Have you ever wondered why when a professional demonstrator plays the keyboard you have .. it never sounds the same as yours! Well, it is probably because when you play you just use your keyboard 'as is', playing with the 'default' voices. The demonstrator knows the keyboard he is playing inside out and will use the keyboard's technical features to adjust things to his liking. Looking at what a modern keyboard can do I reckon it would take months to get to grips with everything it can do. Certainly with my AR organ I am still finding out 'technical' things I can do with it .. and I have had it since 1998! So I suppose one should say that if you have bought a keyboard with so many features available to you .. but just press a button or two and 'play' then you are not really getting the best out of a keyboard you spent so much money on.
Here is a DEMO of how you can 'tweak' those voices to make them sound more realistic. This video deals with 1. 'Reverb'; 2. Adjusting the 'timing' of when a group of several instruments come in (ie. not having them all come in together); 3. .. and he does mention the 'tuning' of individual instruments but doesn't follow that up. Now that third one is pretty important .. to me at any rate. I would have stringed instruments like a Violin slightly 'sharp'; and brass instruments slightly 'flat' (to sound more like a real brass band). A solo Trumpet I would set slightly sharp. Jazz musicians do this to great effect. I say 'sharp' and 'flat', but it is by a minuscule amount that the ear doesn't really pick up. It just makes the instrument sound 'brighter' or 'duller'.
Any opinions on any of this .. please post!
Hugh