HELP -- Pink Floyd keyboard sounds and samples

[AtomFunk]

Hello! I have been scouring the internet for months and I am at a loss. I am a keyboard player who is trying to download sounds and samples for a Pink Floyd tribute. Most samples I find (for Dark Side and The Wall) all have the music in the background. I cant seem to find anyone who is offering or selling patched for Nords, Gaia, or anything. Saw tons of YouTube acts with the samples and sounds I am looking for. I know they are out there. Looking for some help, guidance, knowledge on what to do. Desperately seeking information. Right now my main synth is a Roland Gaia. I can get all the piano, Wurlitzer, and Rhodes sounds on my Yamaha P88 and MM6 no problem. I have a Nord and a B3 for Hammond work. Just don’t know what setting Richard Wright (or from The Wall on) Bob Ezrin or Fred Mandel used for B3 or synth. Please please please help if you can.

[CyberGene]

I think Kurzweils are your best bet. 

[MathOfInsects]

I can't point you to it right now, but there is a website out there called something like "WrightGear," which lists all the keyboards used for each song on each of the albums he was on. 

I will say though: Some of the least effective PF-tribute players I've seen, have been the ones most faithful to the recording-keyboards. Not the parts or sounds, but the boards themselves. The wizardry of those albums often happened post-recording session, and people can tend to ignore the signal processing aspect of PF's recorded output. 

IMO you really need to build the patches. Most of the prebaked ones suck. For layered sounds like Cigar, you can get creative with split points or two boards. You do have to triage sometimes. 
 

As far as recorded samples, depending how prominent your band will be, you may have to record these. There's tons of sound-effects sites on the web. Making these is probably the most fun part of doing PF. If you are small/local, you can find plenty of "sound effects only" tracks from PF out there, even on the aforementioned youtubes. 

Good luck!

[RedKey]

https://youtu.be/CTY9aXY95hg

 

Synth Cloud has a bunch.  It could be a good starting point.

[Jon E]

Have you checked this site?

https://www.synthonia.com

[MathOfInsects]

20 minutes ago, RedKey said:

https://youtu.be/CTY9aXY95hg

 

Synth Cloud has a bunch.  It could be a good starting point.

IMO that one is awful. As always, YMMV.

[AtomFunk]

1 hour ago, CyberGene said:

I think Kurzweils are your best bet. 

Any particular one? Any downloadable patches that don't sound cheap for it?

[AtomFunk]

9 minutes ago, MaskOfInsects said:

IMO that one is awful. As always, YMMV.

Been on SynthCloud all day. Nothing for my Gaia at all. I liked some of the stuff on there. I guess I might need to buy a new board. Not ideal, but thats how it goes I guess.

[CyberGene]

51 minutes ago, AtomFunk said:

Any particular one? Any downloadable patches that don't sound cheap for it?

I haven’t owned a Kurzweil but I have researched the subject of recreating Pink Floyd sounds and found out that most tribute bands use Kurzweil boards (PC3 gets mentioned a lot) and one of their engineers has even posted on this forum something around the lines of how they had PF tribute bands in mind when designing the factory patches. I found those through Google searches, so I can’t give you ready links but this topic has been discussed on this forum years ago, so there might be more specific advices in regards to factory patches or third party ones. 

[mcgoo]

You'll go broke if you try to buy different keyboards to give you the sounds because none of them will have all. And finding PF sounds made for the Gaia is going to be, as you've found out, tough. A better investment of time & money would be a few basic programming lessons, so you can start to go after creating those sounds with what you have.

[ProfD]

10 minutes ago, mcgoo said:

A better investment of time & money would be a few basic programming lessons, so you can start to go after creating those sounds with what you have.

Agreed.  Most of the original sounds came from *vintage* gear by today's standard. 

 

A ROMpler and/or a sampler should be able to produce a reasonable facsimile of the required sounds.

 

Besides, the gig is a tribute band.  No need going all Kurzweil over it.🤣😎

[CyberGene]

While it was me who suggested Kurzweil (without even owning one ever) I agree with others that you better spend some time researching how to approach the sounds with what you have. 

