Digidesign Velvet

Digidesign's march into MIDI sequencing territory continues with the launch of a plug-in emulating classic electric piano sounds.

Pro Tools is already the industry standard for music recording and mixing, and Digidesign's big marketing drive at the moment is aimed at dominating the market for music creation as well. To that end, their Advanced Instrument Research division have been turning out some very enticing virtual instruments, and their latest offering is Velvet, a detailed emulation of classic Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos. (In a previous life, Digidesign's head honcho Dave Lebolt was a professional keyboard player who worked with the likes of David Bowie, so it's no surprise that he's been closely involved with the development of Velvet.)

Applied Acoustic Systems have had considerable success with using physical modelling techniques to emulate the electric piano, while their competitors have tended to stick to a more conventional sample-based approach. Digidesign have adopted a middle ground they call 'dynamic modelling', which uses samples as a basis for a flexible modelling engine. Velvet includes four sample sets, taken from a Mark 1 and a Mark 2 Rhodes Stage Piano, a Rhodes Suitcase 73 and a Wurlitzer A200. Each of these can be loaded in three levels of multisampling detail, depending on how much memory you have to spare for Velvet; with 2GB installed in my Windows laptop, I had no problem running multiple instances at the largest XXL setting. When you switch between patches that use different sample sets, the new set will take a few seconds to load. Velvet is an RTAS-format plug-in that is compatible with all current versions of Pro Tools on Mac OS X and Windows, and is available either on CD or as a 350MB download. An iLok key is required for authorisation.

Some Velvet Morning

Although Velvet is based around samples, there is no shortage of sound-shaping and editing options. Most of the controls are found in two rows of vintage-effect knobs and switches, which are a tiny bit fiddly but no worse than those on most soft synths. The lower of these two rows offers access to a truly comprehensive range of effects and processors, which we'll come to in a minute, while the upper row provides various ways to change the sound at source.

The most basic of these controls is the Timbre knob at the far right. The default settings for all four piano types offer quite a 'hard' sound, which really bottoms out when you dig into the keyboard. This can be perfect in the context of a loud rock track, and indeed, lots of Rhodes players modified their instruments to achieve this sort of quality by moving the pickups closer to the tines, but I tend to prefer a slightly more percussive, bell-like sound. This is easily achieved by moving the Timbre control in the Soft direction, and even though the instrument is sample-based, there's a really smooth progression between clean and tinkly at that end, and thick and farty at the other. Presumably, this is an example of the benefits of 'dynamic modelling'.

Anyone who's used to playing a real Rhodes will know that the keyboard action is quite different from your typical MIDI controller keyboard, whether weighted or not, so full marks to Digidesign for providing the means to adapt Velvet 's velocity response to individual tastes. Two rotary controls set the overall degree to which velocity affects level and Timbre, and there are also four sliders that allow you to set up a velocity response curve.

Like AAS's Lounge Lizard (from version 2, anyway) and NI's Elektrik Piano, Velvet gives you the facility to introduce the release noise that some electric pianos make when you let go of a key. Used subtly, this can help to make the emulation more convincing and, thankfully, Velvet does allow you to use it subtly, with the option to make the release sound staccato as well as to vary its level.

A more unusual, and to my mind, more useful addition is the option to simulate the mechanical noise of the keyboard itself. If you play an electric piano at normal volume through an amp, you can clearly hear the clonks and bangs that the keys make, even though these are not amplified through the pickup. These noises aren't audible on your typical recorded Rhodes or Wurli sound, but they certainly help to make playing Velvet a more convincing experience. You could also use them to create the illusion of recording a singing pianist, where the vocal mic would pick up a certain amount of mechanical noise. Velvet even gives you the option to hear these noises with the piano lid on or off, and if you want to, you can turn the Pickup Level right down to give you the kalimba-like sound of an electric piano played purely acoustically. I'm not aware of any other electric piano emulation that includes these mechanical noises, and in some circumstances they can add a lot to the experience of playing Velvet.

The final sound-shaping control in the upper section is a knob labelled Condition, which runs from 'Mint' to 'Bad'. I found the effect of this control pretty subtle, and even at 100 percent Bad, Velvet still sounds a whole lot smoother than my own MkII Rhodes, which isn't especially battered. Not that I would actually want a software emulation to reproduce its slightly dodgy tuning, uneven volume or occasional clunky notes.

