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AROIOS

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Posts posted by AROIOS

    Peter Baartmans RIP

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    58 minutes ago, Aidan said:

    Sorry to have to share that Peter Baartmans, Yamaha’s ultra talented and exuberant Genos and Tyros demonstrator, has passed away. Peter was out on the road demonstrating Genos 2 throughout Europe only a few months ago but apparently had an aggressive cancer of which he was unaware. As well as a being a brilliant musician at home in many styles of music, Peter was a great communicator (speaking many languages fluently) and a genuinely nice guy too. A big hole has opened up in the Yamaha family. RIP, Peter. 


    Very sad news, I'm a big fan of Peter. May his gentle soul rest in heaven.

    Has Roland ever replaced the XP30?

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    13 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

     

    I always thought they had the same sound engine - the JV1080. The sound data was certainly compatible, notwhithstanding some model-specific diffs, e.g. # of outputs.


    1080/2080/1010/30/50/60/80 are the "Super JVs". He might be referring to the original JVs (JV80/880/90/1000 etc)

    • Like 1

    DX7 Bass in its prime! Peter Cetera

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Reezekeys said:

     

    Nice fat sound you got there! Three basses seems like enough to do the job too.

     

    There's another way to do this – a small amount of LFO modulating pitch at slightly different rates on each synth voice. I would put a delay on the offset of the LFO so the attacks are all together and in tune.


    Glad you liked it, Reezekeys, and thanks for the new tip. I'm gonna try it out in my next synth bass programming adventure.

    DX7 Bass in its prime! Peter Cetera

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    4 hours ago, jazzpiano88 said:

     

    I would say this bass patch would have made the recording at least 1.414x nicer.   The Bass sound w/ attack minus the bass muddy sustain is perfect.

     

    Back then the artists and producers wanted huge bass, which completely destroyed the mastering mix.   So they included such BS Bass sustain from that original Stem attached above.   What they didn't understand is that they only really needed the high frequency components of the Low End, which is what the patch from AROIS achieves.  Instead they ended up with what was like Cellos playing vibrato sustaining in the background which is complete mush and had to be mixed out but retaining a crappy DC component that ended up degrading the overall recording.   

     

    So on the Cetera "Next Time I Fall" recording, like, who is going to complain? It's 1985!!!  Who's going to go  "Omar, the Keyboard Bass is too muddy and overpowering....can you ease up on the number of TX816 channels you're using to overload the console over Amy's rich vocal"???     No.   They knew her vocal baritone components were getting shrouded but no one knew why.  

     

    It wasn't until a few short years later that mastering and mix engineers realized that they needed to open up the low end to allow the low end to breath.   You can always add low end later, but if the low end is dominated like the original droning sustain (growl / swirl as described above)  bass Stem shown up above, it saturates the mix from that track from the start and there is no recovering. 

     

    So the Bottom Line:   Be that as it may, the Cetera tracks are great, but could have been even better.    If there was swirl on the bass, but not on the Electric piano, something was wrong. 


    Glad you enjoyed the patch, jazzpiano88. And yes, the original bass is more impressive in isolation but could be a PITA to tame in a mix.

    The mix engineers behind so many of these Pop and Rock hits don't get nearly as much recognition as they deserve. Only after listening to a lot of the original stems, did I realize what crude materials they were dealing with back in the day.

    DX7 Bass in its prime! Peter Cetera

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    21 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

    I'm gonna guess that swirly sustain on the bass is eight DXs... yes the TX816 which I saw a lot of in studios at that time. You take one patch, put it on all eight modules, and detune them slightly from one another. That's the "swirl." This was done with many FM sounds, to fatten them up.


    @Reezekeys so I layered 3 FM bass patches today and got a sound similar to "Glory of Love". This opens a new door for my synth bass programming. Thanks again for the suggestion.

    Here's a quick demo of it:

     

     

    • Like 1

    DX7 Bass in its prime! Peter Cetera

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    3 hours ago, Mark Zeger said:

    Re: “Next Time I Fall In Love”, allow me to segue to its writer, Bobby Caldwell. Love his music. His album Heart Of Mine generated hits for Cetera & Grant, the title cut for Boz Scaggs, and “All Or Nothing At All” for Al Jarreau. Those are 3 of the first 4 songs on the album!


    Besides being a great songwriter, he's also got a distinctive Blue-Eyed-Soul voice. My favorite cover of The Emotions' "Don't Ask My Neighbors" was from Bobby.
     

