Simone Temporali Joins SynthCloud: From Fortepiano to FM Synthesis

There are musicians who play synthesizers. There are programmers who understand how synthesizers work.

And then there are people like Simone Temporali, who seem determined to do both, preferably while explaining exactly why that legendary keyboard sound from 1975 is considerably more complicated than it first appears.

A classically trained pianist, keyboardist, musical director and sound programmer, Simone joins the SynthCloud team with an unusually broad musical background. His career moves comfortably between concert halls, progressive rock productions, orchestral performances and the sometimes unforgiving world of advanced synthesis.

He can approach a keyboard as a pianist, analyse it as a sound engineer and rebuild its sonic personality as a programmer.

For SynthCloud, that's a particularly interesting combination.

Because creating a good sound is one thing. Understanding why it works, how it responds to a musician and what happens when you take it on stage is quite another.

A Classical Pianist With an Electronic Obsession

Simone's musical education begins at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, where he graduates in piano with top marks and honours, later completing an advanced solo piano diploma with the same distinction.

He also specialises in fortepiano, studying with Andrea Coen and refining his musical approach through advanced courses with internationally recognised performers and teachers.

That might suggest a career entirely devoted to classical repertoire.

Except that Simone has been fascinated by electronic keyboards and sound synthesis since childhood.

And, fortunately for the synthesizer community, that fascination never went away.

Classical training and electronic sound design may appear to belong to different musical worlds, but the connection becomes much clearer when you consider what both disciplines actually require.

A pianist spends years developing control over articulation, dynamics, phrasing and expression. A sound programmer deals with many of the same questions, only through a different set of tools.

Velocity response, envelope behaviour, filter movement, modulation and expressive controls all contribute to the way a sound reacts beneath the fingers.

The real challenge is not merely creating an impressive timbre.

It's making that timbre behave like a musical instrument.

And Simone understands that distinction from both sides of the keyboard.

Pink Floyd Legend: When the Sound Has to Be Right

Since 2011, Simone has worked as keyboardist, musical director and programmer for Pink Floyd Legend, one of Italy's most established productions dedicated to the music of Pink Floyd.

The project has performed at major Italian venues, including Rome's Auditorium Parco della Musica, Milan's Teatro degli Arcimboldi and Bari's Teatro Petruzzelli.

For a keyboard programmer, Pink Floyd's catalogue is both a fascinating playground and a rather demanding assignment.

Those iconic keyboard parts are not simply collections of notes. Their identity depends on instrument architecture, modulation, effects, performance techniques and the interaction between layers.

Think about the opening of Shine On You Crazy Diamond.

Reproducing the atmosphere involves far more than selecting a vaguely vintage-sounding synth patch and adding an enthusiastic amount of reverb.

The character of the sound, its harmonic movement, its attack, its evolution and its place within the arrangement all matter.

And audiences know those sounds.

They may not be able to explain the technical difference between two oscillator configurations, but they will certainly notice when something doesn't feel right.

This is where Simone's work as a programmer becomes essential.

Recreating historical keyboard sounds for live performance requires a balance between authenticity and practicality. The original instrument may be unavailable, impractical to tour with or simply incompatible with the rest of a modern setup.

The solution is not always to reproduce the original hardware.

Sometimes it's to understand the sound well enough to recreate its essential character using entirely different technology.

Which brings us to one of the most interesting aspects of Simone's work.

Re-Build Sounds: Taking Legendary Timbres Apart

In May 2024, Simone presented Re-Build Sounds, a workshop at Saint Louis College of Music in Rome dedicated to the reconstruction of iconic keyboard sounds from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

And this is where things become particularly interesting for synthesizer enthusiasts.

The workshop explored how famous timbres could be recreated using instruments with very different synthesis architectures, including the Moog Voyager, Kurzweil K2500 and software synthesizers.

The method goes well beyond choosing a similar waveform.

First comes the historical research: understanding which instruments and recording techniques contributed to the original sound.

Then comes perceptual and technical analysis.

Is the sound monophonic or polyphonic? How many oscillators might be involved? What happens to the harmonic content over time? Is the movement created through modulation, performance technique or external processing?

Only after answering those questions does the actual programming begin.

Among the sounds examined were the iconic opening of Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond, keyboard textures associated with Toto's Africa and Rosanna, the synthesizer sound of Van Halen's Jump and several classic Beatles arrangements.