[stoken6]

5 hours ago, AtomFunk said:

Hello! I have been scouring the internet for months and I am at a loss. I am a keyboard player who is trying to download sounds and samples for a Pink Floyd tribute. Most samples I find (for Dark Side and The Wall) all have the music in the background. I cant seem to find anyone who is offering or selling patched for Nords, Gaia, or anything. Saw tons of YouTube acts with the samples and sounds I am looking for. I know they are out there. Looking for some help, guidance, knowledge on what to do. Desperately seeking information. Right now my main synth is a Roland Gaia. I can get all the piano, Wurlitzer, and Rhodes sounds on my Yamaha P88 and MM6 no problem. I have a Nord and a B3 for Hammond work. Just don’t know what setting Richard Wright (or from The Wall on) Bob Ezrin or Fred Mandel used for B3 or synth. Please please please help if you can.

What Nord do you have? Lots of samples and patches available for download from norduserforum.com.

 

I also think this might be your moment to transition from "download" to "program/sound design". I saw KCer Jim Alfredson's video on his patch (Kurzweil) for "Have A Cigar" which helped me program something for my Stage 2. There's plenty of information out there, if you're willing to put the pieces together. Good luck!

 

Cheers, Mike.

[Synthoid]

2 hours ago, ProfD said:

Besides, the gig is a tribute band.  No need going all Kurzweil over it.🤣😎

 

 

[MathOfInsects]

2 hours ago, stoken6 said:

What Nord do you have? Lots of samples and patches available for download from norduserforum.com.

 

I also think this might be your moment to transition from "download" to "program/sound design". I saw KCer Jim Alfredson's video on his patch (Kurzweil) for "Have A Cigar" which helped me program something for my Stage 2. There's plenty of information out there, if you're willing to put the pieces together. Good luck!

 

Cheers, Mike.

Cigar is a logistical trip. There's the Wurly, a clav, the minimoog main riff (two mono lines played together, with portamentos that sometimes feel like they settle in opposite directions!), and that splashy high synth (maybe a Solina?). That splashy synth sits alone during the verses, but then also sits under the minimoog riff, and does not portamento. I use two different split points on the Nord (Clav, Wurly, Splashy synth) and then send the minimoog line from the Nord to a second board, where I also leave local volume up, and that one also has splashy synth, so I can have the minimoog line portamento while the Splashy Synth does not while still having a "third" hand free for wurly or clav, and also have the splashy synth by itself when I need it during the verses.

[niacin]

There is a list from the net of the gear Rick used on each album attached below, it comes down to Farfisa organ, Hammond organ, Wurli, Rhodes (replaced with a Wurli for live), Clav, Solina string machine, Minimoog and occasional Moog Taurus bass pedals. 

 

There's a really good article from an old Keyboard magazine attached below on programming the synth leads, and these two links might help you, not sure how close Gaia will get you, and you'll need delay fx:

 

https://www.musicradar.com/tuition/tech/how-to-make-a-pink-floyd-style-lead-synth-sound-209117

https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2015/04/10/the-iconic-sounds-of-synthesis-pink-floyds-welcome-to-the-machine-lead/

 

Rick's organ settings are all pretty basic: he EQed the top end out of the Farfisa to get rid of the shrillness, tab settings are discussed in this link:

 

https://organforum.com/forums/forum/electronic-organs-midi/combo-organs-keyboards/41658-rick-wright-echoes-farfisa-settings

 

Hammond is often first 4 drawbars all the way out, set the Leslie mic angle pretty wide.  

 

For Cigar I have a Clav / Wurli / Solina split on the upper keyboard and synth lead on the bottom, my left hand goes between clav and Wurli, my right between Wurli, Solina and synth lead.  Yes there's a lot to cover once you factor in the clav, but in a live mix you might leave the clav out and not miss it much.  The intro to Shine is layers: tuned wineglasses with water, Solina, a touch of Hammond, Moog Taurus for the bass.  The piano on Echoes goes through a Leslie.  When you get to Animals you need to know that alot of it is a result of experimenting with fx, keys through a vocoder and that sort of thing.  For Comfortably Numb this is worth watching to hear the orchestra parts:

 

 

 

Samples: take what you can direct from the original recordings, which is pretty much everything except the spoken bits in the middle of tracks on Dark Side.  I rolled my own for Learning to Fly by editing audio from a Youtube flying lesson video.  There are lots of samples out there but the quality isn't great.

