Nice. I think you nailed it!
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I spent a lot of evenings at the Eastown Theater in Detroit, and one evening had the pleasure of watching ELP up close.
Emerson had a stack of crap about 8 feet high that looked like the switchboard for the city of Chicago. He was constantly adjusting things throughout the set as they played songs like Lucky Man and From the Beginning, matching the recorded songs on the fly.
A short while later I was in a studio that had a Mini Moog. If you walked up to that thing youād be lucky to get any sound out of it period for ten minutes, at which point you might get some white noise. Soon after that I saw the Jan Hammer group, and Hammer had the keyboard on a guitar strap playing Hendrix tunes note for note. Presets on modern synths are amazing, but rapidly become cliched. Knowing how to dial up a sound on a synth is truly an art form in itself.
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Hereās clip of him talking about it.
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I just watched that clip, Ingo, and the 3 oscillators and other controls he used to generate that pulsating synth sound which he played along with on a more organ sounding synth to achieve that definitive ELP sound was impressive. The synth that just played the base sound mixed with the keyboard playing by a virtuoso keyboardist are exactly what I did in a song I did around 2000 which I could only find on an old CD which I ripped and placed in a new Reaper project a few days ago. The difference was I used sampled/effected guitar sounds that pulsated from UJam Carbon and played in midi. I also added two synths from Sonik Synth 2, one pretty realistic strings and the other with some synthy oscillation motion going on, again it is 99% presets and just to add that ambience as well as a totally new pattern. I bring up all this because I have been musically unproductive since the summer for no reason except maybe I have had real life distractions. Nonetheless, Black Friday came, and I had a hankering for some new synth sounds.
My problem is I have 2 laptops that I use for Reaper. My older Sony is stronger and handles more demanding VSTs, whereas my newer old Acer does not have the processer to run the fancier newer synths. So it occurred to me to look for deals on older synths which might work on my weak equipment. Well, I did not really find anything that blew me away, based on the sample videos I could find. Specifically, I could not find anything that I probably didnāt already have a means of getting a similar sound, just maybe have to mix it myself rather than it be on a preset.
And that is the fact of the matter- I have a lot of synths, and I barely know what I can do already. When I listened to the original Someday, I had some good sounds and parts, but they all came alive with the new parts- guitars, bass, synth, strings, drums. It was as if the 21 year old song was just waiting for this remix.
I admit the new version is bigger and louder, rocks a lot harder, and that is partly a matter of taste, but thatās what synths can do. And whether it is too much distraction or quintessential to the song is equally possible.
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This does rock pretty hard @steban and I like that. The mix is muddy and confused, I canāt really hear the drums or bass. The vocals arenāt very clear either and a little pitchy here and there but the overall effect has a good vibe so Iām not sure you should change anything. Rock on!
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