PX 560 Bad Steel Guitar 1 tone

[alanven]

I have had a PX560 for less than a year but have found the Steel Guitar 1 tone doinks at the top of the register (not quite 2 octaves).  Frist, I wondered if anyone else had that issue. Second, I hav found that with the 1.10 firmware update, there is an ability to save tones and load tones.

 

I would appreciate it if I could get that tone - that is, if it isn't a common problem and the Steel Guitar tone is good all the way up.

 

Thanks,

 

Alan

[bahman]

Hi! That is not a problem with your keyboard. You will find it in any digital keyboard/synthesizer regardless of the model/brand. What is happening is that you are trying to play a tone, a steel guitar tone in this case, outside the frequency range of the original instrument. The range of a standard 6 string guitar with 22 frets is ca. four octaves. As a result, a seven octave keyboard can produce three octaves worth of frequencies that are outside the frequency range of a guitar. Digital sound engines have to somehow address this issue when producing a synthetic sound. The basic options are either not to play any sound outside its natural range, or to digitally stretch/squeeze the frequencies and the envelope. The latter option often produces distorted/unnatural sounds when moving outside the natural range of the instrument. In the case of some guitars on the PX560, the sound engine stops stretching the sound on the higher range and replaces it with a string "pluck" effect (it can be used to add some texture to the guitar sound). You will also find similar limitations with other narrow range instruments. For example, check what happens when playing too low or too high frequencies with the picollo, recorder, bassoon, timpani or glockenspiel. To use the full seven octaves you can try to create hex layers and/or use different tones in the upper and lower zones and/or use an external DAW to create overlapping zones so that you replace the octaves that are outside the range of the steel guitar (likely C1-C2 and C6-C7) with appropriate low and high frequency sounds that suit your purpose.
 

 

[alanven]

Great information of which I was ignorant. Thank you for taking the time to explain this. I will stop whining now.