 

Good luck.

 

 

 

 

WrightGear-rev156.pdf

The Wrighht Stuff.pdf

[dsteinschneider]

I used this website to get isolated tracks of the cash registers, spoken word etc.

 

http://kitrae.net/music/Music_mp3_DSOTM.html

[Jim Alfredson]

Well, I could on and on about this topic for days. I joined a really good Pink Floyd tribute band in 2017. The previous keyboardist in that band, Matt Riddle, is playing with Brit Floyd now, probably the best PF tribute band in the world. They actually tour the world doing it. They are amazing. And he's an incredible keyboardist. Way better than me.

 

But the cool thing about Richard Wright is that he wasn't a virtuoso keyboardist from a technical standpoint. His genius lies in how he assembled textures and sounds and the note choices he made. And the gear he used on all those classic records is easily replicated on modern keyboards. That's actually the easy part if you know a bit about subtractive analog synthesis and vintage electromechanical keys.

 

The real challenge is reproducing all of those various textures and sounds and parts in real-time on the gig! The aforementioned Matt Riddle, when he played with the band I'm in now, brought out a real Hammond and Leslie, a real Rhodes, a digital piano, I think a real Solina string machine, a couple all purpose ROMpler synths, and a monophonic analog (either a Minimoog or ARP Odyssey, I think). His rig was impressively huge and awesome but holy crap, that's a lot of stuff! And it doesn't really solve the problem of how to play all the parts simultaneously, imo.

 

The first rehearsal I had with the band (hereto referred to as EOPF for Echoes of Pink Floyd), I brought out my Kurzweil Forte7, Hammond SK2 with a 3300, Novation UltraNova, and an Arturia KeyLab 61 connected to my laptop running Mainstage with the Arturia KeyLab software in it. I bought a pack of Pink Floyd sounds for KeyLab. At that first rehearsal I realized two things: I had too much shit and farting around with the computer sucked. Also the sounds from that PF pack were just ok.

 

The next rehearsal I showed up with just the Kurzweil, the Hammond and Leslie, and a Prophet 12 for strings and some leads. The guys were like, "That's it?!?" I spent weeks and weeks learning VAST on the Kurzweil and programming custom sounds and then putting those into MULTIs with multiple splits and layers. I also found Malc at Enjoy The Sirens and bought his stellar Shine On You patch for the Kurzweil. That saved a lot of time. 

https://enjoythesirens.com/

As of now, my rig is the Kurzweil Forte7 and a Hammond SK Pro. Two keyboards. I sometimes bring the UltraNova out for vocoder effects on Sheep, if we're performing it.

The Forte7 does 90% of everything. The SK Pro is for organ (both Hammond and Farfisa) and occasional Solina strings or Wurli. I don't even bring a Leslie anymore. Everything is in-ear and the Kurzweil sends program change messages to the Hammond and my vocal processor (since I also took over lead vocal duties two years ago... like I didn't have enough to do!)

The Kurzweil triggers samples. It does all the analog synth sounds. All pianos, electric pianos, even organ sometimes (like on Pigs: Three Different Ones). It does strings, both electronic (Solina) and acoustic (for Comfortably Numb), French horns, sound FX, pads, synth bass, etc. It's a BEAST. I could do the entire gig on it really, but I do like having the Hammond there for almost exclusively organ. Again, I sometimes use the Hammond SK Pro for Solina strings, Wurli, and even synth bass on Echoes. But I don't need to. It's just nice to have it ready to go.

But here's where it gets interesting regarding the Kurzweil. 

These modern Kurzweils are designed for Broadway. In other words, they are designed to allow a keyboardist to cover a ton of parts quickly and easily. And that's why they are so good for Pink Floyd tribute bands, because there's so much you have to cover and you only have so many fingers.

 

Once of the best features is Chord Triggers. You can take any key on the keyboard and assign up to 12 notes to it. Any 12 notes you want. To any key you want. If you're on FB, I demonstrate the power of this feature in this video.

https://www.facebook.com/jim.alfredson.3/videos/3195138894033763

 

This allows me to trigger multiple sounds on a single note, each sound consisting of entire chords if needed.

