I was in the need of a Clavinet for a Disco-Reggae styled tune, so I wrote this patch.
A cheap and simple but effective sample-based clavinet for the 201 Pocket Piano.
Before I hear any complaints – yes, this patch is monophonic and will remain like that for now.
Check out the video below to see how the whole thing sounds in a musical context.
Apologies for the sloppy playing – unfortunately I had some rough latency issues while recording which confused me a lot, but given the circumstances it doesn’t sound all that bad for that anyway.
No worries - all fine
BTW i forgot to mention the note range is from F0 to E5.
To be honest, I’m not quite sure if a clavinet is a monophonic or polyphonic instrument - I never saw one in real life that I could try and a quick Google search yielded different results.
According to ChatGPT it’s like that:
The original Hohner Clavinet, including models like the Clavinet D6, is typically a monophonic instrument. This means it can produce only one note at a time. While you can play multiple notes sequentially, if you play a new note before releasing the previous one, the previous note will be cut off. The Clavinet is designed to replicate the sound of a clavichord, which is a monophonic keyboard instrument. If you need polyphony, you would typically need to use additional effects, synthesizers, or instruments in your setup.
The first version of this patch was actually polyphonic but I found it sounded a bit muddy when chords where played hence I decided to go monophonic on this one.
ChatGPT is wrong, guys, better trust WIkipedia on this one… and many others
I’ve touched a real one only once, but I’m kind of in love for this instrument. I play digital, sample based simulation hosted in the Nord Electro. The Hohner Clavinet is actually a string instrument. It has as many strings as keys, yes sir!
Every key will actuate a hammer that will act as a finger tapping a metallic string, hence making it vibrate between this point and its tailpiece.
An pick-up then transforms the metallic string vibration into an electric current. All in all, its principle is similar to the electric guitar’s tapping technique and barely allows velocity playing.
It was first invented as a home, study piano or harpsichord.
The key span is F0 to E5, hence the sample range you must have found.
Thanks for the explanation @stiiiiiiive! I’m with you - ChatGPT is off the mark on so many things but this explanation sounded reasonable to me. Probably the Google search term “Is a Clavinet monophonic?” wasn’t too good either…
I’m also very into Clavinets, they’re all over my 70ies Reggae record collection!
Seems like I’m doing a polyphonic upgrade of this patch soonish then.
I don’t have a big reggae culture but I think Clavs are used more in a monophonic way in there. I love Clavs in funk too, more rythmic/chordy stuffs on this side.
@stiiiiiiive Funk is unfortunately still a big gap in my record collection and general music knowledge, but I’m working on filling that gap.
Speaking of that - I have updated the patch to 4-voice polyphony. I hope 4 voices make sense/are enough - in case you need more just let me know. Feedback from actual keyboard players is always very valuable. Thanks!
Did another update - 0.3 is now up on patchstorage. The poly object pretty much destroyed the characteristics I liked in the initial version. I have experimented with the damping/sustain but even with the sustain set to 0 ms, there still seems to be some kind of overlap between the notes and I just can’t deal with it…
For this reason I have included the “engine switch”: Just hold Shift and turn Knob1 - left side is monophonic mode (as in 0.1), right side is 4-voice-polyphonic mode for chords action (as in 0.2). Mid-position is the turning point, so you don’t have to go to the outmost position to switch modes.
I think it’s quite useful but I wanted to keep things simple - IMHO this works better on the Organelle as you have a display that shows you which values you are changing - I went far with that on the Pocket Batería patch where you could control 9 values with 3 knobs - while it could become relatively incomprehensible on the 201PP.
