The Sound Board

Brand new instruments:

Augmented Woodwinds
CP-70 V

Re-modelled instruments

Mins V4
Wurli V3

Added to V Collection

MiniFreak V
Acid V
Augmented Grand Piano
Augmented Brass

V Collection 9 or Sound Explorer Collection 2 + 3 or 4 products of VCX = 99€
VC 9 (or SEC 2) + 1 or 2 products of VCX = 149€
Upgrade from VC 9 or SEC2 = 199€
Upgrade from VC 6, 7, 8 or SEC1 = 299€
Crossgrade from Pigments, or FX Collection, or 3+ software = 399€
https://www.arturia.com/products/softwa ... n/overview

Honestly pretty disappointing. The CP-70 is imo one of the worst sounding pianos ever made, strictly for stage use in the 70s and early 80s since it was the least bad available. Do we need another version of the MiniMoog? The Augmented series is nice enough I guess, but I find myself never really using what I have.

For existing V Collection owners, the new update to Analog Lab adds some functionality, and presets from the new Mini, Wurli and Acid synths, about 80 each. About 80 or so each. For the Mini and Wurli, you don't get a separate instrument, but clicking either in Explore loads both old and new. You can then sort by Instrument. All the old mini presets are labelled Mini (V3) and the new just Mini (same sorta thing for Wurli).

No CP70, MiniFreak or Augmented synths though. Oh well.

The Mini does sound very good, and they've added a lot of features to make it a maxi-mini.

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Dec 12, 2023 11:34 am(...) The CP-70 is imo one of the worst sounding pianos ever made, strictly for stage use in the 70s and early 80s since it was the least bad available.(...)

Not with you on this one, Guy. The CP70 is a unique instrument with a very distinctive sound and an attraction (still strong) far above and beyond the practicality of 70’s-80’s live use. Many artists and bands have taken a CP70 into the studio even when they could easily have chosen a real piano. For starters, one of your heroes: Peter Gabriel. (In a CP70-thread on the SteveHoffman forum, someone says: “Peter Gabriel probably doesn’t leave his house without one”. The CP70 is featured heavily on all his classic albums.)
Joe Jackson is another CP70 fan. As are Elvis Costello and Billy Joel. The Police used one on their later albums (and Sting’s “Bring On The Night” has Kenny Kirkland on CP70.) The instrument is also all over Eric Clapton’s “Just One Night”. George Duke kept on using a CP70 on his albums alongside real pianos, obviously because he liked its sound and character.

The instrument became unfashionable during the 90s but bands like Keane brought it back from obscurity and helped to give the CP70 a sort of retro/cool/hip/vintage/alternative appeal, and since then there’s a whole new generation of musicians who insist on that sound (real, sampled or modelled). Prices for the real thing have also gone up considerably in recent years.

There’s a CP70 playlist on Spotify.



Good decision of Arturia, I find, to include a CP70 in their V-Collection.
(The demos don’t convince me completely though. The problem with simulating a CP70 is that the original already has a fair amount of ‘plastic-ness’ and artificiality in its sound — exactly the right amount to make it what it is, of course — and it really can’t have any more otherwise it really does start to sound cheesy and bad. So, when recreating a CP70, the level of plastic-ness and artificiality has to be judged just right. Not easy, I imagine. And in some of the demos it doesn’t sound, to my ears anyway, like Arturia completely succeeded.)

_

Piet, the sound of Keane depressed me beyond measure. When Simple Minds featured it loud and proud on Alive and Kicking part of me died. Peter Gabriel somehow gets away with it because he's Peter Gabriel - I'll concede it sounds good on Red Rain (somehow).

And if for some reason I really have to have that wretched sound, I always have Keyscape. (And the Sample Tank library I haven't installed).

I think the only instruments that are more nails on a chalkboard to me are steel drums, electric violin / cello and - at the absolute bottom and thankfully rare - wine glasses.

I've been gigging maybe 6-8 times a year for 5+ years at a club that has a CP70. I really enjoy playing it, and the rest of the (jazz) band seems to dig it. Yes, it's a unique beast with, let's say, "challenging" bass tuning (extremely high inharmonicity). I remember when a younger pop-rock pianist in a up-and-coming local band got one. I went over the bass tuning options with him, and he agreed that they are all bad--was a bit disillusioning! But you just do the least bad compromise and live with it. And you learn to change your voicings/ideas to accentuate what it does well and minimize what it does poorly.