 

I can also assign samples to a key and play them in trigger mode, meaning one press and the sample plays. Press again and it stops playing. Great for long samples. For example, I sampled the entire intro to Time. And then in the sample I looped the "tick tock" section, once all the other clock chimes and such were gone. So I just press one key, that entire sample plays, it automatically loops itself on the 'tick tock' part, and then we start the musical intro (the big Moog bass, the Wurli tinkling, Farfisa held notes). And when the main part of the tune comes in (the first verse) I just hit that key again and stop the sample. 

 

A single patch on the Kurzweil is called a PROGRAM. Each PROGRAM can have up to 32 layers. A layer can be anything; an oscillator, a filter, DSP, whatever. For example, one other sound I did not program is the On The Run sequence. I think the patch I found was originally made for the PC3. It is a single PROGRAM consisting of close to 30 layers. Every part of the On The Run track is in there except the airport intercom sound. You hold one key and the whole thing just goes; the little EMS Synthi sequence, the hi-hat pattern, the footsteps, the weird noises, the whole thing. It's brilliant. And you can control the filter and resonance via the sliders.

Then you have MULTI mode where you can have up to 16 Zones. Each Zone can be a PROGRAM. Or it can control an external device either via MIDI, USB, or both. Or it can be an internal PROGRAM and send MIDI too (again either on 5pin DIN MIDI or USB MIDI). So to use the example of On The Run again, I setup a MULTI with the PROGRAM that has everything but the airport intercom sound on Zone 1 of 16, then on Zone 2 I put a custom Program I made that is just a sample of a woman announcing stuff from an airport intercom that I found on YouTube. I processed it in Cubase to make it unintelligible but still sound like someone talking, exported it as a WAV, loaded it into the Kurz, and made a PROGRAM out of it. Load it into the MULTI and voila... one key press and some slider fiddling and there's my On The Run.

The Forte has 9 programmable faders and 11 programmable buttons. Three footswitch inputs. Two continuous controller pedal inputs. Two MIDI outputs. 3.3GB of flash ram sample memory (no loading from an internal harddrive). Tons of FX. Two pairs of stereo balanced outputs. It's absolutely nuts what you can do with it.

I'll be moving everything to the Kurzweil flagship K2700 soon. More real estate (88 key instead of 76), 16 touch sensitive programmable pads, ribbon controller, etc. It's gonna be sweet! But the Forte is still a monster of a machine.

 

Beyond all that, at first I was intimidated by the prospect of programming all the sounds but once you realize the architecture of the synths that they were using, it's way easier. For example, on Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, that's all EMS Synthi or Minimoog. The Synthi can only produce square waves or sawtooth waves. That's it. By modulating one with the other you can get some other wave shapes, but those two are the only waveforms the oscillators produce by themselves. And there are only three oscillators.

Likewise, the Minimoog has essentially four waveforms; sawtooth, triangle, square (pulse) wave with different widths, and a weird half triangle / half sawtooth. Again just three oscillators and a filter.

So knowing that, it's pretty easy to make the Have A Cigar lead sound, for example. A sawtooth is full of harmonics. A square wave is more hollow sounding. The Have A Cigar sound is very buzzy, so it's definitely a sawtooth wave. Add some modulation for vibrato (which I do on the Forte with aftertouch), add some portamento / glide. Layer at least two oscillators just slightly detuned from each other. Play with the filter until it sounds right. There you go. That's the sound.

But again the real trick is to play it! And that part is in thirds, sometimes major, sometimes minor. If you just play thirds, you have to do so on a sound that isn't monophonic and thus you're not going to get the portamento! So to work around that, I play them in sixths but using two Zones in a MULTI so that each part is still monophonic and thus I get the portamento. Hard to explain but here I demonstrate it:
 

That video was my old rig, when I was using the Prophet 12. I had just gotten the Pro2 that day and was messing around with integrating it into the rig but decided not to do so. I also had the XK5 in the rig, which I was using for awhile but it was too big and took up too much room. And I was using powered speakers, a real Leslie, and no in-ears at that time. I'm all in-ear now.

 

Anyway, again I could talk about this for days. I have a ton more examples of crafty programming using the Kurzweil's features that makes playing this stuff so much easier. As I mentioned, I'm singing lead now, too. So I had to streamline as much as I could in order to perform everything. The Kurzweil has been irreplaceable in that regard. 

