Canadian Applied Acoustics updates Lounge Lizard to version 3, the already famous electric piano simulator based on the powerful physics modeling engine derived from Tassman. Compared to previous versions, this time we find significant improvements and new features, including a complete built-in multi-effects, a completely redesigned graphical interface and a whole new sound. But how faithful can a simulation or a sampled library be? How does a real electric piano sound? This is the right opportunity to compare the true with the false and the multiple possibilities that the world of digital simulations offers us. Gentlemen, this is Mr. Rhodes
To better understand what the Rhodes piano is (Fig.1) it is good to know a minimum of its fascinating history. It all began with the outbreak of World War II, when an American music teacher, Harold Rhodes, was called to serve in the US Air Force Corps, and was placed in the military hospital. During that time, Rhodes thought that a good way to cheer the military in patients was to entertain them with music, but in the best way: by teaching them to play. So it was that he devised a method to bring a musical instrument in front of the beds in the infirmary. The first rudimentary prototype of his invention was built with pieces of sheet metal obtained from a B-17 bomber crashed near his barracks. The thing was a huge success for him, so much so that he earned official honors in the weapon. After the war, he decided to embark on the path of making musical instruments by opening a small factory in which the first instrument marketed under the Rhodes brand and presented at the 1946 NAMM Show was born: the Pre-Piano, a small portable amplified piano. The following year he built a 73-key version without preamp that caused such a stir in the music industry that it attracted the attention of another great patron of the music industry of the time, Leo Fender.
Shortly thereafter, the production of the now famous electric pianos branded "Fender Rhodes" began. The first product was the Piano Bass, the famous keyboard bass used by Ray Manzarek of the Doors. In 1970 the first real Rhodes piano was released, the Mark I, presented on the market in four versions: stage seventythree, stage eightyeight, suitcase seventythree and suitcase eightyeight. The difference between the stage models and the suitcases lies in the fact that the former have steel feet and are foldable in a portable suitcase weighing “just” 65 kilograms, while the latter are mounted on an amplified stereo speaker with a built-in tremolo effect, for the generous weight of about 120 kilos. The success of the Rhodes among the musicians of the time is remarkable, so much so that a single recorded by Herbie Hancock serves as an advertising demonstration. Since that time, the sound of Harold Rhodes' invention has gone around the world, being used in virtually all musical genres, from pop to jazz, from rock to funky. In the following years, Rhodes broke away from the Fender brand to be acquired by a powerful record company of the time, CBS. In 45 the model came out Mark ii, first with few structural changes if not purely aesthetic (the rounded lid is replaced with a more robust one able to keep other instruments on it, such as the heavy analog synthesizers of the time), then technical changes follow with the intent to improve their sound and playability, including all-plastic frets. In 1984 the Mark V, entirely redesigned and with a completely new design in line with the style of the 80s. The story ends in 1987, when the Rhodes is sold to Japanese Roland and, due to the increasing popularity of electronic synthesizers, lighter and more practical to carry, no one was interested in buying a very heavy electromechanical piano, and Roland certainly wasn't. interested in production. The Rhodes piano wasn't the only electromechanical piano around in the 70s. To be sure, the first truly portable electromechanical piano was the Wurlitzer (Fig.2), which was made famous by the great Ray Charles in 1959 with the recording of the song “What'd I say”, and later by groups such as Supertramp and Queen. The operation of the Wurlitzer was very similar to that of the Rhodes, although radically different in the fundamental aspects, but the concept derived from Harold Rhodes' idea of using "asymmetrical tuning forks" instead of strings, amplified by magnetic pickups similar to those of electric guitars. Another famous electric piano was produced by Yamaha in the early 80s, the CP70 (Fig.3), a real piano with real strings, amplified by piezoelectric pickups scattered along the sound box. What gave it that characteristic sound was the fact that there was only one string for the low notes, and two for the high notes, unlike the classical pianos which have two and three respectively. To transport it, it was sufficient to unscrew the side handles to end up with two suitcases weighing about 50 kg each. A few years later the 88-key version was born, the CP80.
