Favourite Prog Rock Keyboards |
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progbethyname
Forum Senior Member Joined: July 30 2012 Location: HiFi Headmania Status: Offline Points: 7811 |
Posted: July 05 2013 at 10:26 | ||||
Hey! I've been warming up to that mini keyboard that is the clavinet. I love it's featured sound in AGALLOCH's THE MANTLE album. Brilliant. Anyway. Glad to hear of another appreciative response to good old clavi. :) |
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Gimmie my headphones now!!! 🎧🤣
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The.Crimson.King
Forum Senior Member Joined: March 29 2013 Location: WA Status: Offline Points: 4591 |
Posted: July 05 2013 at 13:02 | ||||
Kerry Minnear was one of the biggest proponents of the Hohner D6 Clavinet. It's sprinkled throughout Gentle Giant's live "Playing the Fool" album especially in "Excerpts from Octopus". A cool feature of the clavinet was a lever that you could set which would mute the output. Here in "Excerpts from Octopus" are a couple different clavinet sounds. Unmuted at 2:28 and 2:50, muted at 6:10 and unaccompanied/muted at 6:40. Nothing else sounded like a clavinet
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KingCrInuYasha
Forum Senior Member Joined: September 26 2010 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 1281 |
Posted: July 05 2013 at 13:48 | ||||
Mellotron, hands down, followed by the Hammond Organ and the Minimoog.
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He looks at this world and wants it all... so he strikes, like Thunderball!
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progbethyname
Forum Senior Member Joined: July 30 2012 Location: HiFi Headmania Status: Offline Points: 7811 |
Posted: July 05 2013 at 14:38 | ||||
Ahhhh tastey mellotron. This has to be my favourite song today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUeDJTiE4t4&feature=youtube_gdata_player |
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Gimmie my headphones now!!! 🎧🤣
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verslibre
Forum Senior Member Joined: July 01 2004 Location: CA Status: Offline Points: 15453 |
Posted: July 06 2013 at 18:32 | ||||
That's right, nothing else did. Herbie Hancock played it to great effect before he (sadly) stopped using it. George Duke used it, too. Led Zeppelin's "Trampled Under Foot" wouldn't be the same without John Paul Jones' bitchin' clav groove. And of course, Stevie Wonder made the clav's sound famous on his hit "Superstition." Wakeman's spitfire clav lead on "Ice Run" from White Rock is another highlight in the instrument's storied history! |
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verslibre
Forum Senior Member Joined: July 01 2004 Location: CA Status: Offline Points: 15453 |
Posted: July 06 2013 at 18:38 | ||||
I love keyboards amd synthesizers in general so I checked off many of the boxes...LOL!
The Mellotron is such a classic sound, it's perfectly understandable why it's most listeners' favorite. The way the Mellotron characterized the sound of Tangerine Dream's mid-70s music (Rubycon, particularly), the legendary Mellotron chords Tony Banks is known for, and its presence on so many prog albums in general...a timeless sound. The MiniMoog is just as important, a deadly weapon in the hands of guys like Jan Hammer, Wakeman, Emerson, and countless others. Hammer's MiniMoog solos are among my general favorites, too...he really has "the touch"! For me, the Fairlight Musicomputer and the Synclavier haven't aged well. I could take them or leave them. They're relics of the '80s that were prohibitively expensive for their time and they were routinely outperformed by lesser instruments then and now! |
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The.Crimson.King
Forum Senior Member Joined: March 29 2013 Location: WA Status: Offline Points: 4591 |
Posted: July 06 2013 at 19:24 | ||||
I agree. Nowadays a $3,000 Yamaha Motif XF does nearly everything a $150,000 Synclavier did (except print out sheet music). I still have to give the Synclavier props though, without it Zappa never would have created "Jazz From Hell", "Civilization Phaze III", "FZ Meets the Mother's of Prevention", "Francesco Zappa", and who knows what other Synclavier madness still hiding in his vaults?
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Gerinski
Prog Reviewer Joined: February 10 2010 Location: Barcelona Spain Status: Offline Points: 5153 |
Posted: July 06 2013 at 20:33 | ||||
I guess that the Synclavier and Fairlight were necessary steps along the road, even if expensive and questionably performant by today's standards, before the 80's star digital synths like the Yamaha DX-7, Korg M1 and Roland D-50 changed the music world.
And besides sounds playback, digital sampling was a new technology and these machines helped bridge the gap. Much of Zappa's or Pat Metheny's music would not have existed without the Synclavier.
