Nevertheless, guitar is probably a different story. I think it's still the trickiest & most difficult acoustic sound to synthesize.
The top of the line Clavinova model really has some quite satisfying guitar sounds though. Significantly better, in my opinion, than the model just below it. Unfortunately, this high end Clavinova sells for something like $10k, if I am recalling correctly.

For something in the neighborhood of $2K (or less) though you can get an electric piano that really sounds and feels like a real piano (we thought the Kawai electric pianos were particularly nice).
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  #13  
Old 01-18-2012, 06:49 PM
revive revive is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wcap View Post
For something in the neighborhood of $2K (or less) though you can get an electric piano that really sounds and feels like a real piano (we thought the Kawai electric pianos were particularly nice).
Yes, I'm usually content with piano sounds in electric pianos or keyboards. Especially now. Sampling technology has gone a long way. Would have been different 10 years ago. I even still have a $1K electric piano that I still use at home. I feel the piano sound is close enough to be musical.

Nevertheless, clasically trained pianists (which I am not) are usually much more picky. They usually dislike electric pianos/keyboards, both the action and sound.

Btw, we at ReviveMusicStore also sells keyboards and electric pianos. Just let me know if I can help you or your church
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