MOTU Electric Keys

Interesting old keyboards are becoming ever-more expensive and difficult to find. MOTU's solution to this is Electric Keys — samples of all of the desirable retro instruments you could want, for less money than a second‑hand Vox Jaguar!

Every bit as desirable as all the great analogue synths of the past, and arguably even more downright cool, are those organs, string machines and electro‑mechanical keyboards that helped characterise countless tracks now regarded as pop, rock and jazz standards. Although various sample libraries and virtual instruments have catered for a few instruments of this type — the likes of Native Instruments' B4 or Applied Acoustics' Lounge Lizard spring instantly to mind — there have been very few that have tried to cover all bases. That's where MOTU's Electric Keys comes in. It's a 40GB sample‑based whopper which promises to recreate all your favourite Led Zeppelin, Doors, Stevie Wonder, Jean Michel Jarre, Keith Emerson and Pink Floyd keyboard sounds — or at least the ones that weren't coming out of a synth.

Installation

Skins load up automatically to reflect the look of the instrument you've loaded, although the controls are the same for each one. Shown here are the Vox Continental, Hohner Clavinet and Fender Rhodes skins.

Electric Keys works in three ways: as a stand‑alone application, as an instrument plug‑in in your DAW, or as a sound library for MOTU's MachFive 2 (or another sampler that can load MachFive 2 libraries). On the Mac, Electric Keys can run in MAS, AU, VST and RTAS plug‑in formats, while in Windows it's DXi, VST or RTAS.

The 40GB or so that Electric Keys occupies is sufficiently large that you'll need to set aside an hour or two to copy the sound banks from each of the five dual‑layer DVDs to your hard drive. Where you copy them is correctly stated only in an addendum to the main Users' Guide, but if you follow the instructions you should have no difficulties.

The sound banks themselves are proprietary .UFS files, and each of the 12 cater for a specific instrument type. If you know you'll never use some, then you don't have to install them, and Electric Keys will only show you the ones that are actually present.

Interface

The main graphic interface occupies 850 by about 370 pixels and because Electric Keys has 12 'skins' that are loaded up automatically to suit the instrument you've chosen, the appearance of the interface varies somewhat. The skins are 'photo‑realistic' and are clearly intended to help evoke the character of the loaded instrument. Beyond that, they don't really do anything — they're literally graphic overlays, and the actual controls are identical no matter what the skin looks like.

Main controls consist of master volume and tune, a trio of tone controls, and a further three knobs and two switches for amp‑drive amount and tremolo. Four selectable velocity response curves lurk at the far right of the six-octave E-to‑E keyboard display and there's a tiny FX button that launches a separate window, the FX Rack, which I'll get on to in a moment.

Loading presets is done using the LED look‑alike part slots. Double‑click one and a translucent file‑browser overlay appears, which will be familiar if you've used other sample‑based instruments by MOTU. It's a hierarchical affair which makes it quick to dive into individual sound banks, choose keyboard models, and then individual presets. After you've loaded one, the browser vanishes, and then you can choose to use the 'next' and 'previous' buttons in part slots, or a hierarchical pop‑up menu, to load further presets.

As Electric Keys can accommodate two presets at once, with each part having its own volume and pan controls (plus a mute button), it's easy to set up layering, which broadens the sound palette enormously, and is very appropriate in mimicking the operation of some of the string ensembles and 'multi' keyboards on offer. Still greater sound-shaping potential hides behind each part's 'E' button — see the 'Experts Only' box for a discussion of what's on offer.

Snapshots of an entire Electric Keys setup (including Expert and FX Rack settings) can be saved as a Combi. MOTU provide 250 or so already configured, which really demonstrate the sonic potential of the instrument, but as these are accessed through your OS's standard File Open dialogue box, auditioning them is a little more effort than simply switching presets.

FX Rack

What's a synth or sampler these days without a bunch of effects bolted on? Electric Keys' are delivered via the 'FX Rack', which opens in a separate window. There's an Amp Simulator with 14 models and some virtual miking options, a multi‑mode resonant Filter, 12‑stage Phaser, Flanger, four‑stage stereo Chorus, Delay, Reverb and Vinyl Simulator. Presets for individual effects or an entire multi‑effect setup can be loaded (or indeed saved) using FX Rack's own built‑in browser overlay system.

I'm leaving my Electric Keys niggles for later in the review, but when it comes to one particular effect I just can't restrain myself: the Chorus is an absolutely turkey which, as far as I can see, does almost nothing. At best, there's a hint of something like auto‑pan or tremolo, but precious little of the thickening, widening or detuning you'd want. With some other UVI‑based instruments having a perfectly effective Chorus, I can only assume something went wrong with this one, and I hope it'll be fixed in an update.

In Use

A smaller overlay accommodating 'Expert' settings occupies the right‑hand side of the plug‑in window.