Effects & Processing

The lower row of controls allows you to do pretty much anything you might conceivably want to do to your piano sound. First off the block are a simple compressor, which can be used either to emphasise note attacks or to add sustain to the body of the sound, and a Tube Drive control, which does exactly what you'd expect. They are followed by a simple EQ and a level control, before the signal hits the effects section.

You can have any or all of the five effects active at once, but there doesn't appear to be any way to change the order in which they're chained. Distortion is always the first link, and is available in three flavours called Fuzz, Ring and Crush. The first is intended to emulate a stomp box fuzz pedal, rather than the more subtle distortion of a valve amplifier or similar. The second, as the name suggests, is a ring modulator, while Crush offers sample-rate and bit-depth reduction, for that digital lo-fi sound. I have to say that I didn't find the Distortion section as useful as I'd hoped. I couldn't get a usable sound out of the ring modulator, while the fuzz and bit-crushing effects are pretty brutal: not bad, exactly, but they tend to completely obliterate the nuances that Digidesign have worked so hard to get into the Velvet sound to start with.

By contrast, I rather liked the Wah, which is the second of the five effects. Again, three modes are available. The first is a simple LFO-controlled auto-wah, the second is an envelope-controlled band-pass filter and the third an evelope-controlled low-pass filter. All three provide a Pedal control, which could be linked to a MIDI foot pedal for manual control, and a switch offering 'British' or 'American' wah sounds. I found that the envelope-controlled modes, in particular, were most useful on single-note riffs at the lower end of the keyboard. Instant '70s funk!

The modulation section provides four modes: chorus, flanger and two different phasers. The phasers and flanger are OK, but I was less taken with the chorus, which sounds thin and a bit gutless. I suspect that many people will prefer to use dedicated plug-ins for modulation, such as Waves' Metaflanger or Eventide's Instant Phaser.

The same goes for the Cab section, which allows you to simulate the effect of playing Velvet through a small or large loudspeaker, or an unspecified amplifier. In each case, you get the usual three tone controls, plus the ability to introduce a variable amount of room ambience into the results. Again, it's nice to have the option, but in terms of sound quality and flexibility, it has nothing on a good third-party amp and cabinet simulator such as NI's Guitar Rig.

Last of the five effects in this section is a simple but effective delay, which can be operated in mono or as a stereo ping-pong delay, and sync'd to Pro Tools 's bars and beats grid. In Tape mode, the repeats get progressively dirtier as they fade away, for that grungey WEM Copicat sound.

Finally, you'd expect an electric piano simulator to offer a tremolo effect, and Velvet doesn't disappoint, although for some reason it's located on a separate panel just above the keys. There are the usual Rate and Depth controls, and it can be operated in mono or stereo modes. However, there's no control over the shape of the LFO waveform, and I couldn't achieve a convincing emulation of the more extreme tremolo effects you can get from a Wurli, like on Neil Young's 'See The Sky About To Rain'. The tremolo in Lounge Lizard strikes me as more effective in this respect.

Playing Velvet

Digidesign have clearly set out to make an instrument that is, above all, highly playable, and they've achieved that goal in impressive style. Velvet is highly responsive, and can be tailored to suit your keyboard and playing style. The basic sound is excellent, especially on the Mark 1 and 2 Rhodes models, and the editing options give you all the sound-shaping control you're likely to want. Velvet won't go into the weird and wonderful realms that you reach by pushing Lounge Lizard 's controls to extremes, but that's not really the point. It certainly covers the full spectrum of conventional electric piano sounds, from tinkly to meaty, and I couldn't detect any aliasing, multisample split-points or other artifacts that detract from the realism. After 30 years or so, there can't be many real Rhodes pianos left that sound this good!

With Hybrid, Strike and now Velvet, Digidesign's Advanced Instrument Research department are on something of a roll when it comes to developing virtual instruments, and if you don't already have a rival product such as Lounge Lizard or Elektrik Piano (see box), Velvet is a very strong contender. With a bit of help from some third-party effects, I'm sure you could get very close to any classic electric piano sound on record, and I'd have no qualms about using it in an exposed or solo context. More than that, though, its responsiveness and feel make Velvet a really satisfying instrument to play, and once you try it out, you'll want to do just that.