Ian

You sure did a fine job on the Nearness of You. Interesting idea on using the sustain with the sax for decay. You did that so smoothly I didn't notice or recognize you were using sustain. Usually I have a bird when I hear sustain on instruments that normally don't have sustain because it is so obvious and unnatural. I'll have to give that a try myself.

I wrote a user program on my G70 for the best realistic sax I can do...

I also use the sustain pedal with the sax tone(you have to remember the sax guy has to breath)..

I set the sax to mono, and portamento is set to 8 ...I also do not like to drench it in reverb and chorus...this is a give a way that it is fake...

The problem with most folks that try to play sax on keys..they acidentally play chords from nowhere...a single sax plays single notes and can't play more than one....then try to cover up play with tons of reverb..

I also like to crossfade between 2 similar saxes with velocity switch..I use aftertouch to bring in more vibrato..

Wide open sax play is also telling fake...the sax has soft tones too, velocity play is important..

Tony that was just something off the top of my head inspired by a combination of The Movie " The Gladiator" & Thelmo's Movie themes as I stated ..no rhyme or reason...just picked a style and played what was in my head with the selected STS sounds....

Dnj, apologies for being a little late. Only today I sppoted your topic but couldn't open the file (error-file not found) to listen to song#3 you dedicated to me. Anyway, thank you for the concern. Telmo.

Very nice job Ian. Thanks for posting that. It's always nice to hear an actual audio example of what you are talking about.

I followed this topic with interest in the sax sounds and they are all quite good. Amazing what we can do with these keyboards. My choice of the Tyros 3 was made because of the tenor sax sounds and at least for my subjective preference has not yet been replaced by any other keyboard. Now there are many different approaches to sax playing and the resulting sounds but the T3 sound was my favorite sound and one similar to what I tried to create when I played Tenor.

Here's a composition of mine that features the Tenor on the last verse and also the Jazz Trumpet from the T3. With the exception of the String background the rest of the sounds are from the Motif XF.

http://www.box.com/s/gc4p2frx9vt0f4o5ge8l

Joe

Thanks Scott. The sustain for decay works on SA Saxophone, and not on SA2. However, since I've recorded that piece, I've moved to the incredible Tyros4, and now use a volume pedal (Yamaha FC-7) for increased expression on sax and trumpet, as well as having far more control over the organ sounds (great for violin too).

Of course, you know that using the volume pedal with sax lets us increase the volume of the sound after we've initiated it's initial volume via velocity sensitivity; we both are familiar with sax (and wind) players increasing or swelling the volume of a note throughout it's duration, and using the volume pedal as stated, certainly adds to the accuracy of the emulation.

I'm not sure why SA2 doesn't decay the same way as SA, but thankfully, the SA Saxophone is one of the best saxes on the Tyros4 (and also on Tyros3/S910/S900).

The tricky bit for me is using volume with right foot (as I was used to on B-3 and Electone) and using the sustain with my left foot, something I am not used to, coming from a piano background, but I am now quite comfortable with that arrangement.

Ian

Very nice work, Joe...the sax (very dreamy sounding) is really done nicely, and was trumpet. The falls ( added with Art 1 ?) on the sax make it very realistic.

Ian

Thanks, Ian. No ART 1 needed. Just the up and down glissando you can sound with the SA Jazz Tenor when your two consecutive notes are near an octave and you key it right.

Joe

Cool! It really makes a difference when you spend time working with the various ways to control the SA notes...and it shows that you have been doing your homework.

Ian