This file: Sams_23.txt Contents: Info about the Unisyn (PC) Alesis QS8 bank "Sams_23.ubk". 23 is this bank's revision number. Author: Samuel G. Streeper sams@best.com www.best.com/~sams/alesis Last Update: 29 June 1998 Originated: 3 July 1997 Bank has over 80 programs and 9 mixes Sounds may be used, modified, and distributed freely. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bank Overview --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This bank contains patches which I created or modified for my tastes and playing style. Most notably this bank has good solo piano patches that I find much more playable than the factory patches. I play with my keyboard sensitivity set to about 75 now in the global menu, and these patches are "tuned" for this kind of velocity response. I usually try to make all the sliders do something interesting and good sounding, so check those out. You may use and modify these sounds in any way without attribution - make them sound better or just different and send them back out with your changes, please! Finally, most of the piano patches here are stereo and there will be phase cancellations if you play them to a mono amp since the left and right channels get summed. If you play my piano patches monophonically, look for the few mono patches or just modify a patch to eliminate the right channel (it sounds tinnier on the piano sample) and pan the left channel to centre. Current favorite pianos: mix #8, programs #70 & #81 For more Quadrasynth resources, visit the Quadrasynth pages: http://midiworld.com/quadrasynth/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Program Information --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Programs 0 and 1 - Pianismo28 and 24 Good mellow solo pianos. Basically I velocity switch between the quiet samples myself using the tracking generators. This is similar to using the veloPiano sample, but I leave off the hard hammer strike sample and tweak the samples at different velocities independently for (hopefully) optimal sound and playability. If you like these, check out #70 and #72. Mod Wheel: Brightness. Slider A: Gives longer release. Slider B: Slows filter attack, makes the attack softer/mushier. Note that velocity will quicken the attack back up. Slider C: Increase resonance - changes the tone a bit. Slider D: Gives you some reverb. I finally figured out how to dial up a mellow reverb, so this is a bit subtle but I like how it sounds. ---------------------- Program 2 - pA8 -pt1 The quiet half of the PianForte piano from the "Mix" section. It doesn't make much sense to play this patch in program mode as all the loud sounds are completely missing. The PianForte mix sounds great for performance work, but it's a bit odd for sequencing as it uses 2 midi channels. Program notes: Uses the tracking generators to do its own velocity switching. Originally I tried to match the tones at the velocity split points and make the overall response close to my "reference" Yamaha grand. Lately I've been practicing daily on a Boesendorfer grand, so between having a reference piano that's closer to the Alesis sample and having learned a few things about making the QS sound good, I'm pretty happy with the sound of this patch. ---------------------- Program 3 - pA9 -pt2 The loud half of my PianForte from the "Mix" section. It doesn't make much sense to play this patch in program mode as all the quiet sounds are completely missing. You can use this patch in program mode to calibrate your keyboard sensitivity for the PianoForte mix. Adjust your sensitivity so that you get the hard hammer strike sample when you feel you are playing "enthusiastically enough." If this patch never makes any sound, you won't get the punchiest high end from PianoForte because you're never transmitting high velocities. Key sensitivity of about 75 (in the global edit section) is about right for me. ---------------------- Program 4 & 5 - MonoPianos A mono piano. This will sound better through a mono amp than the stereo patches. Has good velocity switching by using the tracking generators. Pretty much just the left channel of the Pianforte mix panned dead center. Program #22 in this bank is a mono stage piano with more kick but less subtlety than this one. The first is the left and the second one is the right half of the Alesis Boesendorfer stereo sample. Mod Wheel: Brightness Slider A: Amp Decay longer. Slider B: Filter Attack Slower. Note that velocity will quicken the attack back up. Slider C: Chorus, give it a tad to fatten your sound. Slider D: Gives you some reverb. ---------------------- Program 6 - StagePno03 A good bright stereo piano to cut through a mix. Try this and the FulBrite series for rocking out, and see #22 for something similar in a mono piano. Mod Wheel: Brightness Slider A: Amp Decay longer. Slider B: If you can't play louder, play out of tune. Slider C: Chorus, give it a tad to fatten your sound. Slider D: Gives you some reverb. ---------------------- Program 