# The Famous E Electric Piano AVAILABLE NOW from Orange Tree Samples



## gregjazz (Jul 10, 2020)

For Leeds Musical Instrument Rentals in North Hollywood, it was just a simple method of cataloging their instruments by stenciling letters on the cases of the electric pianos. One of their electric pianos in particular took notice by producers and session players, the one marked with the letter “E”. It wasn’t long before the “E” became one of the most highly sought-after electric pianos in the LA studio scene in the ‘70s and ‘80s, being featured in countless hit songs and albums. It got to the point where the “E” had to be scheduled months in advance for tracking dates.

Its sound is remarkable: the low end is clear and defined, and it has a sweet, bell-like tone in the register an octave above middle C. The inventor of the electric piano himself referred to the “E” as the best electric piano he had ever heard.

Until now, the “E” model electric piano has never been sampled before.

Determined to share its beautiful, pristine tone, George Mamalakis, the owner of the “E” electric piano, began sampling it. As a seasoned Jazz pianist who actively uses virtual instruments in his performance setup, George Mamalakis is well-acquainted with the depth of sampling necessary to recreate the dynamic, nuanced sound of the “E”. Beginning in 2015, with the guidance of Jay Graydon, Grammy award winning producer, recording engineer, composer, and recording artist, George began the long undertaking of meticulously sampling the “E” electric piano. To assist in the process, George invented a mechanical device which he named VERA, which is able to mimic the human motion of striking each key, but at very precise dynamics. Each key was sampled with 18 velocity layers, with each note’s natural decay into complete silence.

Since 2017, Orange Tree Samples has been working with George and Jay to produce the playable instrument using the Kontakt platform. Orange Tree Samples is known for their innovative scripting in sample libraries, and this library is no exception. We added a lot of exciting options to customize the tone of the electric piano, including a detailed model of the instrument’s built-in tremolo, several chorus models that use custom DSP, and a flexible modular effects rack.

We’re excited to present the resulting virtual recreation of the instrument, *The Famous E Electric Piano*, so that you too can enjoy the experience of playing the “E” electric piano.

*Video Demos:*


*Audio Demos:*
Demo #1: Song for Ori
Demo #2: Aurora Terrialis (Terry Trotter)
Demo #3: Everything You Be (Terry Trotter)
Demo #4: Don't Forget Your Suitcase
Demo #5: The Famous E (George Mamalakis)
Demo #6: First Time Love (Chris Poehler)
Demo #7: Dawning of The Digital Angels (Steven Cravis)
Demo #8: Not Like This (Johan Landqvist, ft. Andreas Aleman)
Demo #9: Reflectiva (Terry Trotter)
Demo #10: Homage To Terry (George Mamalakis)
Demo #11: How Does This EP Make You Feel (Chris Poehler)
Demo #12: Kaleidoscope (Terry Trotter)
Demo #13: Clare's Tremolo (George Mamalakis)
Demo #14: Terry's Blues (Terry Trotter)
Demo #15: Angela (George Mamalakis)
Demo #16: Dyno My E (George Mamalakis)
Demo #17: ChoRevNoEQ (George Mamalakis)

*Key features:*


Over 1,300 samples recorded at 96khz, 24-bit, totaling 7.0 GB (compressed to 3.26 GB using Kontakt’s lossless NCW format).
Over 70 production-ready factory presets created by Jay Graydon, George Mamalakis, Greg Schlaepfer, and Chris Poehler.
Chorus and tremolo using custom DSP.
Modular effects system with EQ, phaser, delay, algorithmic reverb, IR-based reverb, and more. The IR-based reverb features four legendary reverb units, totaling over 500 reverb presets.
Smart tremolo attack ensures that the tremolo starts at its strongest point, giving you clear note attacks.



*Pricing:*
$159 USD (regularly $179). This $20 off introductory discount lasts until July 24th, 2020.

*Format:*
This sample library is powered by the KONTAKT Player, so it does not require any additional software.

*Downloads:*
User Guide (PDF)

Visit the product page here: *The Famous E Electric Piano* sample library for KONTAKT

Or you can click here to order *The Famous E Electric Piano* directly


----------



## kaipiranha (Jul 10, 2020)

Fun fact: Listened to the first demo for a few seconds - Song for Ori - and thought "Well, where's a version of 'Not Like This'?"  Gorgeous sound! Added to my shopping list.


----------



## zvenx (Jul 10, 2020)

Greg, to me this thing sounds phenomenal.
As I was listening to the walk thru, I pulled up my current Rhodes offerings, there is something almost magical about this one.
Congrats.


rsp


----------



## zvenx (Jul 10, 2020)

A little more info on it.






