Bach was a vital composer. A large part of his extensive work is dedicated to the clavier, which just meant an instrument played with a keyboard. During the Barock era this was an instrument such as a harpsichord, a clavichord, or an organ. Today, Bach is mostly played on modern Pianos, but rarely on synthesizers.
Vital is also the name of a modern versatile synthesizer. If carefully set up, this instrument doesn’t harm Bach’s keyboard œuvre. Instead, it might even provide a new and unheard insight into Bach’s keyboard work.
The provided presets do not intend to mimic a specific sound of existing instruments, but inherit many of their properties. Like a piano, the spectre of a tone depends on the pressure a key is pushed: High velocity values produce rich harmonics whereas low velocities show only a few harmonics. Similarly, the decay of low notes is smaller than that of high notes, but rather like an organ, the sound only stops completely when the key is released.
The presets are a good choice for the interpretation of all types of music from the baroque era. They are less suited for music explicitly written for the modern piano.
Link to Vital: Spectral warping wavetable synth.
Link to the Vital Bach presets: Unpack the zip file and manually add its content to Vital’s directory in your user directory. Feel free to modify the presets to meet your taste.
Link to some recordings: Either open the Recordings tab of the Espressivo Web app or open the Espressivo Player Web page. (Note that currently there is only a recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.)