anyone wanna make some cash? I need studio sets for Roland FA-06

[mmartinez]

Following up on this, I ended up making most of the patches myself. Some of them ended up pretty close; others not so much. But all together it was good enough to get the gig.

 

Now I've got a whole bunch more of new songs to put together the patches for. Like 40 to 50 more songs. It's gonna take time. The more of these I can find where someone's already done it, the better!

[Reezekeys]

Good luck to you. It seems like there'd be a good business model in selling pre-rolled patches for workstations, but maybe it's too specialized (or there are too many different workstation keyboards now?!). One thing for sure - I don't envy keyboardists in any band playing current music as we're the ones expected to cover ten times as much stuff as the other instrumentalists.

 

The only other tidbit I might offer is that very often, "close" is good enough! I've found that what matters most is a band's overall sound which boils down to the rhythm section having a good-feeling pocket that people can move to. Joe & Jane Q are not listening to see if you're perfectly reproducing every synth sound or part. Of course, if the bandleader is, that's a different story! I don't work for those types anymore.

[KuruPrionz]

45 minutes ago, Reezekeys said:

The only other tidbit I might offer is that very often, "close" is good enough! I've found that what matters most is a band's overall sound which boils down to the rhythm section having a good-feeling pocket that people can move to. Joe & Jane Q are not listening to see if you're perfectly reproducing every synth sound or part. Of course, if the bandleader is, that's a different story! I don't work for those types anymore.

^^ So much this!!!^^

A great groove and a chorus the dancers can sing along with and you're golden. 

 

I was playing with a Top 40 Country band years ago and the male lead singer said "You aren't playing the guitar part in the intro." and I said "Jeff, which guitar part do you want me to play, there are six guitars in that intro and I can only play one guitar at a time." He stared at me in disbelief. Eventually I got him to hum the part he wanted and we moved on. 

 

When I moved up here I auditioned for a Motown cover band. I got the gig, did a bit of homework for the audition - signature licks. Early on the keyboardist / band leader told me "We will never sound just like the record. We have drums, bass, guitar, keys and 3 vocalists (4 counting me on harmonies). Get the signature licks, take the saxophone parts and we'll be fine as long as they dance to it." And, they did dance to it. Done deal. Reality rears it's head, most records have more parts than a 3 headed 5 legged chicken. 

[AUSSIEKEYS]

8 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

 Reality rears it's head, most records have more parts than a 3 headed 5 legged chicken. 

Hee hee exactly.

 

And dont forget the chicken wings. 

[mmartinez]

One of songs we'll do is Yaz Situation. Non sequenced so I'm going to pick one or two of the synth parts that capture the most essence of the song. The bass can play the synth bass part. The guitar can play one of the other synth parts. And that ought to be good enough for people to recognize that we're doing Yaz Situation.

 

For a few songs, like Separate Ways, I feel it's crucial to the get the synth patch dialed in because when you hear that opening couple of notes everybody in the world recognizes it precisely because of that synth sound. But for other songs, like The HEat is On it doesn't really matter what I choose for the backing pad.

[kaptainkeys]

12 hours ago, mmartinez said:

For a few songs, like Separate Ways, I feel it's crucial to the get the synth patch dialed in because when you hear that opening couple of notes everybody in the world recognizes it precisely because of that synth sound.

I don't have an FA, but if I did I would be interested in this opportunity.  For Separate Ways, there might already be a patch in the keyboard that is 85-90% of the way there, a lot of keyboards have that and may even hint to the name of the song.

[Adan]

22 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

 

The only other tidbit I might offer is that very often, "close" is good enough! I've found that what matters most is a band's overall sound which boils down to the rhythm section having a good-feeling pocket that people can move to. Joe & Jane Q are not listening to see if you're perfectly reproducing every synth sound or part. Of course, if the bandleader is, that's a different story! I don't work for those types anymore.

 

My time in a high rolling Michael Jackson tribute taught me this same lesson.  Tons of very specific signature synth parts to cover, so you'd think that everything had to be spot on, right?  As best I could tell, it never made a difference.  As long as I was in the ballpark, all was good.  My playing, and in particular being in the pocket with the rest of the rhythm section, was always the most important determinant of the energy level and audience reaction.  This was not a bar band -- we routinely played big shows.  I'm a lousy synth programmer -- just don't have the patience for it.  Never mattered.

[Rod S]

Did you try to contact Narfsounds? (Francis Capistrano).    He sells package of popular sounds for the Fantom (as well as Kronos and Montage), he may be interested in doing this for you.  

 

[mmartinez]

Rod S - Thanks for that tip. I haven't heard of Narfsounds (Francis Capistrano) - let me see if I can find him.

 

Adan - yeah, agreed. It mostly doesn't matter but I would like to get reasonably close on some of these. I would say I'm a mediocre synth programmer, I'm neither lousy nor good. Mostly I get bored and annoyed scrolling through zillion tones trying to find a good match. Then once you have it you still have to tweak the filters and attacks and this-and-that ... It's exhausting.

 

GotKeys - it's too bad  you don't have an FA cuz I'd take you up on it.