It really has a character of its own. There is a nice "pop" in the attack, and the two string unisons (the strings press on piezos that form a "bridge" directly on the cast iron plate) have a distinctive clean, clear sound. Plus, it holds its tuning really well (there is no wooden soundboard to shrink or swell with changes in humidity).

Though I don't have V Collection yet (I have some synths that are part of the bundle, and will probably upgrade to the whole collection eventually), I'm glad Arturia included it.

I guess I'm in between, because I've never felt strongly about a CP-70 one way or another. Back in the early '80s, I was happy to play one on stage because they were the next best thing to a piano; but during the sampling era, I've never sought one out to buy as a library. (I do have Keyscape, but I didn't buy it for its CP-70.)

Best,

Geoff

Geoff Grace wrote: ↑Dec 13, 2023 4:16 am I guess I'm in between, because I've never felt strongly about a CP-70 one way or another. Back in the early '80s, I was happy to play one on stage because they were the next best thing to a piano; but during the sampling era, I've never sought one out to buy as a library. (I do have Keyscape, but I didn't buy it for its CP-70.)

Best,

Geoff

This is all raising my favourite subject - bad-sounds-that-were-the-best-we-could-do-at-the-time-which-we-eventually-grew-to-love-in-their-own-right. Is there any piece of sonic technology that time does not fetishize? The Mellotron was a marvel in its day bur technically diabolical now. Yet it is still beloved. Those crunchy samplers of the 80s are loved now. The cheapy synths like the SH-101.

I agree with you Geoff, the moment half decent sampled pianos came on the scene, I felt it was an obvious step up from the CP70s (I'd go further of course and want to chuck all the CP70s into the bin). The Proteus, the humble Roland U-110 or Korg M1 et al just sounded obviously better to me.

I think love comes in when an artist owns a particular sound. If someone used the Mellotron in the 60s to mock up Mozart as close as they could get to an orchestra, it would have been woeful and would sound every bit as bad today. However making a feature of the different sound is the key - Phil Collins using his CR78 before his real drums blasted over them on In The Air Tonight was an obviously conscious artistic choice. I remember being struck on Thomas Dolby's Aliens Ate My Buick album how he might use synth brass, cheaply sampled brass and a real brass section all on the same track, The Key To Her Ferrari. He wasn't pretending the synth and sampler was real, they were each their own cool texture.

Maybe that's why I am so hard on the CP70. Real pianos were too difficult to tour, so it had to do - records didn't use them, just live on tour. And it's not distinctively different in the way any electric piano would be, it's perhaps a bit uncanny valley, and with a hard and brittle edge. Yet I guess Piet's playlist above shows people using it consciously and in some cases relentlessly like Keane, so eventually that argument doesn't work in the end either.

Maybe it's just this simple - I don't like the sound. Over-thinking as usual.

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Dec 13, 2023 4:41 am(...) records didn't use them, just live on tour. (...)

Your dislike for the CP70 — I thought you only suffered from a severe case of cembalophobia, but your aversion for the CP70 seems to run even deeper — appears to make you refuse to accept a slice of CP70 reality, Guy. The instrument wasn’t just used live. It is, as I mentioned before, on countless studio recordings from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. And not just because there was nothing better available at the time, but because the artists wanted *that* sound, and no other, on their recordings.

One of the best examples and also one of the great uses — in my opinion anyway — of the Yamaha instrument, is Elvis Costello’s “Everyday I Write The Book”. I can’t imagine any other pianosound, fake or real, acoustic or electric, improving on it. (Listen to the CP70 staccato pointillism in the chorus. Perfect sound for the part.)



Similar thing with Simply Red’s “Red Box”. There’s a high percentage of CP70 in nearly all the pianosound-blends on the “Picture Book” album, and while I was never was a fan of the band (or that album) — which is putting it extremely mildly —, I really do think a track like “Red Box” needs its dose of CP70 for full impact. Anything else would be less.



And, unsurprisingly, the musician who could, better than most, bring out all the unique funkyness that the CP70 is capable of, is George Duke.



The CP-70 is also a big part of Zappa’s late 70’s live- and studio sound (which, granted, is often the same thing). But check out a.o. “Sheik Yerbouti”.

