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Tone catalog/glossary?


dougie360

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Is there a database which describes or maps the various piano / E. Piano tones to what they sound like?  

 

For instance, I would like to mimic the song by the Doors - Riders on the Storm.  I believe they used a Rhodes MK synth or something like that, and was wondering which tone would get me closest to that set up?    Maybe one of the 60's elec piano tones?   

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Dougie

 

Here is the closest thing that I am aware of.  Go to the link below, then do a browser "Edit > Find" and enter the band name, or the song name, or the instrument name and see what you get.  In the case of "Riders on the Storm", enter the song name (not much info on this one though).  Sometimes you can do a Bing or a Google search on something like "Riders on the Storm synth sound" or "Doors synth keyboard sound", and if you are lucky, you will get a specific description of what the keyboardist did to get the specific sound in question, but it is seldom as easy as selecting a preset and making a couple of simple tweaks.  Whenever I have tried this, it has required listening to the sound very closely, over and over and over, interspersed with a lot of rigorous experimenting - especially with effects selection and settings.  Quite often a particularly cool sound was done with equipment (sometimes unorthodox) external to the keyboard, for instance, the original Duane Eddy twang was done by micing a guitar amp placed in an abandoned 5000 gallon gasoline storage tank.  If you do not know that kind of info about a particular sound, it can be really difficult to emulate it.  Good luck:

 

http://www.synthmania.com/Famous Sounds.htm

 

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From what i can hear and what I've read, it was a Fender Rhodes suitcase piano, with a strong tremolo, probably Fender amp based. I've played Rhodes pianos, I can't seem to recall a built-in tremolo on the models I played but my memory might be wrong. Generous use of sustain pedal....I have duplicated this sound with my old Ensoniq TS-12 and Yamaha SY77 but not yet with a Casio. You need the strong tremolo effect. The Rhodes sound characteristically was rather dull in the low registers unless you smacked it, and very bell-like in the upper registers. And unless it was well "regulated" the internal action was very mechanical-not completely consistent across the keys, creating a kind of random effect for dynamics. Actually part of the tonal quality of the instrument and why it is hard to duplicate accurately with digital. Maybe someone else on this forum has some ideas as to how to get that sound.

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