Quite a demanding playlist for anyone who thinks vintage sound design consists of selecting a sawtooth waveform and hoping for the best.

What makes Simone's approach particularly valuable is its focus on understanding a sound rather than merely copying its surface characteristics.

A preset might sound convincing when played in isolation, yet behave completely differently once the musician starts using velocity, expression controls, pitch modulation or complex chord voicings.

Getting the architecture right matters.

Getting the musical response right matters even more.

And making the whole thing reliable enough for live performance? That's where the real work begins.

The Sound Engineer Behind the Keyboardist

Simone's technical curiosity eventually took him beyond performance and into the engineering side of music.

In 2015, he completed a master's degree in Sound Engineering at the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

His academic work included the development of an FM synthesizer programmed in Pure Data, an environment used to construct and explore audio processing and synthesis systems.

This is a revealing detail.

Frequency modulation synthesis is powerful, flexible and capable of producing remarkably complex harmonic structures.

It is also perfectly capable of turning a small parameter change into something spectacularly unpleasant.

Unlike more immediately intuitive subtractive synthesis, FM involves understanding how operators interact, how modulation affects the resulting spectrum and how changes in amplitude and frequency relationships influence the sound over time.

Designing a synthesis system in Pure Data means engaging with those principles at a fundamental level.

For Simone, the interest isn't limited to operating an existing instrument.

It extends to understanding the mechanisms that make the instrument possible in the first place.

That technical background, combined with years of stage experience, gives his work a particularly practical perspective.

A sound can be technically sophisticated without being especially useful.

The real achievement is making all that complexity disappear beneath a musician's fingers.

From Battiato to Disney: A Musician Who Doesn't Stay in One Lane

Simone's professional career has never been restricted to one genre.

His performance experience includes appearances with artists such as Danny Elfman, Guy Pratt, Ron Geesin and Durga McBroom, alongside numerous figures from the Italian music scene.

In 2015 and 2016, he served as musical director and keyboardist for Sgt. Pepper's Show, an ambitious production dedicated to the Beatles' celebrated album, performed in its original orchestral form.

He subsequently collaborated with neoclassical composer Luca D'Alberto, accompanying him in performances across Europe.

Since 2024, Simone has also been keyboardist, musical director and programmer for Voglio Vederti Danzare, a production celebrating Franco Battiato's music in collaboration with the Roma Sinfonietta orchestra.

And since 2025, he has worked as keyboardist, musical director and arranger for C'era una volta Disney – Il Concerto.

From progressive rock and classic pop to neoclassical music and orchestral productions, the musical contexts change considerably.

The need for sensitivity, precision and convincing sounds does not.

In fact, working across such different environments makes a programmer confront a particularly useful reality: there is no single definition of a perfect keyboard sound.

A patch that works beautifully in an intimate arrangement may need a completely different balance, dynamic response or frequency profile when surrounded by an orchestra or a full rock band.

Context changes everything.

And a good programmer learns to listen before reaching for another parameter.

What Simone Temporali Brings to SynthCloud

Welcoming Simone to the SynthCloud programming team means bringing together three complementary perspectives: the discipline of a classical pianist, the instincts of an experienced live performer and the technical knowledge of a sound engineer.

It's an approach that fits naturally with what matters to our community.

SynthCloud isn't simply about collecting presets. It's about giving musicians access to sounds that inspire ideas, solve practical problems and make their instruments more expressive.

That requires more than technical specifications or impressive demonstrations.

A well-designed sound needs a purpose.

It needs to respond convincingly, work within an arrangement and remain usable when a musician moves beyond the first few notes.

Simone's experience with historical sound reconstruction is particularly relevant here. His ability to analyse recognizable timbres and translate them across different synthesis platforms brings a valuable perspective to professional sound programming.

And his background in musical direction adds another layer: the understanding that a keyboard part is never completely independent of the music surrounding it.

As Simone begins this new chapter with SynthCloud, we're excited to see how that combination of musical experience and technical curiosity will shape his contributions to our growing community.

There is something reassuring about welcoming a programmer who knows both the elegance of a historical fortepiano and the inner workings of FM synthesis.

Especially one who has spent years ensuring that some of rock history's most recognisable keyboard sounds survive the journey from the original recordings to the modern stage.

Welcome to SynthCloud, Simone.

We suspect the factory presets are about to face some serious competition.

Stay tuned. There's plenty more to hear.