Acoustic and Electronic Instruments

> What a Sitar does the K2500 never will. There is no way
> to account for room tempiture and the manner which a player sits, both
> have a profound effect on the tone of the instument.

The unfortunate truth, from what I've seen anyway, is that if it sounds
enough like a sitar, the sorts of things that the real sitar will provide that
the electronic simulation won't, are exactly what many audiences expect to
hear.

A while ago, somebody on the list was looking for good electronic violin
simulation with no vibrato, because he didn't want the vibrato to confuse the
harmonies of his unusual tuning. Sorry folks, but that's just not going to go
over with most audiences. It would, if people could think of a vibratoless
violin as an interesting sound in itself, but very few audiences (blugrass
fiddling being a notable exception) will. Instead they'll say, "gaaaaack,
that violin sounds hideous!".

If on the other hand, it doesn't sound like anything in paticular, they
accept it as something new and take it for exactly what it is. They may or may
not like it, but at least they won't hold it to the same extremely detailed
standard as a "real" violin.

That's what I've found anyway.

> The unfortunate truth, from what I've seen anyway, is that if it sounds
> enough like a sitar, the sorts of things that the real sitar will provide that
> the electronic simulation won't, are exactly what many audiences expect to
> hear.

I should clarify that, even though I used presence or absense of vibrato as an
example of this, I was merely citing a simplified case to illustrate my point.
The sorts of things people seem to look for are mostly a lot more subtle than
vibrato or not.