How the Rhodes plan works:
The Rhodes piano is a technically very basic instrument (Fig.4 ), very robust, designed to be transported and to last over the years, easy to understand and to repair. The secret of its sound lies in two fundamental elements: the particular structure of the so-called "asymmetrical" tuning forks, and the offset of the pickups (Fig.5). A tuning fork is a metal structure that emits a note when vibrated by an external force, just like the classic 440Hz tuning fork used to tune acoustic instruments. Its fork shape ensures that vibrations propagate from one fork to another evenly while maintaining a stable intonation. Harold Rhodes had the idea of creating tuning forks with two forks of different mass, in fact those of a Rhodes piano are made up of a wider part, also called "tone bar", and a narrower part called "tine". When a key is pressed, thanks to the lever effect (remember Archimedes?), A hammer is set in motion which is literally thrown against the narrowest part of the tuning fork (the tine) which, in turn, transmits the vibration to the part. wider (the tone bar) vibrating both at a predetermined and adjustable frequency by means of a small metal spiral wound almost at the tip of the tine. At the same time, a nylon string attached to the back of the hammer pulls down a felt muffler so that the tuning fork can vibrate freely, suspended between two springs placed on neoprene rubber shims. The pickup, placed in front of the vibrating tine, picks up the sound exactly as in an electric guitar, that is, transforming the variation undergone in its magnetic field into an electric signal. When the key is released, the hammer goes down and the mute returns up stopping the vibrating tine. The particular vertical positioning of the pickup with respect to the end (offset) allows to obtain a greater or lesser number of harmonics with respect to the fundamental, from which the characteristic sound of the Rhodes derives: a little metallic, so full-bodied and caressing, halfway between a jazz guitar and a vibraphone.
The synthesis with physical models: What has just been explained reminds me a little of that old video game, "The Incredible Machine" where the reaction, according to the laws of physics, of each single element influenced the next one, or those devilry related to strength of gravity that you see in the cartoons of Tom & Jerry (Jerry pushing the broom that falls on the glass that spills the water on a spoon that drops the ball that breaks the rope that makes the anvil fall on poor Tom's head! ), but in reality all those movements take place in less than a fraction of a second, hundreds of times, thousands of times during a seated performance. But is it possible to recreate all this in the "virtual" world? Among the many types of synthesis that we know, there is one in particular that was born with the intent of artificially simulating the behavior of physical elements existing in nature capable of generating sounds or noises when stimulated by a mechanical force (Fig.6). Hence the name "physical models".
Given the complexity of the thing, the synthesis with physical models exists only in the field of digital sound and is formed by "models", ie parts of a program that serve to simulate a single behavior of a physical element. For example, if we wanted to simulate the sound given by the snapping of the fingers, we should have a model that simulates the characteristics of the skin (roughness, consistency, friction, etc.), one that simulates the resonances that are formed in the sound box formed by the palm. of the closed hand, one that simulates the force with which one finger pushes against the other, etc. By connecting all the models according to a logical scheme that reflects the real situation, we could obtain the expected result. One of the most commonly used models to simulate the behavior of vibrating objects is based on the delay effect and is called "waveguide", with different variations and derivatives. If you inject a very short pulse into a delay effect with a very short delay time, in the order of a few milliseconds, and quite high feedback, you can hear a musical note. The tighter the delay time, the higher the pitch of the note. Other techniques widely used to simulate physical phenomena or to model sound are waveshapers and convolution of impulses, both possible only in DSP environments. Thanks to the synthesis with physical models it has been possible to imitate, up to now, sounds of percussion instruments, wind instruments, struck and plucked strings, and sounds of string instruments, with more or less success depending on the case, although some models they are difficult if not impossible to recreate digitally, or at least they would require very high computing power. For example, the sound of a cymbal, snare drum or grand piano has not yet been successfully reproduced as they are too complex. However, today there are techniques capable of streamlining the effort of a microprocessor to a minimum to reproduce instruments such as… the