E Model Rhodes


Keyboard Magazine referred to it as "the fabled E Model Rhodes (February 1984), lauding its "distinctively pure tone", its rich "depth and brightness".




www.emodelrhodes.com




rsp


----------



## sostenuto (Jul 10, 2020)

Will just buy this now, so OTS Lib remains complete. Audio and early video make this another unique and classic OTS offering. ( glad to be fanboy in this single instance )


----------



## CGR (Jul 10, 2020)

Wow - this looks and sounds stunning. Greg at Orange Tree Samples was a great choice for this project - he really knows his stuff, and is also a very good keyboardist/pianist.


----------



## chimuelo (Jul 10, 2020)

I owned a Rhodes and never saw Tines that big.
Im all over this one.
Thanks GregJazz.


----------



## kaipiranha (Jul 10, 2020)

CGR said:


> Wow - this looks and sounds stunning. Greg at Orange Tree Samples was a great choice for this project - he really knows his stuff, and is also a very good keyboardist/pianist.



...and it was probably no mistake either to team up wit Jay Graydon on this one.


----------



## CGR (Jul 10, 2020)

kaipiranha said:


> ...and it was probably no mistake either to team up wit Jay Graydon on this one.


Yes - a formidable team indeed.


----------



## Virtuoso (Jul 11, 2020)

gregjazz said:


> Each key was sampled with 18 velocity layers, with each note’s *natural decay into complete silence*.


I don't know if there's something wrong with my download, but I'm hearing a ton of hiss on this piano, to the point that I'd call it unusable. I switched off all the effects and EQ to rule them out as the source of the hiss and recorded this clip to show what I mean.

Is anyone else seeing this?


----------



## gamma-ut (Jul 11, 2020)

"I want authentic sounding samples of an electrically amplified instrument"

"Not like that"


----------



## Virtuoso (Jul 11, 2020)

Have you actually played it?

They do claim, as I quoted above, that "each note’s natural decay into complete silence". A bit of hiss is fine given the nature of the beast, but doesn't it seem excessive? It's far noisier than the Keyscape Rhodes and the Scarbee and Soniccouture ones are pretty much silent.


----------



## StillLife (Jul 11, 2020)

Virtuoso said:


> I don't know if there's something wrong with my download, but I'm hearing a ton of hiss on this piano, to the point that I'd call it unusable. I switched off all the effects and EQ to rule them out as the source of the hiss and recorded this clip to show what I mean.
> 
> Is anyone else seeing this?



It is probably because of my tinnitus, but I don't hear any hiss at all in this example.


----------



## VivianaSings (Jul 11, 2020)

Virtuoso said:


> I don't know if there's something wrong with my download, but I'm hearing a ton of hiss on this piano, to the point that I'd call it unusable. I switched off all the effects and EQ to rule them out as the source of the hiss and recorded this clip to show what I mean.
> 
> Is anyone else seeing this?



You're not nuts - that actually is pretty noisy. If you put any compression on the Rhodes, that's gonna get a lot worse. That's the kind of noise I usually get from compressing an amped Rhodes pretty heavily to begin with.


----------



## Monkberry (Jul 11, 2020)

StillLife said:


> It is probably because of my tinnitus, but I don't hear any hiss at all in this example.


I learned to live with tinnitus as a badge of honor. I now write music in whatever key my ears are ringing in on any given day.


----------



## gamma-ut (Jul 11, 2020)

Virtuoso said:


> Have you actually played it?
> 
> They do claim, as I quoted above, that "each note’s natural decay into complete silence". A bit of hiss is fine given the nature of the beast, but doesn't it seem excessive? It's far noisier than the Keyscape Rhodes and the Scarbee and Soniccouture ones are pretty much silent.



As far as I can tell, you took the quietest section and turned it right up.

This seems to be in the same area as "why do felt piano samples have so much background noise"?


----------



## gamma-ut (Jul 11, 2020)

The only way I can replicate that level of hiss is to whack the EQ up on the high mids and treble coupled with a volume gain that would cause clipping at normal velocity.


----------



## wst3 (Jul 11, 2020)

Virtuoso said:


> I don't know if there's something wrong with my download, but I'm hearing a ton of hiss on this piano, to the point that I'd call it unusable. I switched off all the effects and EQ to rule them out as the source of the hiss and recorded this clip to show what I mean.
> 
> Is anyone else seeing this?


Wow! No, I am not hearing that much hiss in the tails, I'm wondering if I ever let them play out long enough to expose the noise?

Thing is, and I am in the minority, I'd still rather the hiss than the artifacts from noise reduction. I'll have to play around some more.


