11 EVB3

Up until now we’ve mainly looked at synths that, while they don’t emulate any particular musical instrument, are capable of re-creating the sounds of a variety of different synths and types of synthesizers. The next few chapters are going to cover a few Logic software instruments that emulate real-world keyboard instruments that are indisputably important parts of modern music. EVB3, EVP88, and EVD6 emulate a class of instruments known as electromechanical instruments. What that means is that all of these real instruments used a combination of electrical and mechanical means to create their sound.

How do you emulate real instruments? Well, there are a few different ways to try to accomplish this. Back in the early days of synthesis, people would use oscillators, filters, envelopes, and any of the other tools available in analog subtractive synthesizers to try to re-create these sounds. Generally, the results were fairly unrealistic, although these emulations could still have a pretty cool sound of their own. Sampling these instruments was the next method people tried to recreate these classic sounds, and to this day there are many sample libraries and ROMpler synthesizers that use sample playback to emulate real instruments. With some instruments, sampling is incredibly effective, and the results have become more and more realistic ....