Rhodes piano! Applied Acoustics' Lounge Lizard is a prime example of this. Lounge Lizard 3: Now that we know how a Rhodes piano works and what physical modeling is, we can get to know and understand better the Lounge Lizard by Applied Acoustics (the name is an English saying which, translated into Italian, means "cascamorto", the guy who picks up beautiful girls at the bar). Let's start by saying that this plug-in is compatible with both Mac and Windows systems, and that it is the result of a long research by two former IRCAM students in Paris, Philippe Dérogis and Marc-Pierre Verge, who during the last four years have literally taken apart a Rhodes piano piece by piece to study its functioning and the behavior of each single component in order to recreate one of the most successful simulations available on the music software market today. Lounge Lizard, being fully synthesized, does not use any samples, takes up very little space on the hard disk, installs very quickly and allows enormous flexibility, allowing us to adjust to our liking the sound we want to obtain, or to create sounds completely other than an electric piano. CPU usage is not very high but it is still advisable to have a fairly fast processor if you prefer to use high polyphony or if you use other plug-ins in the same song. The interface is divided into two main panels (Fig.7), each panel is divided into several sections. In panel A we find most of the innovations introduced by version 3, among which at the top the new multi-effects section stands out, with three separate and independent processors, which can be connected together according to two different algorithms: effect A + effect B in parallel or A + B in series, with reverb always in the tail. Effects A and B include: Chorus (mono or stereo), Flanger (mono or stereo), Vibrato, Ping-pong delay, Digital delay, Tape delay, Phaser, Auto wah, Wah wah, Notch filter and Distortion. Depending on the selected effect, the labels of the three knobs change for their parameters. Among the reverbs we have Club, Drum studio, different types of Hall and Room. At the bottom left there is the section dedicated to the tuning of the instrument, with transposition and fine tuning, and a micro-tuning section.
Through the latter, it is possible to tune the instrument with itself, that is to decide what type of tuning we want to attribute to its keyboard (better defined as “temperament”). By default the equal temperament is used, but it is possible to load files with other types of temperament or to apply the stretch tuning, very used in the 70s on the Rhodes piano, which slightly detaches the pitch of the notes downwards and upwards. , giving a greater sense of richness to chords and unisons. Continuing towards the right of the interface we find two more new sections: Clock and Recorder. The former is used to generate an internal clock when LL3 is used in stand-alone mode, useful for synchronizing effects to the tempo of the music. The Recorder section is a simple wave file recorder. Finally, we find the big knob of the general volume and the two vu-meters left and right in the style of Boombox early 80s. Now let's move on to panel B (Fig.8). Here we find most of the controls already present in previous versions of Lounge Lizard, and each section, as already seen in figure 5, relates to a mechanical part of the Rhodes piano. The three sections at the top, in particular, are the real physical models: MALLET (the hammers), FORK (the tuning forks) and PICKUP. But let's find them one at a time. The MALLET section allows us to model the hammers of our electric piano; the three controls of the Stiffness subsection allow you to adjust the stiffness of the hammers, which in a Rhodes are softer in the lower part until they become significantly stiffer towards the high notes. With the Noise commands we can insert a sort of woody noise in the attack of the notes, while the Force commands act on the force with which a hammer strikes the relative tuning fork, thus acting on the dynamics. The FORK section allows us to model our tuning forks, and here we find the Tine subsection with the controls relating to the metal part of the sound, and the Tone section (bar) which controls the body of the sound. In particular, the tine color knob allows you to adjust the timbre of the metallic sound that is heard in the attack phase of each note. Finally we find the PICKUP section, with controls to adjust its geometry, i.e. the vertical and horizontal position with respect to the tuning forks (as explained in the second paragraph of this article), and a selector that allows you to choose between two types of pickups, one modeled for one Rhodes piano, the other for the Wurlitzer. At the bottom left we find the DAMPER section, actually yet another model, which generates the sound emitted when a note is released, caused by the mute that returns to brake the vibrating tuning fork. This is a very important element of the sound of a Rhodes, although in Lounge Lizard it is not the height of realism.