 

Can you do what you need on the GAIA? Mostly. I would definitely start there. Think about the important sounds and remember how simple the synths were that they used at the time. Study how those synths made their sounds and then use those same principles to re-create them.

Oh as for the voices, I found them isolated on Youtube. Used a website to convert to mp3 and then converted them to wav files so I could load them into the Kurzweil.
 

[cphollis]

That was a great writeup, Jim, so thanks!

 

However, I'm not sure I'd coach the OP to start checking out other keyboards.  Besides, bands can have a notoriously short life!

 

Other than the sound effects (cash register on "Money" etc.) you probably have enough to do a half-decent job.  You might want to head over to the Nord User Forum to pick up the samples you need, along with plenty of examples of PF patches people are using.  That being said I don't think you're going to find ready-to-go patches and sample sets, so Some Assembly Required.

 

That being said, if this is a long running and well paying gig, I'd agree that programming a Kurz is probably your best bet.

[CowboyNQ]

My strong advice would be to create your own samples wherever possible.

 

As far as sounds go, if you have a good synth, organ/emulation and stage piano, you’ll get there regardless of brand/model.  I’ve seen so many Floyd tributes do it so many different ways.  As has been already mentioned here, the art lies more in how to layer the various sounds - and often - deciding what to leave out.

 

PF themselves sounded nothing like their studio albums when they played live until The Wall tour in 1980/81 and they used plenty of trickery (and extra musicians) then and subsequently to achieve this feat.  Luckily it’s a bit easier for all of us these days thanks to modern technology.

[o0Ampy0o]

2 hours ago, CowboyNQ said:

PF themselves sounded nothing like their studio albums when they played live until The Wall tour in 1980/81 and they used plenty of trickery (and extra musicians) then and subsequently to achieve this feat.  Luckily it’s a bit easier for all of us these days thanks to modern technology.

 I realize you are referring to the gear replicating the studio sound. It was sometimes also true of what or how they performed the songs. For The Wall shows Gilmour was not replicating the riffs or the sound of the studio version of The Wall. He had replaced his Univibe with a crappy flanger which had just come out. He played the punchier leads with little sustain unlike most of his lead tone on studio albums and live. The un-Gilmour-like flanger dominated his sound. Seemed to me they were understandably focused on the stage show of The Wall rather than replicating the songs, like the music supported the visuals instead of the other way around as it usually was.

[MathOfInsects]

5 hours ago, cphollis said:

half-decent job

I've said this elsewhere, but: while Pink Floyd is probably most often thought of as a "guitar band," a PF tribute band is 100% a keyboard band. While I do not think keyboard patches have to absolutely match the original recording, and that getting in the same "family" of sounds will get you pretty far, I don't know that I'd suggest half-decent as the threshold. Maybe it's just a language quibble? IMO a great PF tribute band with a half-decent job being done on keys, is a half-decent PF tribute band.

[cphollis]

3 minutes ago, MaskOfInsects said:

I've said this elsewhere, but: while Pink Floyd is probably most often thought of as a "guitar band," a PF tribute band is 100% a keyboard band. While I do not think keyboard patches have to absolutely match the original recording, and that getting in the same "family" of sounds will get you pretty far, I don't know that I'd suggest half-decent as the threshold. Maybe it's just a language quibble? IMO a great PF tribute band with a half-decent job being done on keys, is a half-decent PF tribute band.

Agree.  I wasn't clear whether this was a serious gig for the OP, or perhaps a lesser project?  If he's playing as part of a local bar band, "half-decent" to the regular readers of this forum would be more than enough.  Conversely, if people are paying good money to see a PF tribute band, yes, it's a serious gig that should require extensive programming on multiple instruments, and not a handy preset pack as he was looking for . I probably spend more time than I should getting my PF sounds "right".

[Jim Alfredson]

6 hours ago, cphollis said:

That was a great writeup, Jim, so thanks!

 

However, I'm not sure I'd coach the OP to start checking out other keyboards.  Besides, bands can have a notoriously short life!

 

A fair point. You can do all this in Mainstage as well, which is $30, assuming you have a Mac.