I tested Electric Keys as a stand‑alone application and as an Audio Unit instrument plug‑in running in Digital Performer 6. In general, it was a trouble‑free experience — there were no crashes, and the user interface is extremely easy to get to grips with. Preset load times varied considerably according to their complexity, ranging from two seconds for the simplest String Machines to 32 seconds for the full version Rhodes pianos. This was on my dual-processor G5 — I'm sure better spec'd machines would be faster. But sticking with sample loading, a subtle feature I did appreciate, especially when stepping through all the presets in turn, is that an already‑loaded preset stays playable until the very last moment while a new one loads. On a few occasions Electric Keys would report that a preset couldn't be found, only to load it perfectly on the second attempt, and every now and then I'd notice a glitch one or two seconds after a new preset went in if I immediately starting playing it — presumably that was the disk streaming settled down. Otherwise all was reliable.

But what about the sounds? As a specialised library, I just love Electric Keys, and I still can't get enough of it. With so many good things to choose from, it seems unfair to single out just a few — but here goes. The Rhodes, Wurlitzer and CP80 samples are right up there, especially in their full versions. Immensely playable, beautifully mapped to velocity, and sort of reassuringly chunky. Meanwhile, the String Machines sound bank is heavenly, and with a 'warts and all' character that totally eclipses every modern-day synth or general‑purpose ROMpler's efforts in the same area. The Hammond is well done, and can sound glorious. And the more unusual keyboards are much more than just filler material — there's something extremely refreshing about jamming or writing with sounds that are so 'anti' every glitzy, hyped‑up soft synth or trendy retro sample set.

The FX Rack houses Electric Keys' on‑board effects, and a dedicated file browser allows presets to be called up individually or en masse.I've got some reservations, however. The lavish user interfaces are all very well, but for those with smaller monitors they waste space. The main window could very easily be much smaller, or, better still, accommodate all the 'Expert' parameters up front, doing away with the need for the additional overlay (see 'Experts Only' box). And how about an option to hide the keyboard? The FX Rack is similar in this regard, and I'm sure could look as good and work just as well in about half the area.

Moving on from the interface, there's a problem with the way Electric Keys' amp envelope works. It offers the potential to make lavish slow‑attack/long‑release pads from organ and string presets that are otherwise just 'on/off'. But some presets have a key-release sample layer in addition to their main, looped sustain layer, and when you attempt to make a slow-attack pad out of these, their release samples behave in an unexpected manner, triggering loudly when you release keys that have only been held down briefly. It's a weird effect, not musically desirable, and apparently unavoidable.

My next gripe is with the B3 preset's Leslie speaker implementation. When you flick the Leslie's 'half moon' switch on a Hammond you distinctly hear a speeding up or slowing down of the Leslie rotors as their new rotation speed is reached. Electric Keys kludges this characteristic effect by doing a slow‑ish crossfade between a preset's 'slow' and 'fast' Leslie samples when you move your controller's mod wheel. It will fool many people, I'm sure, especially in a mix, and at least there's some sort of smooth transition, but for me it's a disappointing inaccuracy. The modelled B4 by Native Instruments has no problem recreating the effect, courtesy of a dedicated Leslie processor, and I wish MOTU had implemented a similar emulation in the FX Rack. It could then have been applied very effectively to all the rest of the organs, electric pianos and string machines.

Staying with the FX Rack, and leaving aside the puny Chorus I mentioned earlier, there's room for improvement in several areas. I won't be too harsh here, since it's so easy to use alternative effects when you're running Electric Keys in your DAW, but I found the Amp Simulator often added edge and grunge at the expense of body and weight, and the reverb's fixed plate‑like character and mono‑summed input/stereo output design is rather limiting. A mono output and 'crappy spring reverb' option would be appropriate for many presets.

You'll have to decide for yourself whether MOTU's strict observance of the all the instruments' original key ranges is a purist benefit or an annoying restriction. You can modify the keygroup ranges if you load up presets in MachFive 2, but in Electric Keys itself there's no means of doing this.

Keys Of Character

Organising, recording, looping and mapping a sample library of this size and nature can't be easy or quick, so it's to MOTU's credit that they got most of the really important things absolutely right. Essentially, Electric Keys is like being let loose in a studio full of some of the grooviest, most inspiring old keyboard instruments ever made, all of them oozing individuality and character, and finding that they're virtually all in tune and working perfectly. The quality of recording and presentation is, with only a smattering of exceptions, first class — these are instruments just begging to become serious writing tools, and to go straight into a mix. Unlike that of some other sample players, the user interface is welcoming and easy to use, and while the skins are a little gimmicky, they're sort of fun too. The sound layering possibilities, tone controls and Expert features increase the sonic potential of Electric Keys enormously, and a number of the FX Rack effects are very nice indeed.

But I do hope that a future update can patch a few specific sampling and mapping problems, give us a Chorus worth having, and maybe a Leslie too. Then this library really would be a force to be reckoned with.