7-9 - Synthy Bright pianos ---------------------- Program 10 - Qorgan_A1 An experiment in additive synthesis to produce a wobbly organ. I'm only about half done with this patch but I still find it useful. This patch is very simple really. I use a series of sine waves to approximate a square wave, then I make it beat by detuning the partials and by setting most of the LFO's in motion. Eventually I want to "tune" all the beating, make it modulatable, make the partials move around the stereo image, etc. If you hold down the sustain pedal, you get a huge beat from the detuning and some weird arpegiation from the amplitude pulsing and delays. One more thing I've noticed is that this sound cuts through a mix well without taking up a lot of sonic space, since the sound doesn't have much in the way of overtones. Mod Wheel: Brightness Slider A: This is a drawbar that removes lower frequencies. Slider B: Speeds up attack and decay, down for a pad, up for a lead. Slider C: Nothing yet, eventually should modulate beat speeds Slider D: Distortion ---------------------- Program 11 - Qorgan_C1 Almost the same as Qorgan_A1, but the waves are more pure which makes it a better pad. ---------------------- Program 13,14,15 - Piano Organs. Try the drawbars for weird effects. ---------------------- Programs 16-21 - I have nothing to say about most of these. ---------------------- Program 22 - MonoStage A mono version of #5, a good jamming piano. I think I tried to make this one as bright as the QS can make this sample ----------------------- Programs 23-27 Bright Pianos Super bright stage pianos. These mostly just differ with effects or controller routings. Sliders C&D usually invoke the functions that differ between these patches. 23 C is delay time, D is delay FX amount 24 C is chorus, D is reverb 25 C is delay time, D is delay feedback, kind of a favorite 26 is the best sounding one, slider C is resonance, D is reverb 27 is similar but uses a brighter pitch shifted sample ----------------------- Programs 28-29 Distant pianos. These are pure wet piano reverbs. I was experimenting to see if the best sounding wet reverb would make the prettiest smoothest verb for my other pianos. (It does. Well duh!) These aren't the best sounding verbs I found though. ----------------------- Programs 30-34 Effects gone bad. And the controllers may make them worse. Watch the volume levels on these. ----------------------- Program 35 Meloct - Mellow octave piano ----------------------- Program 36-39 BritEnuf series pianos These are derived from FulBrite piano (patch #26) but they're slightly tamed to make them better for some Joplin rags I'm working on. They're a little bit less punchy for better or for worse and without a few artifacts intoduced by trying to make the FulBrites so bright. #36 has chorus on slider C while #37 has resonance there, and #38 doesn't use the EQ in the FX unit since the high frequency EQ amplifies some cumulative noise when you hold a chord. So #38 is maybe one of the "truest" reads on the piano sample in this bank. I'm not sure these patches are significantly different from some of my stage pianos; I'm still testing these to see how well they work. Later note: These work OK for some songs, but the envelopes feel mushy and not very piano-like for other stuff. I just added #39 here, it's probably the best of this series. ---------------------- Program 40 - Pianismo27 The forerunner to patch #0, it is mellower with less dynamic range. ---------------------- Program 41 - sinus This patch is all tuned sine waves. It grew out of this experiment: Move the mod wheel and sliders A & D down, and sliders B & C all the way up. Hit the note C2, then move slider A back up and B down to confirm that B is tuned a fifth above A. But if A is down and you pull down B, instead of hearing a higher note, you hear an octave lower. Why? The reason is that B is tuned to a perfect fifth. Since the QS (and almost all modern keyboards by default) is tuned to an equal temperament scale, that means 7 semitones plus a little bit (ie just tuning). Since the perfect fifth is 1.5 times the frequency of the low note, the fifth beats 3 sine waves for every 2 of the lower note, and your ear picks up the beat when the waves come into phase, an octave below the low note. Slider C is a drawbar an octave above B, slider D feeds the outputs to the leslie effect, aftertouch messes with the pitch of the high harmonic and feeds the whole mess to distortion, and the mod wheel makes the amplitudes of all the sounds pulse out of phase. ---------------------- Program 42 - Big FX Slider C adds about as much chorus as I can stand, and slider D does the same for reverb. ---------------------- Programs 43-61 - Every piano sample! I just took a good piano patch and plugged every QS piano sample into it to hear how they all sound. I did slightly change the filter and envelopes on some of them to make them all sound good. From this you can hear that all the piano ones