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verslibre
Forum Senior Member Joined: July 01 2004 Location: CA Status: Offline Points: 15453 |
Posted: July 06 2013 at 22:29 | ||||
Eddie Jobson recorded Theme Of Secrets entirely with the Synclavier. For the time, it was unique, I will not contest that. It made for a very pleasant listening experience. |
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The.Crimson.King
Forum Senior Member Joined: March 29 2013 Location: WA Status: Offline Points: 4591 |
Posted: July 06 2013 at 22:58 | ||||
Ya, I was looking up info on the synclavier and it mentioned it was an 8-bit sampler with 2 meg of storage space but for an additional $30,000 you could upgrade to 1 gig. If you bought all the extras it could act as a self-contained recording studio for a cool $400,000. The big deal for Zappa was that he could finally hear his most complex compositions played exactly as he wrote them. I also found a picture of Pat Metheny running a Roland GR300 guitar synth through his. They were definitely pushing the bounds of technology for that time.
Edited by The.Crimson.King - July 06 2013 at 23:00 |
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Gerinski
Prog Reviewer Joined: February 10 2010 Location: Barcelona Spain Status: Offline Points: 5153 |
Posted: July 07 2013 at 00:41 | ||||
Here is a video of Metheny showing his Synclavier II controlled from his Roland G-303 guitar Don't know if you have seen my article about instruments commonly used in Prog, I comment about all these there |
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The.Crimson.King
Forum Senior Member Joined: March 29 2013 Location: WA Status: Offline Points: 4591 |
Posted: July 07 2013 at 20:01 | ||||
No, I wasn't aware of it but just had a look. Outstanding! I love all the pix! Are you aware of a book called "Vintage Synthesizers" by Mark Vail? It was written in collaboration with Keyboard Magazine and is in at least it's 2nd edition. It's 300+ pages and full of pix and diagrams and is an outstanding resource for prog keyboard nuts like us
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Gerinski
Prog Reviewer Joined: February 10 2010 Location: Barcelona Spain Status: Offline Points: 5153 |
Posted: July 08 2013 at 01:34 | ||||
I had never seen it, I just searched it and it looks interesting, thanks!
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verslibre
Forum Senior Member Joined: July 01 2004 Location: CA Status: Offline Points: 15453 |
Posted: July 08 2013 at 02:00 | ||||
Yeah, that's a great book! And here's a great website: http://www.vintagesynth.com/ |
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The.Crimson.King
Forum Senior Member Joined: March 29 2013 Location: WA Status: Offline Points: 4591 |
Posted: July 08 2013 at 12:44 | ||||
Ya, my favourite section is called "Dredging the tar pits of technology" and features some incredible keyboards that were so outrageous in design that they never got beyond a single prototype. Great stuff. There's another book I'd recommend to those of us who put a vote behind the mighty mellotron. It's called, "The Mellotron Book" by Frank Samagaio and is 150 pages of history, photos, and details of the inner workings of our beloved tron. www.vintagesynth.com is a great site, I could easily spend hours there and referred to it frequently while putting this poll together
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brainstormer
Forum Senior Member Joined: January 20 2008 Location: Seattle, WA Status: Offline Points: 887 |
Posted: July 08 2013 at 14:38 | ||||
RE: Dredging the tar pits of technology" You have a link to this? Doesn't seem to come in a google search except possibly as a book chapter. |
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--
Robert Pearson Regenerative Music http://www.regenerativemusic.net Telical Books http://www.telicalbooks.com ParaMind Brainstorming Software http://www.paramind.net |
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The.Crimson.King
Forum Senior Member Joined: March 29 2013 Location: WA Status: Offline Points: 4591 |
Posted: July 08 2013 at 14:54 | ||||
I don't have a link, I have the actual book Section: "Hearts of the Modern Synth Industry" Chapter: "It Came from the Music Industry" Sub Chapter: "Dredging the Tar Pits of Technology" Some of the great headings: "Riding the Oblivion Express", "It Slices, It Dices", "Monophonic Monstrosities", etc... |
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FusionKing
Forum Senior Member Joined: December 28 2009 Location: Scotland Status: Offline Points: 522 |
Posted: July 10 2013 at 19:18 | ||||
The Fender Rhodes is sexy
The Hammond Organ is smokin'
and Moogs should be illegal for thier drug-like effect.
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"Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself" - Sartre
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progbethyname
Forum Senior Member Joined: July 30 2012 Location: HiFi Headmania Status: Offline Points: 7811 |
Posted: July 10 2013 at 20:25 | ||||
Still loving the sh*t out of the Oberheim OP courteous of mr. GEDDY Lee.
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Gimmie my headphones now!!! 🎧🤣
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antonyus
Forum Senior Member Joined: January 30 2006 Location: Munich Status: Offline Points: 541 |
Posted: October 22 2013 at 08:35 | ||||
Mellotron by far
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