It was late at night and my brain was running a million miles per hour, so I apologize for the lengthy Kurzweil fanboy post. But the main takeaway from that long post should be that figuring out the sounds is only part of the battle. The other part is figuring out how to play them all with just two hands and possibly your feet if you're sitting down. I stand for this gig, but we have an auxiliary guy that covers extra guitar parts, percussion, and even triggers some custom samples of synth parts I made for him, so that helps a lot.

 

[analogika]

2 hours ago, Jim Alfredson said:

A fair point. You can do all this in Mainstage as well, which is $30, assuming you have a Mac.

It was late at night and my brain was running a million miles per hour, so I apologize for the lengthy Kurzweil fanboy post. 

 

please don't apologise. I really enjoyed that!

[mcgoo]

3 hours ago, Jim Alfredson said:

... the main takeaway from that long post should be that figuring out the sounds is only part of the battle. The other part is figuring out how to play them all with just two hands and possibly your feet if you're sitting down. 

 

Agree. Take the intro to shine on you crazy diamond. The big pad behind the solo evolves through the solo. The pad part alone is really a 2 handed part if you want to cover it verbatim, but you can't.... Unless you start getting creative with splits and so forth. What I do is have the same pad layer (mostly solina with a subtle amount of phasing and a very light organ layer) copied to 2 different splits. One with sustain pedal disabled. That way I can sus the droning left hand part while my left hand covers the right hand part. My right hand covers the solo and the tinkling glass fx. 1 foot on sus pedal, 1 on vol pedal, aftertouch on solo to trigger vibrato as needed.... It's all doable, but don't expect to find a patch setup like that.

 

And that's just the 1st half of the intro. I have to switch to a different patch so I can bring in the moog bass during the 2nd half of the intro where the guitar lead is. And do it without any hiccup, space or pause...

 

So again, to the OP. Before you spend money on new keys or patches, spend money on learning how to make these wonderful beasts do what you need them to do! 

[CowboyNQ]

8 hours ago, o0Ampy0o said:

 I realize you are referring to the gear replicating the studio sound. It was sometimes also true of what or how they performed the songs.

 

I absolutely agree. 

 

In the post DSOTM period of the 70's PF physically could not replicate their rather intricate studio work live with the available technology and only four (later five) musicians plus a couple of backup singers on stage.  To be fair, nor did they attempt to.  By the time The Wall tour rolled around the band's (Roger's?) ambitions had changed and they applied significant manpower (and backing tracks) to create a far more impressive visual and sonic spectacle. 

 

These days spectacular concert experiences are the norm for international touring acts and are heavily enabled by modern technology.  But it was certainly a groundbreaking undertaking at the time; it's now passed into folklore how the tour was a failure from a financial point of view, with only the contracted musicians (one of whom was the recently-defloyded Richard Wright) making money.

[TommyRude]

23 hours ago, analogika said:

 

please don't apologise. I really enjoyed that!

Agree.  Please retract your apology!  A sophisticated and articulate post, providing a master class, free of charge to the OP.  Humble salutations Jim.

[HammondDave]

On 10/23/2022 at 12:11 PM, Jim Alfredson said:

A fair point. You can do all this in Mainstage as well, which is $30, assuming you have a Mac.

It was late at night and my brain was running a million miles per hour, so I apologize for the lengthy Kurzweil fanboy post. But the main takeaway from that long post should be that figuring out the sounds is only part of the battle. The other part is figuring out how to play them all with just two hands and possibly your feet if you're sitting down. I stand for this gig, but we have an auxiliary guy that covers extra guitar parts, percussion, and even triggers some custom samples of synth parts I made for him, so that helps a lot.

 

oh man… Jim!  I totally geeked out on your post and that video. As a huge PF fan, thank you!  

[AtomFunk]

On 10/23/2022 at 3:54 AM, Jim Alfredson said:

Well, I could on and on about this topic for days. I joined a really good Pink Floyd tribute band in 2017. The previous keyboardist in that band, Matt Riddle, is playing with Brit Floyd now, probably the best PF tribute band in the world. They actually tour the world doing it. They are amazing. And he's an incredible keyboardist. Way better than me.