are really the same multisample, just pitch shifted or with a different starting point to change the attack sound. ---------------------- Programs 62 through 75 - the new Piano series. I wanted to do a series of variations on Pianoisimo27 (a longtime classical favorite), mostly because it was too mellow to cut through a mix, even over other pianos when I loop sections to practice. I'm really happy how these came out, I think several are even better than Pianoisimo27, and I sure have enjoyed that one (if I must say so myself!) The names look weird, but there is method to the madness; following the name are uppercase letters that identify the sample and thus the character: G - grand piano, the straight Boesendorfer sample N - no hammer, the grand sample with the hammer attack clipped D - dark, the grand sample pitch shifted down to lower the harmonics V - velo piano, velocity switches between soft, no hammer, and grand Following this is a lower case letter, "s" for stereo, "m" for mono (usually 1 voice, I generally prefer the left sample), or "r" for the right mono channel, which has rather a different timbre. Most of these pianos mix in a resonator effect if you push slider C, that fills out the sound a bit and I tried to make it sound like soundboard resonance. However, a few these are followed by a "c"; that means slider C adds a chorus instead of resonance. A few have a trailing "d", that means I add a very fast delay effect, which causes some phasing that changes the timbre. Mod Wheel: Brightness. Slider A: Gives longer release. Slider B: Slows filter attack, makes the attack softer/mushier. Note that velocity will quicken the attack back up. Slider C: Increase resonance (or chorus) - changes the tone a bit. Slider D: Gives you some reverb. A few program specific comments: #62 Piano Ns - This one plays just like Pianisimo27, I like it! Good for classical, not very punchy for dramatic pieces though. #64 Piano Vs - I can't get the envelopes right for this multisample; an AENV attack of 0 gives a bit of a click on the grand sample and if I slow it to 1 it's too mushy on the no hammer sample. Oh well! The mono version makes a pretty versatile 1 voice piano. #68 Piano Ds - I gave this one a bigger reverb than the others so you can really wallow in the darkness. The pitch shifting makes the overtones on a couple notes slightly out of tune. #70 Piano NGs - Velo switching done right. This is a new favorite for classical and it's got pretty good kick if you raise the mod wheel. #72 Piano NGsd - Here's a great trick - This one is always routed through a fast delay, adjustable with slider C from 0 to about 8 milliseconds. These delays cause phasing that can really tweak the timbre to bring out the attack, or make the tone bright, mellow, or boxy. Combine this with the mod wheel (filtering before the delay) and slider B (filter the attack or accentuate mettalic attack tones) and you can get more colors out of this one than any of my other pianos. I like it! ---------------------- Programs 76 & 77 FXGrand monophonic pianos These were experiments to try and change the timbre of the piano with harder velocity strikes. The effect is not very pronounced, but still they seem to play ok. The first one uses the FX unit to change the phase of 1 of the samples so it will sound different in a mix, and both of them mix in pitch shifted samples with velocity. On both slider C affects the tone some and slider D adds more pronounced reverb than most of my pianos. ---------------------- Programs 78 and 79 - BigBoesy and ClassyBo These are variations on Pianisimo27 and Pianisimo13, respectively. Up to Pianisimo 11 and 13 or so I was moving away from harsher Alesis piano sounds, and around 13 all the way up to 27 I was working for a clearer sound and better top end. But I still play 13 all the time for classical because it's smoooooth, so these 2 combine some of the characteristics of each. The differences are pretty subtle but they feel different to ME... These programs are also used in mixes #8 & 9 where I use a different piano on top for better highs. Mod Wheel: Brightness. Slider A: Gives longer release. Slider B: Slows filter attack, makes the attack softer/mushier. Note that velocity will quicken the attack back up. Slider C: Increase resonance on BigBoesy and chorus on ClassyBo Slider D: Gives you some reverb. ---------------------- Program 80 - AcidGirl A nasty sawtooth patch for basslines. Sliders ABC modulate the envelope attack, decay, and release respectively. The mod wheel determines how the envelope pulls up the filter. Slider D adds some squawky distortion. If you've got the mod wheel up, be careful with your levels on high notes; a digital saw wave is loaded with high frequency sizzle and you don't want to damage your ears (or speakers). Aftertouch detunes the oscillators and adds a bit of a feedback pad. If I run this patch into my analog synth's external filter input, it makes a great analog brass