Quote Originally Posted by hFx View Post
Excellent point! I can't imagine Keith, Rick and the others back in the early 70's complaining about "the wrong feel" or "authenticity" of new instruments and technology - they embraced it! The prog movement was much about exploring previously unheard timbres, or more-or-less traditional instruments in new contexts.

OK, fans that embraces artists commonly want the artists to sound the same as when they lost their heart to them, alas all genres tend to get quickly fossilised. It's a natural fact that most active musicians - professional or amateur - are emulating the style and sounds of someone that were truly progressive before, present or past. Of course there is a big market for emulations, being it carefully copied LP Standard 59s, VST-emulations or that infamous digital mellotron

Personally I try still to embrace the "progressive" adjective, but it was really on PE that I came to realise that its just a word used to pinpoint some musical movements in the early 70s, when the guys referred to above were among those leading the way. It's ust a label, like Glam, Punk, New Romantic, Rockabilly... Then, of course the tools they used become archetypes. Cumbersomeness and crappy designs aside. Hey, even those weird sounding Yamaha CP-70/80s stage pianos of the 80s are considered "authentic"

A B3 excellent instrument, but have you tried add some Alchemy or K5000 sheen to it...?
If there is one advantage that old stuff, or their virtual emulations have on truly new forms of synthesis, it is that it's more easy to create new sounds. With newer forms of synthesis people often got stuck with factory-presets, because they often were a hell to program. I have a Waldorf Blofeld and I still have to create one sound on it. On the other hand, in Cubase I have a virtual analog synthesizer and within an hour I created a new sound.

I suppose the Yamaha CP-70/80 stage piano's are going the same way as the Wurlitzer and Fender Rhodes as sounds of their own, worthy of being emulated.