1977 Rhodes Mark I Stage 73, shorter looped samples
16 Mb disk space
jRhodes3 is my sampling of my 1977 Rhodes Mark I Stage 73 electric piano, which I purchased new back in 1978. This sample set is not intended to be a jack-of-all-trades Rhodes, but rather, it's how I usually set up and used my Rhodes. It was recorded with EQ, with a treble boost and low-mid scoop, emphasizing the bell tones, and with substantial bark on the higher velocity layers. There are 5 layers, sampled to peak at 3dB difference per layer at on the low notes and to maintain volume throughout each layer. Not all layers are full-keyboard width, as higher notes don't change timbre as much.
The set includes 67 16-bit looped samples, with up to 5 velocity layers, sampling every 4th white key. The samples were recorded directly from the harp connector. Samples are encoded in lossless FLAC format to reduce disk space.
jRhodes3c is a looped version, with stereo option. Samples are looped after a few seconds, to save memory and disk space.
The stereo effect is a mild pitch-shift doubling to create a stereo image, applied in mid-side effect so that it cancels out when summed to mono.
Three .szf files are included:
- jRhodes3c-looped-both.sfz - mono is MIDI Program 1, stereo is MIDI program 2
- jRhodes3c-looped-mono.sfz - mono only
- jRhodes3c-looped-stereo.sfz - stereo only
Click the green "Code" button above, and choose "Download ZIP". Unpack the .zip file into a folder of your choice, and load the result into your sample player. I use Sforzando, which supports FLAC. You only need the jRhodes3c-flac-sfz folder and its contents. The .sfz file in there is what you load into your player.
The samples were recorded around 2006, from a Rhodes I had bought new in 1978. The samples were recorded directly from the harp connector, with EQ applied to give the tone I usually used, enhancing the bell-like quality and carving out low mids. The stereo samples have a stereo image added to by applying a 2 cent pitch shift using mid-side technique (so the effect cancels completely when summed to mono). Noise was removed from the samples using CoolEdit 96.
Samples in this set were looped to reduce memory footprint. For full-length unlooped samples, see jRhodes3d.
This is not intended to be the authentic original unprocessed Rhodes; it's intended to be what I wanted the Rhodes to sound like most of the time.
Regarding the naming convention: the 3 is because this was my third sampling attempt. (The first was a single-velocity sampling for dev test purposes only. The second was aborted for technical reasons I don't recall.) The "c" identifies this as the 3rd attempt at processing the samples or mapping the keyboard.
The "d" mono samples are identical to the "c" samples but full-length. The "d" stereo samples have the same effect applied as "c" but using different tools (SoX library rather than r8brain.)
I lost the original sample recordings in a home fire, but fortunately I did have distribution copies of the original looped and unlooped soundfont files, and these sample sets are recreated from them.