sound. ---------------------- Program 81 - MoodPiano Slider B shifts the pitch from way flat to way sharp, so this piano gives some interesting timbres if you're playing by yourself. You probably don't want to use this one with people playing pitched instruments or they just might pitch you. ---------------------- Program 82 - Nocturne This stereo piano uses the mellow NoHammer sample for the low and mid notes but the Grand sample for the high notes. I use it as a 1 channel piano for classical playing on pieces that require more "tinkly" highs than the Pianisimo patches provide. It's sort of a cross between program #0 and mix #8. ---------------------- Program 83 - Tenebres A dark and mellow piano. This patch is best in stereo, it has a rather strong chorus effect when played in mono. ---------------------- Program 84 - PianoX An experimental piano. I use the "2 reverbs" FX configuration on this one which I haven't used on anything else yet. On harder strikes it sends a sine wave to the bigger reverb. I'm trying to simulate they way a piano timbre changes when you punch it. Not that this adequately emulates that... I tuned this piano a bit flat to tame some of the high frequencies without too much filtration. Sliders A & B kill the left and right piano channels, which can remove phase cancellations when you play this through a mono amp. Slider C changes delay time, and slider D boosts the amount of delay in the mix. ---------------------- Programs 86-90 Component parts for "Sinead" mix patches. 86 and 87 are the first 8 harmonices for a sawtooth wave. 88-90 is a 12 voice version of the same thing. This allows me to do additive synthesis to mimic a resonant filter. These patches can sound cool when played in program mode, since it will just play 4 harmonics that are mathematically related but not necessarily on half step boundaries. Move the B slider up to attenuate the even harmonics. ---------------------- Program 100 SamzDrmzA1 A drum kit. Right now the only reason this exists is for a better snare drum, centered around the C2 key. The standard snare drum isn't punchy enough and rolls sounded more like tapping on a bucket. This is my first attempt, at least it hits properly hard and can do proper rolls. Mod Wheel: Filter brightness, snare sustain. Slider A: Snare AENV release. Slider B: Snare sustain decay. Slider C: Amount of delays in the reverb, no effect if reverb isn't up. Slider D: Reverb. I'll have to fix this so the other drums go to verb too. ---------------------- ---------------------- Program 116-123 More obsoleted versions of patches, kept here because they still have some goodness. ---------------------- Program 116 - Piano NGs3 This one is a component in mixes #8 & 9. It supplies the high notes. ---------------------- Program 117 & 120 - A couple of historical favorites... I'm adding this comment about a year (!) after I started my quest for the best possible QS8 pianos. Pianismo11 was the first one whose tone I really liked for classical; I finally got the piano really soft and dark. In retrospect it was too soft with an unrealistic attack (an overreaction to the Alesis stage piano patches!) And Pianisimo13 was the first one where I thought the QS was realistically showing some of the beauty and grandeur of the Boesendorfer that the sample came from. I played it until the wee hours of the morning, and when I would lay into a big chord I would just mouth out "Oh YEAH!" like it was finally clear just how good the QS could be. ---------------------- Program 124 - ClsclPian2 A fairly mellow classical piano patch. This patch is related to the Pianisimo patches but I tried to really tame the attack to make it more suitable for fast classical music. If the attack is to mushy for your piece or style, try the Pianisimo program or Pianforte mix. ---------------------- Program 125 - Panner01 Just an experiment in panning using controller A. Dave Bryce gave me the secret that made this one work: Set a voice's velocity response curve to "minimum" and then you can modulate the amplitude up with any modulator, otherwise it seems you can only modulate it downwards. This one is still not right with different velocity triggers but I'm not going to fix it for a while. ---------------------- Program 126 - wackflut Not generally useful, but it was an interesting lead voice and sound effect on one project. ---------------------- Program 127 - SoftPiano4 (obsolete) An obsolete ancestor of most of the pianos in this bank and a descendent of the Alesis PureStereo patch. Development has probably stopped on this patch and it's not my favorite here. ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mix Information --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mix 0 - PianForte5 An old but versatile piano patch. I velocity switch between 3 stereo samples, and try to optimize the sonic characteristics of each sample independently. Constructed from patches #2 and #3 in the program bank. A few important notes: This patch is better suited for performance work than sequencing; Since the sound is constructed from 6 samples, it uses 2 program patches and requires 2 midi channels. These channels need to receive exactly the same data, and then based on the velocity, only 1 stereo-pair will sound. If there's a better way to do what I need on 1 channel, I'd love to hear about it! Here's how I use it in sequencing: Channel 1 transmits the normal midi data, but I don't have channel 2 transmit anything. To play it back, you can play this track back to a 1 channel piano like my Pianisimo patch, or you can dup the track and send it to channels 1 and 2 to get the piano to properly sound both loud and soft notes. You could set up this mix so that both channels 1 & 2 transmit, but they will have exactly the same data which is inconvenient at best. If you do transmit both channels, you must set the playback of this track to channel "any", because if you force the 2 channel track to a single channel you will have a problem with flanging and possibly hung notes. This patch may consume more polyphony than normal. I believe every note you sound will require 6 voices be made available, but then I think that since the tracking generators will kill the amplitude on 4 of those voices, they should be immediately made available again for voice-stealing. I haven't had a problem with it. You probably should calibrate your keyboard senitivity to this patch for the best effect. Try this: Go to program mode and play program 3 alone; that's the hard hammer strike sample, and this patch will be silent when you don't punch the keys hard enough to get to the hard hammer strike. If you never get to this hard hammer strike sample, your keyboard sensitivity is too low (for the range required by this program). I set mine to around 75 and then I get to the punchy sample about often enough when I'm playing enthusiastically, and otherwise the mellower samples will play. Once calibrated, go back to mix mode to play the full range instrument. If you like this mix, check out program #72, which is sort of a later derivative and it only requires 1 channel. Mod Wheel: Brightness. Slider A: Gives longer decay. Slider B: Slows filter attack, makes the attack softer/mushier. Note that velocity will quicken the attack back up. Slider C: Resonance, maybe a bit like soundboard noise. Slider D: Reverb ---------------------- Mix 1 - pnoprctc My piano practice mix. Just 9 channels of my program 0 (which should always be a soft piano), and channel 10 is a drum track for the metronome. I use D5 (120 velocity) and A0 (80 velocity) for my clicks. ---------------------- Mix 2 - PianoPad_1 Piano in space! My Pianisimo piano over my experimental Qorgan pad. ---------------------- Mix 3 - PianLeadA1 A split with a rock piano over my Qorgan, effects from the piano patch. ---------------------- Mix 4 - PianLeadB1 A split with a rock piano over my Qorgan, effects from the Qorgan. Try the drawbars. ---------------------- Mix 5 - QorgLeadA1 A split with Qorgan over piano, effects from the Qorgan. Try the drawbars; since this Qorgan patch comes up in pad mode you'll need to push up controller B to get the organ into lead mode. ---------------------- Mix 6 and 7 - Sinead additive organs These patches burn a lot of polyphony to generate the series of harmonics for a sawtooth wave. Sinead2v uses 2 channels and 8 voices, and Sinead3v uses 3 channels and 12 voices per note. Additive synthesis allows me to simulate a resonant filter because I can emphasize certain harmonics with the mod wheel. Note that I don't use the filter at all, so the filter envelope is still available to do cool stuff like filter sweeps. There's a lot of neat things you can do with this kind of synthesis, but it will be a while before I finish these. Still these are current favorites - try dialing up some hollow organ sounds for whistling high tones. Also try the component patches in program mode for a hollower sound. Important note for sequencing: These patches require multiple channels to generate all the harmonics. They will send identical data on 2 or 3 channels, and you need to play that data back on 2 or 3 channels - don't force it back to 1 channel on playback or you won't get the right effect. Mod Wheel: Simulate filter cutoff point. Slider A: Simulated resonance. This doesn't work quite right yet. Slider B: Cuts the even harmonics, so the saw wave morphs towards a square wave. Slider C: I think I routed this to the pitch unit, I forget now what it does. Slider D: Reverb ---------------------- Mix 8 and 9 - BigBoesy and Classic Bo Similar to programs 78 and 79, majestic classical pianos, but I use a different program (using channel 2) for the notes from C#5 on up to circumvent the NoHammer samples that have their attack clipped off up there. ---------------------- Mix 10 AcidGirls I'm using this to sequence some TB303 like stuff. It's just a sawtooth patch on every channel except 10, which is drums. ----------------------