----------



## Virtuoso (Jul 11, 2020)

gamma-ut said:


> As far as I can tell, you took the quietest section and turned it right up.


No - that's exactly how the notes decay - no post processing at all. Just the default preset, with the chorus/EQ/reverb/gain switched off to isolate where the hiss is coming from, bounced straight from Logic. I'll post a comparison in the Sample Talk thread.


----------



## BezO (Jul 11, 2020)

I was hoping for multi-output for DI, amp/mic & room. This would be a no brainer if so. I'll have to think about. Sounds really good though.


----------



## Monkberry (Jul 12, 2020)

Maybe one of the virtual cables are bad. Have you tried swapping it for another? All joking aside, that hiss is really strange unless they decided to leave it in for the sake of "character" and authenticity. I don't own this but has anyone else checked this yet? My first thought was compression exposing the hiss but if all inserts were bypassed and it is still there I would think it's intentional or overlooked.


----------



## gamma-ut (Jul 12, 2020)

I’ve already posted what I’ve found.


----------



## VivianaSings (Jul 12, 2020)

Do they not offer a DI'd version of this in the presets? You'll probably get better sound to noise if you just re-amp it and mic it yourself. Or run it through an amp plug in like Scuffham.

That kind of hiss, if not from compression, usually means they didn't have the amp high enough when they sampled it to overcome the noise of the amp. Some amps have stupid noise and you should have them really loud when mic'ing them - the Roland JC120 comes to mind right away.


----------



## Kent (Jul 12, 2020)

VivianaSings said:


> That kind of hiss, if not from compression, usually means they didn't have the amp high enough when they sampled it to overcome the noise of the amp. Some amps have stupid noise and you should have them really loud when mic'ing them - the Roland JC120 comes to mind right away.


That’s why you use low-wattage amps to record: so you can crank them to the sweet spot without blowing out the windows!


----------



## VivianaSings (Jul 13, 2020)

kmaster said:


> That’s why you use low-wattage amps to record: so you can crank them to the sweet spot without blowing out the windows!



Totally - but along with a fender tube amp, the JC120 was another amp that worked amazingly with the rhodes. The JC Chorus is amazing on that. I ended up replacing my JC120 though with a JC40 which is a smaller, more modern version of the JC120. Perks include a lot less noise and easier to get a good recording volume without blowing out the windows! 

The pickups on the rhodes are really similar to guitar pickups and the output on a rhodes is virtually identical to a guitar output, especially impedance wise which is why anything that sounds good on a guitar works so good on a rhodes - guitar amps and guitar pedals. You don't run into the headroom issues like you do using synths with guitar pedals.


----------



## Ashermusic (Jul 13, 2020)

The Roland Jazz Chorus amp was _very_ popular here in LA with Fender Rhodes Stage Pianos, and it did sound great. But I always preferred the built-in sound of the Suitcase.


----------



## sostenuto (Jul 13, 2020)

Gotta believe Greg S. is checking the 'hissy' issue and will comment soon. Too much relevant knowledge at OTS to not get this sorted, or at least explained fully.


----------



## chimuelo (Jul 14, 2020)

Thanks GregJazz.
This is a sweet sounding EP with the tiny bell quality as well as bark and bite, but the tremolo and dynamics make this really playable for Bill Evans and Hancock tones which is the real test for me.

Bravo.
Never used the Orange Slices I guess. Made this cheaper by 27% on top of the introductory offer.


----------



## gregjazz (Jul 16, 2020)

Virtuoso said:


> I don't know if there's something wrong with my download, but I'm hearing a ton of hiss on this piano, to the point that I'd call it unusable. I switched off all the effects and EQ to rule them out as the source of the hiss and recorded this clip to show what I mean.


Thanks for the audio example!

It sounds like you played the very quietest velocity layer, and then normalized the audio. The quietest dynamic will naturally have the lowest signal to noise ratio, which is why the noise floor is so audible when you bring the master volume up. And of course, as more notes are played, the noise floor layers up.

When we recorded the samples for The Famous E Electric Piano, we aimed to get the lowest noise floor possible by using as clean and direct signal path as possible. However, (and this is the important part) we didn't denoise the samples afterward. That's why if you play a bunch of notes simultaneously, the noise floor starts to layer up. Most of the time it's okay, but in your audio example, that's pretty much the worst case scenario, since it's a very low dynamic with the volume boosted to bring it back up to full volume. (well, not quite the worst case scenario, because that's without a compressor or EQ boosting the mid highs / highs)

You have a valid point, though, and the noise floor is still something you could practically run into, like when playing a soft ballad with the electric piano playing solo, for example. I didn't run into any issues when writing my contributions for the demo tunes ("Song for Ori" and "Don't Forget Your Suitcase"), but I could see running into the noise floor in some situations.

