Semi OT (Gnossiennes-y but not Theremin-y)
Back before I was obsessed with digital Theremins, I was obsessed with digital pianos. Turns out they all pretty much suck as piano replacements (some way worse in terms of suckage of various factors than others - key pivot points too close to the player, "hammer" rebound induced injuries, caveman level compression of the voices via stretching and looping, etc.), which in the end burned me out on the subject - probably a good thing. Anyway, during that time I ran across a fantastic MIDI file of the Gnossiennes, created by author Saya Tomoko: [MIDI]. That it's manually sequenced is extra amazing, as the note dynamics and rubato are quite realistically applied. I softened the velocities somewhat in Cakewalk in order to make it more intimate sounding. Believe me, good MIDI files are few and far between.
And here it is rendered on our Roland RD-700NX: [MP3] - 8 years ago! The order of voices as recorded: Studio, Brilliant, Concert. Concert is the default voice, so presumably Roland thought it was superior to the others. I read somewhere that it was an amalgam of several different pianos, and I suppose I believe that as it isn't very consistent sounding to me. I find the Studio to be a bit less complex, but clearer and less "dark", so I prefer it over the Concert. The Brilliant isn't so brilliant IMO, too jangly sounding, I think I would have omitted it from the RD and used the memory for a different piano, or for improving the other two pianos. The sympathetic resonance of the damper pedal simulator on the RD is pleasant and fairly realistic sounding, though you have to turn it up quite a bit in order to hear it. And the note decays of the RD pianos are top notch (but only compared to the other incredibly shitty offerings of digital piano manufacturers).
