Lounge Lizard EP-3 - Electric Piano
Once again, AAS rises the bar in the re-creation of the classic Rhodes™ and Wurlitzer™ electric pianos. Not only does Lounge Lizard EP-3 deliver the authentic tone of the originals but it also preserves their action and feel. Once you get your hands on Lounge Lizard, that elusive electric piano sound becomes a reality—you'll be proppelled into inspirational space.
Building up on our physical modeling know-how, we've come up with the refinements that takes one of the most impressive and unanimously acclaimed software instrument of the industry further ahead.
What's New in Lounge Lizard EP-3
- Presets The brand new library fully exploits the refinements on offer and covers all your electric piano needs
- Effects The high-end effect section has been extended with tremolo, wah, chorus, phaser, delay, reverb, and EQ—making Lounge Lizard a complete and self-contained electric piano solution
- Pickup model Two pickup types are now available for a wider character range: electromagnetic (Rhodes™) and electrostatic (Wurlitzer™). In addition, scaling has been added for even volume across the entire keyboard
- Fork model The new and improved Fork model adds upper harmonic content for an even more authentic sound
- Damper model The improved Damper now closely interacts with the Fork and provides superb dynamic response
- Audio Recorder The integrated audio Recorder captures inspired moments on the fly
- Micro-Tuning Custom tunings are now possible with the added support for Scala files
Presets and Effects
Lounge Lizard comes with an extensive preset library that is simply inspiring—giving you access to the Rhodes™ and Wurlitzer™ sounds popularized by musical legends like Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, and George Duke. There is a choice of pure and true tones as well as a selection of processed ones courtesy of the high-end effect section.
Especially designed for the electric piano—so you don't spend hours tweaking external plug-ins or boxes—the effect section includes the classic tremolo, chorus, wah, and phaser effects as well as EQ, delay and reverb, making it really easy to create your own distinctive custom tones.
EP Character and Beyond
The original Rhodes™ pianos provided timbre and volume adjustments by letting you position the tines in relation to the pickups. These adjustments were at the heart of the electric piano's character as they controlled the harmonic content, attack, and decay of the sound—offering unique tone to each player. But there was a price for this flexibility, several painstaking hours with a screwdriver and incredible patience was needed to change the sound of an electric piano.
Suffer no more—With Lounge Lizard, the preset library provides a selection of thoroughly chosen Tine/Pickup configurations but you also have the ability to make those adjustments in real time via two simple controls: Distance and Symmetry.
But it doesn't end there, since controls are provided for the various electromechanical components, Lounge Lizard can be pushed far beyond hardware equivalents, opening up a completely new realm of sonic posibility!
What's more, since the interaction between the tine and pickup is quite unique, its effect can't be obtained with the filtering provided by samplers—limiting sampled solutions to one or two fixed configurations and bringing physical modeling at the forefront of the electric piano recreation.
Highlights
- All the classic electric piano sounds: Rhodes™, Wurlitzer™, RMI™, Hohner™
- Entirely based on physical modeling for outstanding sound quality
- Top quality preset library—vintage to modern
- Integrated browser and locate function for easy navigation and organisation of presets
- Fast preset loading time
- Hands-free operation via custom MIDI programs
- Every parameters can be controlled via MIDI or host automation
- Intuitive and ergonomic user interface for preset creation
- Fast installation
- Real-time calculaton of sound—no samples
- 32bit floating point internal processing
- Audio bit-depth and sample rates up to 24bit/192kHz
- Import/Export functions for easy sharing of presets
- Unlimited undo/redo capability
- Standalone operation—no host application required, and standard plug-in formats support
- Full audio and MIDI hardware support
- Simultaneous operation of multiple MIDI ports
- User defined MIDI maps with MIDI Learn function
- MIDI clock, tap and host tempo synchronisation
- Dynamic voice allocation and CPU overhead protection
Modeling an Electric Piano: How it works
The electric piano was invented by Harold Rhodes (1910-2000) during the forties when he was in the army. The first instruments he built were made of aircraft pieces and were intended to entertain army servicemen. It became a very popular instrument in jazz and rock, and has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years through it's extensive use by the world's top hip hop, R&B, and house producers.
The mechanism of the electric piano is, in fact, quite simple. A note played on the keyboard activates a hammer that hits a fork. The sound of that fork is then amplified by a magnetic coil pickup and sent to the output, very much like an electric guitar.
System Requirements
PC
- Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP
- Pentium III 800MHz
- 128MB RAM
- ASIO, DirectSound - VST, DXi
Mac
- Mac OS X 10.2, 10.3, 10.4
- G4 733MHz
- 256MB RAM
- CoreAudio - VST, AU, RTAS