It's something we've looked into and are planning on addressing, but we need to develop our own tools to denoise the samples in a way that doesn't risk negatively affecting the tone of the instrument. My goal would be to have zero noise, even in the most extreme circumstances, but I don't want there to be any trade-off with the quality and purity of the tone.

Personally, I wouldn't consider the current noise floor to make the instrument unusable, as you put it, but it's high on our priorities to improve for the sake of perfecting the sound of the library.


----------



## Virtuoso (Jul 16, 2020)

gregjazz said:


> It's something we've looked into and are planning on addressing, but we need to develop our own tools to denoise the samples in a way that doesn't risk negatively affecting the tone of the instrument. My goal would be to have zero noise, even in the most extreme circumstances, but I don't want there to be any trade-off with the quality and purity of the tone.
> 
> Personally, I wouldn't consider the current noise floor to make the instrument unusable, as you put it, but it's high on our priorities to improve for the sake of perfecting the sound of the library.


Thanks for the feedback. The Keyscape Rhodes has built-in noise reduction which certainly adversely affects the tone, so I know it's a tough one to crack. I hope you do find a solution - the tone of the E is otherwise great.


----------



## Virtuoso (Oct 27, 2020)

Some great news - an update has just been released for the E Piano and the hiss is gone. They have done a really good job of denoising the samples without affecting the character of the piano.

If you already bought it, go grab the update from your account. If not, go buy it!!


----------



## gregjazz (Oct 27, 2020)

We just released an update for The Famous E Electric Piano that has new denoised samples. We were very careful to ensure that only the noise floor was reduced, and that the harmonic content wasn't negatively affected by the denoising. If you own the library and have your "store emails" enabled, you'll receive a notification about the update, and a link to the downloads section of your account where you can get the latest version.

Of course, we have plans for future updates that focus on other things like adding new effect options, cabinet simulation, etc., but wanted to get these denoised samples out sooner rather than later.


----------



## CGR (Oct 27, 2020)

gregjazz said:


> We just released an update for The Famous E Electric Piano that has new denoised samples. We were very careful to ensure that only the noise floor was reduced, and that the harmonic content wasn't negatively affected by the denoising. If you own the library and have your "store emails" enabled, you'll receive a notification about the update, and a link to the downloads section of your account where you can get the latest version.
> 
> Of course, we have plans for future updates that focus on other things like adding new effect options, cabinet simulation, etc., but wanted to get these denoised samples out sooner rather than later.



A little off topic (but while you're here Greg) - any news on the update to Rosewood Grand?


----------



## gregjazz (Oct 27, 2020)

CGR said:


> A little off topic (but while you're here Greg) - any news on the update to Rosewood Grand?


We're in the middle of scripting the UI for it. I'm pretty excited for all the improvements--it's a pretty substantial update, since the samples are completely new (still recorded from same piano, of course) and the interface was completely redesigned as well. And it'll be a good opportunity to make it NKS Ready as well, plus licensing the Kontakt Player.


----------



## Lode_Runner (Oct 28, 2020)

gregjazz said:


> We're in the middle of scripting the UI for it. I'm pretty excited for all the improvements--it's a pretty substantial update, since the samples are completely new (still recorded from same piano, of course) and the interface was completely redesigned as well. And it'll be a good opportunity to make it NKS Ready as well, plus licensing the Kontakt Player.


Sounds exciting. The Rosewood is one of my favourite VI Pianos. May I ask, what will the upgrade price be for owners of the original Rosewood?


----------



## gregjazz (Oct 28, 2020)

Oh, there won't be an upgrade price, it'll just be a free update for owners of the library. It started out as only wanting to add a room signal to the library, which required resampling the piano (otherwise the signals wouldn't line up properly of course). And then that ballooned into a lot of other features and improvements I had been meaning to add...


----------



## Lode_Runner (Oct 29, 2020)

All that work and NI licencing costs and you're not charging to upgrade. Thank you so much for your amazing generosity Greg.


----------



## Jazz+ (Jan 23, 2021)

Based on just clean tone "ballad beauty", is "Famous E " perhaps more gorgeous than Keyscape, Scarbee 88, and VTines? I haven't found any comparison videos.
Let's not consider bark and effects, just clean tone George Duke gorgeousness.

E demos:
https://www.orangetreesamples.com/produ ... tric-piano (https://www.orangetreesamples.com/products/the-famous-e-electric-piano)

Previous thread on the "Famous "E"
http://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthread ... tric-piano (http://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/3056003/famous-e-electric-piano)


----------