     

    • Like 1

    DX7 Bass in its prime! Peter Cetera

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Reezekeys said:

    I'm gonna guess that swirly sustain on the bass is eight DXs... yes the TX816 which I saw a lot of in studios at that time. You take one patch, put it on all eight modules, and detune them slightly from one another. That's the "swirl." This was done with many FM sounds, to fatten them up.


    That's a great idea. I've done it with electric piano patches for years but never thought of applying it on FM basses.

    DX7 Bass in its prime! Peter Cetera

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    14 hours ago, tapes said:

    ...

    The bass sounds hilarious by itself, but Foster wrote such great songs.


    That's one of the biggest arrangement/mixing lessons I learned from transcribing and listening to original mix stems of my favorite Pop tunes: Density management.

    The individual parts of those tunes are often much simpler than I thought or what I would write. It's the brilliant interplay among these simple parts, plus the genius of the mix engineers, that turned those parts into a final product greater than the simple sum of them.

    • Like 1

    DX7 Bass in its prime! Peter Cetera

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    14 hours ago, tapes said:

    Funny, I never even noticed the odd long decay on that bass until hearing that isolated stem! Back then they used to combine FM (DX and Synclavier) with a MiniMoog, like on 'Thriller'.


    That long swirling decay is the most definitive feature of the 80's/David Foster style power ballad synth bass. It fills up the sparse arrangements in the verse of a power ballad much better than a real bass could.

    And yes, bass layering was common at the time. "Thriller"'s bass was actually done on a ARP 2600 with a Moog ladder filter. So Minimoog can definitely do a convincing job of covering it.
     

     

    i-VI

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    2 hours ago, CyberGene said:

    I was wondering if I should write it as bVI or just VI since it’s a minor key, apparent by i. 
     

    I meant bVI as MOI pointed out. And “dramatic/epic” was an exaggeration on my side 😀


    Ah, I see. Without additional context, I would have heard it simply as iiim-Imaj7 or vim-IVmaj7.

    i-VI

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    On 4/6/2024 at 5:58 AM, CyberGene said:

    Either I’m late to the party or it’s a new trend but a lot of current music, or more specifically the one that attempts to be on a dramatic/epic scale can just go on using i-VI chords forever (the VI often being maj7, thus keeping the minor triad and adding the VI bass note), e.g. Cm - Abmaj7.

     

    Is that the only way to create dramatic tension nowadays? 🧐 Where did all the other chord progressions go?

     

    OK, I’m generalizing but still 😀


    I don't see (hear) that progression (attached below) as being dramatic/epic at all. The "Light My Fire" i-vi progression is probably abused more in film/TV scores.

    What am I missing?

     

     

     

    Roland SC-55mkII Emulation

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    On 4/6/2024 at 2:31 PM, CyberGene said:

    I remember how obsessed I was with a track from my favorite game The Incredible Machine, a funky fusion jazz in the style of Mezzoforte. I had a SoundBlaster while the father of a friend of mine had a SC at home, I think he used to work for the TV and composed jingles with it. That same track sounded so good on the SC compared to the SB although the SB was in turn a dream come true for me...


    Excellent piece! Sierra games had some great MIDI tracks, here's a favorite of mine:
     

     

    • Love 1

    DX7 Bass in its prime! Peter Cetera

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    On 4/5/2024 at 7:57 AM, dalpozlead said:

    NEW SONG! LoL🙃 nevertheless I can't stop listening to this backing track... is a masterpiece for synth bass.


    The sustain of it doesn't sound like an DX7 bass to me, probably layered with a 360 Systems MIDI Bass popular around that time.

    And not to dismiss your personal preferences brother, but this bass track is pretty run-of-the-mill. To call it a masterpiece is an overstatement.
     

     

    • Like 1

    Eric Clapton's After Midnight - need some big ears!

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    12 hours ago, musicbysterling said:

    ...What am I missing here? Shell voicings? Drop 3s? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!


    Here's the isolated piano track. It's just some common Blues/Gospel licks around C-Eb-F-G. The missing flavor you're looking for might be the b3 and b7 Blues notes and the I - IV/I Gospel lick. You can even throw in a VIIb/I after the IV/I to spice things up a bit further.
     

     

     

    • Like 3

    OB-Xa - Oberheim vs. Arturia

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    11 hours ago, Jim Alfredson said:

    The Arturia sounds nice but it's pretty obvious which is which. That said, it could be a simple matter of patch programming. For example, the French Horn patch on the Arturia sounded radically different than the OB-X8 and the OB-X8 does indeed sound the same as the original OB-Xa patch.


    I just tested that patch on the free OB-XD, and it destroyed Arturia's version in warmth. What a nice little piece of gem!

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