In Memoriam - Harold Rhodes

[Kent Swafford]

on 1/5/01 8:39 AM, Charles Neuman at cneuman@phy.duke.edu wrote:

> Check out the Rhodes email list if you want opinions on Rhodes! The
> concensus seems to be that the sampled Rhodes sounds are jokes at best,
> and even offensive.

Of course. Sampled Rhodes are disparaged just as are sampled Steinways. The
story goes that Harold Rhodes was enthusiastic about the Roland (?) digital
Rhodes until he actually heard one; he hated it so much that he became
determined to put his piano back into production (under a different name
since he no longer owned the right to call his piano a "Rhodes").

There is a large range of sounds possible from a real Rhodes, and so there
is no agreement as to what the Rhodes sound really is, hence the
disappointment with the sampled Rhodes sounds that are around.

There are some very big advantages to using a sampled Rhodes, such as in
tuning. Real Rhodes notes both vary in pitch with dynamics and flatten as
they continue to sound, problems that can be minimized with a sampled
instrument.

Kent Swafford