__

Well now Piet I did say that although my introduction to the CP70 was as a poor live-only substitute (and formative), clearly that wasn't true overall.

I don't want to low-ball, but appealing to Simply Red for validation is a tough ask. One thing I noticed that was common to George Duke and Elvis Costello is that they are in a fairly dense mix with a lot of other elements, with Elvis the CP blends almost invisibly with the guitar much of the time.

And look, even I acknowledged it sounds right in Red Rain. I'm sure there's tracks with electric violin that I'd like if i looked hard enough. Wine Glasses unlikely but you never know.

The CP70 remains sonically ugly to me, and we're not short of other alternatives. I am however delighted for anyone who thinks otherwise and can get good use out of yet another version, but I'll be re-opening my Korg M1 in the corner.

Low-ball all you want, Guy, cause you’re perfectly right of course. I bow my head in shame for having hucknalled this thread. Still, in my defense, it’s about that piano part, not about the band or the track. It’s that type of piano part to which a CP70 brings something that no other piano or pianoïd can bring, I find.

Not sure about your observations regarding "Everyday I Write The Book" though. I find that the CP70, on its own, is very much one of the defining colours here.

And I don’t wanna torture you any more than I already have, but a more advanced and sophisticated contraption based on the 'wine glasses' thing, is the glass harmonica, apparently invented by Benjamin Franklin (during the time he lived in London). Mozart wrote several pieces for it.

Here’s John Williams’ “Hedwig’s Theme” performed on the instrument. (Hearing it like this, I can't help thinking that the instrument might actually have worked quite well in the score. Its timbre really suits the Potter world, no?)



The glass harmonica is also the main sound in Nino Rota’s wonderful (and rather experimental) score for Fellini’s “Il Casanova” (in which it is used very effectively, in my opinion). Not going to post an example though cause nearly all the cues also have plenty of harpsichord. (And, surprisingly, plenty of Fender Rhodes as well.)

_

Oh good God. This thread has turned into my musical nightmare.

Piet De Ridder wrote: ↑Dec 13, 2023 7:34 am And I don’t wanna torture you any more than I already have, but a more advanced and sophisticated contraption based on the 'wine glasses' thing, is the glass harmonica, apparently invented by Benjamin Franklin (during the time he lived in London). Mozart wrote several pieces for it.

Here’s John Williams’ “Hedwig’s Theme” performed on the instrument. (Hearing it like this, I can't help thinking that the instrument might actually have worked quite well in the score. Its timbre really suits the Potter world, no?)



The glass harmonica is also the main sound in Nino Rota’s wonderful (and rather experimental) score for Fellini’s “Il Casanova” (in which it is used very effectively, in my opinion). Not going to post an example though cause nearly all the cues also have plenty of harpsichord. (And, surprisingly, plenty of Fender Rhodes as well.)

_

This just blew my mind. Stunning.

Geoff Grace wrote: ↑Dec 13, 2023 4:16 am I guess I'm in between, because I've never felt strongly about a CP-70 one way or another. Back in the early '80s, I was happy to play one on stage because they were the next best thing to a piano; but during the sampling era, I've never sought one out to buy as a library. (I do have Keyscape, but I didn't buy it for its CP-70.)

Best,

Geoff

Same for me.

I think we may be forgetting that this is why they make chocolate and vanilla...

The CP-70 is absolutely it's own animal. I like the sound, I use Keyscape while I wait for a truly killer CP-70 library,

Same goes for electric violin - there two artists that play it as it's own instrument, and it works well. Look for Jean Luc (yeah, too obvious?), Eileen Ivers, and Natalie MacMaster. True it does work better in some settings, but that is part of making music.

One of the things that can make an electric violin or CP-70 work is when you don't try to make it sound like a real violin or piano.

At least that's my take...

All that aside I am not tempted to upgrade from 9 to 10... just not enough new stuff, and the demos do not make their CP-70 sound all that great.

wst3 wrote: ↑Dec 13, 2023 8:53 pm electric violin - there two artists that play it as it's own instrument, and it works well. Look for Jean Luc (yeah, too obvious?), Eileen Ivers, and Natalie MacMaster.

Oh, and let's not forget Jerry Goodman.

Best,

Geoff