 

But the cool thing about Richard Wright is that he wasn't a virtuoso keyboardist from a technical standpoint. His genius lies in how he assembled textures and sounds and the note choices he made. And the gear he used on all those classic records is easily replicated on modern keyboards. That's actually the easy part if you know a bit about subtractive analog synthesis and vintage electromechanical keys.

 

The real challenge is reproducing all of those various textures and sounds and parts in real-time on the gig! The aforementioned Matt Riddle, when he played with the band I'm in now, brought out a real Hammond and Leslie, a real Rhodes, a digital piano, I think a real Solina string machine, a couple all purpose ROMpler synths, and a monophonic analog (either a Minimoog or ARP Odyssey, I think). His rig was impressively huge and awesome but holy crap, that's a lot of stuff! And it doesn't really solve the problem of how to play all the parts simultaneously, imo.

 

The first rehearsal I had with the band (hereto referred to as EOPF for Echoes of Pink Floyd), I brought out my Kurzweil Forte7, Hammond SK2 with a 3300, Novation UltraNova, and an Arturia KeyLab 61 connected to my laptop running Mainstage with the Arturia KeyLab software in it. I bought a pack of Pink Floyd sounds for KeyLab. At that first rehearsal I realized two things: I had too much shit and farting around with the computer sucked. Also the sounds from that PF pack were just ok.

 

The next rehearsal I showed up with just the Kurzweil, the Hammond and Leslie, and a Prophet 12 for strings and some leads. The guys were like, "That's it?!?" I spent weeks and weeks learning VAST on the Kurzweil and programming custom sounds and then putting those into MULTIs with multiple splits and layers. I also found Malc at Enjoy The Sirens and bought his stellar Shine On You patch for the Kurzweil. That saved a lot of time. 

https://enjoythesirens.com/

As of now, my rig is the Kurzweil Forte7 and a Hammond SK Pro. Two keyboards. I sometimes bring the UltraNova out for vocoder effects on Sheep, if we're performing it.

The Forte7 does 90% of everything. The SK Pro is for organ (both Hammond and Farfisa) and occasional Solina strings or Wurli. I don't even bring a Leslie anymore. Everything is in-ear and the Kurzweil sends program change messages to the Hammond and my vocal processor (since I also took over lead vocal duties two years ago... like I didn't have enough to do!)

The Kurzweil triggers samples. It does all the analog synth sounds. All pianos, electric pianos, even organ sometimes (like on Pigs: Three Different Ones). It does strings, both electronic (Solina) and acoustic (for Comfortably Numb), French horns, sound FX, pads, synth bass, etc. It's a BEAST. I could do the entire gig on it really, but I do like having the Hammond there for almost exclusively organ. Again, I sometimes use the Hammond SK Pro for Solina strings, Wurli, and even synth bass on Echoes. But I don't need to. It's just nice to have it ready to go.

But here's where it gets interesting regarding the Kurzweil. 

These modern Kurzweils are designed for Broadway. In other words, they are designed to allow a keyboardist to cover a ton of parts quickly and easily. And that's why they are so good for Pink Floyd tribute bands, because there's so much you have to cover and you only have so many fingers.

 

Once of the best features is Chord Triggers. You can take any key on the keyboard and assign up to 12 notes to it. Any 12 notes you want. To any key you want. If you're on FB, I demonstrate the power of this feature in this video.

https://www.facebook.com/jim.alfredson.3/videos/3195138894033763

 

This allows me to trigger multiple sounds on a single note, each sound consisting of entire chords if needed.

 

I can also assign samples to a key and play them in trigger mode, meaning one press and the sample plays. Press again and it stops playing. Great for long samples. For example, I sampled the entire intro to Time. And then in the sample I looped the "tick tock" section, once all the other clock chimes and such were gone. So I just press one key, that entire sample plays, it automatically loops itself on the 'tick tock' part, and then we start the musical intro (the big Moog bass, the Wurli tinkling, Farfisa held notes). And when the main part of the tune comes in (the first verse) I just hit that key again and stop the sample. 