The last two sections of panel B are related to the tremolo effect and equalization. The former can be set in mono and stereo with two types of waveform, triangle and square. In a real Rhodes, the tremolo effect was based on a very simple circuit consisting of a lamp and a photoresistor; a low frequency pulse generator made the lamp turn on at regular intervals, the light of which excited the photoresistor which, in turn, controlled the output volume of one speaker with respect to the other, thus generating the passage of sound from the right channel to the left and vice versa, in a very sweet and musical way, therefore the waveform is not really a square, but a square filtered by an LPF, with very rounded transients. In Lounge Lizard 3 the tremolo effect can be synchronized to the internal clock or to the clock of the host running the plug-in. Other simulations: For those who cannot afford to buy a real Rhodes piano (valued at around 2000 euros) or simply do not want to bring a 65 kg instrument to the stage, there are numerous alternatives, some of them also very valid. Among the hardware, the Nord Electro 2 by Dutch Clavia, the Yamaha Motif, the Gem Promega 3, the Kurzweil KME and many others are worthy of note. In the software field, the choice is even wider (Fig.9 ).
For this test I chose to compare Lounge Lizard 3 against Emagic's EVP88 (available only on Mac platform and compatible only with Logic), the Native Instruments Elektrik Piano, the Scarbee RSP library '73 for Gigastudio and HALion, the freeware MrRay73 (downloadable for free from the website www.soundfonts.it) and, of course, my real Rhodes Stage SeventyThree from 1977. To get an idea of what our ideal sound could be, I have prepared a series of audio examples present on the CD attached to the magazine, in the DEMO MP3 -> Lounge Lizard 3 section. Do you know the great pianist Eumir Deodato? This month I chose one of his songs called “Superstrut” for the rehearsal of the mix. The first six files in the folder are the same part of the song played respectively by the real Rhodes, the Lounge Lizard 3, the EVP88, the Elektrik Piano, the RSP '73 and by MrRay73. All six sounds were recorded “flat” and lightly effected with a hint of reverb and an inevitable stereo tremolo to make them more pleasant within the mix. The real Rhodes is preamplified by an old analog electric guitar processor, the Roland GP-8, with all effects turned off except the compressor which slightly increases the input gain. File number 7 is a small chord progression played by the six instruments in the same order, and file number 8 demonstrates the first to last C notes of a 61-key keyboard played individually in progression. One against all: Of course, owning an authentic Rhodes makes it a bit difficult to give up its sound in favor of a simulation, even if it is a very good simulation. Let's say that for certain applications maybe one is as good as the other, but when it comes to getting your hands on the keyboard and playing for real, or doing solos or wanting to play "Rhodes style", nothing can replace the original . Among those we have heard, the Lounge Lizard is perhaps not the one that comes closest to the real sound, but without a doubt it is the one that offers more flexibility in terms of sound customization, it is particularly suitable for accompaniment sections, certainly it has a sound that pierces the mix. Among others, the MrRay73 freeware is very close to the Scarbee library, with the advantage of not occupying 1,5 Gb of hard disk space as it is also based on physical model synthesis, but with the disadvantage of playing a little synthetic in certain situations. Elektrik Piano, on the other hand, sounds pretty good but takes up around 2 Gb of space and has few levels of dynamics, which makes it rather monotonous after playing it for a while. EVP88 is a good product, it was the first physical modeling electric piano simulator and it is very similar to the Lounge Lizard but I don't think it at the same level. Do you want to know who wins? This isn't a challenge, it's music, and when it comes to music, the only true arbiter can only be your own ear.