 

A single patch on the Kurzweil is called a PROGRAM. Each PROGRAM can have up to 32 layers. A layer can be anything; an oscillator, a filter, DSP, whatever. For example, one other sound I did not program is the On The Run sequence. I think the patch I found was originally made for the PC3. It is a single PROGRAM consisting of close to 30 layers. Every part of the On The Run track is in there except the airport intercom sound. You hold one key and the whole thing just goes; the little EMS Synthi sequence, the hi-hat pattern, the footsteps, the weird noises, the whole thing. It's brilliant. And you can control the filter and resonance via the sliders.

Then you have MULTI mode where you can have up to 16 Zones. Each Zone can be a PROGRAM. Or it can control an external device either via MIDI, USB, or both. Or it can be an internal PROGRAM and send MIDI too (again either on 5pin DIN MIDI or USB MIDI). So to use the example of On The Run again, I setup a MULTI with the PROGRAM that has everything but the airport intercom sound on Zone 1 of 16, then on Zone 2 I put a custom Program I made that is just a sample of a woman announcing stuff from an airport intercom that I found on YouTube. I processed it in Cubase to make it unintelligible but still sound like someone talking, exported it as a WAV, loaded it into the Kurz, and made a PROGRAM out of it. Load it into the MULTI and voila... one key press and some slider fiddling and there's my On The Run.

The Forte has 9 programmable faders and 11 programmable buttons. Three footswitch inputs. Two continuous controller pedal inputs. Two MIDI outputs. 3.3GB of flash ram sample memory (no loading from an internal harddrive). Tons of FX. Two pairs of stereo balanced outputs. It's absolutely nuts what you can do with it.

I'll be moving everything to the Kurzweil flagship K2700 soon. More real estate (88 key instead of 76), 16 touch sensitive programmable pads, ribbon controller, etc. It's gonna be sweet! But the Forte is still a monster of a machine.

 

Beyond all that, at first I was intimidated by the prospect of programming all the sounds but once you realize the architecture of the synths that they were using, it's way easier. For example, on Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, that's all EMS Synthi or Minimoog. The Synthi can only produce square waves or sawtooth waves. That's it. By modulating one with the other you can get some other wave shapes, but those two are the only waveforms the oscillators produce by themselves. And there are only three oscillators.

Likewise, the Minimoog has essentially four waveforms; sawtooth, triangle, square (pulse) wave with different widths, and a weird half triangle / half sawtooth. Again just three oscillators and a filter.

So knowing that, it's pretty easy to make the Have A Cigar lead sound, for example. A sawtooth is full of harmonics. A square wave is more hollow sounding. The Have A Cigar sound is very buzzy, so it's definitely a sawtooth wave. Add some modulation for vibrato (which I do on the Forte with aftertouch), add some portamento / glide. Layer at least two oscillators just slightly detuned from each other. Play with the filter until it sounds right. There you go. That's the sound.

But again the real trick is to play it! And that part is in thirds, sometimes major, sometimes minor. If you just play thirds, you have to do so on a sound that isn't monophonic and thus you're not going to get the portamento! So to work around that, I play them in sixths but using two Zones in a MULTI so that each part is still monophonic and thus I get the portamento. Hard to explain but here I demonstrate it:
 

That video was my old rig, when I was using the Prophet 12. I had just gotten the Pro2 that day and was messing around with integrating it into the rig but decided not to do so. I also had the XK5 in the rig, which I was using for awhile but it was too big and took up too much room. And I was using powered speakers, a real Leslie, and no in-ears at that time. I'm all in-ear now.

 

Anyway, again I could talk about this for days. I have a ton more examples of crafty programming using the Kurzweil's features that makes playing this stuff so much easier. As I mentioned, I'm singing lead now, too. So I had to streamline as much as I could in order to perform everything. The Kurzweil has been irreplaceable in that regard. 

 

Can you do what you need on the GAIA? Mostly. I would definitely start there. Think about the important sounds and remember how simple the synths were that they used at the time. Study how those synths made their sounds and then use those same principles to re-create them.

Oh as for the voices, I found them isolated on Youtube. Used a website to convert to mp3 and then converted them to wav files so I could load them into the Kurzweil.
 

Oh my god everyone. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! I looks like my Nord Electro 2 is to old and my Roland Gaia is a little simplistic. I think I am going to take a look at some other gear. Might not be able to go full in on some of the high end stuff, but I think everyone had some GREAT ideas. This has all been sincerely helpful. Thank you so so so much. I hope I can repay all of the love someday.