Iconic Tony Banks?

[Tusker]

One lovely device I see in TB's writing which sets him apart I think is his exploiting of minor plagal cadences (Fm to C, or it's cousin Ab to C).

 

You hear it in the main riff of Afterglow, which Al Quinn mentioned.

 

You can hear it in the beautiful song Jim Alfredson mentioned (Evidence of Autumn) when Phil sings "into your lonely life"

 

You can hear it in the climax of Wot Gorilla which Tony Banks Fan mentioned. (a creative reworking of one of the motifs from One from the Vine) It happens at 2:21, resolving from Dm to A.

 

My favorite exposition of this device is in Time Table from the Foxtrot album.  There are many minor plagal cadences during the song but the fadeout is special. Beginning at 3.42 he modulates rapidly from E major to F# major to Aflat major to BFlat major. It's his own Giant Steps, lol. 

 

 

Looking at his library of work his use of the minor plagal is quite distinctive. You don't hear the more typical "backdoor ii-V-I" (Fm7, Bflat7, C) of the jazz vocabulary. Instead he uses chromatic methods to get to the minor 4th and surprises us with the resolution to the tonic. It's clever. It's unique. It's unabashedly romantic. It's one reason he is my favorite prog keyboardist and composer.

[Losendoskeys]

Late to the party it seems, so echoing all that has been said above.
He isn't really about Emerson or Wakeman flashy solos but having said that, as a tribute band player there are a few that are quite a handful!
I still work hard at "In The Cage" and "Down and Out" is another tricky one.
Then there is the string of keyboard changes in the "Robbery, Assaul and Battery" solo section!

He was really about structure and no-one anywhere can structure chords and melodies in the same way - full stop.
Just beautiful. He even squeezed texture out of his Hammonds without ever hitting "Fast" on the Leslies!
Having learned most of Genesis' material (by ear) over the last 20 years, I still marvel at the way he would put chords together.
Seven Stones is a big favourite and for a proper Mellotron solo you need go no further.
The most complete track for me is "Can - Utility and The Coastliners" - it's got everything.
I still get hairs standing up on my neck when I play these tracks  - and I play them every week!
Also worth mentioning "The Lamia" which has gorgeous piano intro and sweeping Mellotron.

I'm amused at some of the comments about later tracks like Abacab, as they are pretty simple efforts not in the same league as the early albums.
Having seen the Foxtrot tour in the 70's I'm firmly embedded in the prog era but I do appreciate his ability to structure the more commercial albums.

The intro to Firth of Fifth has to be mentioned if only that it still occasionally can trip me up - he dropped it because of the limitations of the pianos at the time and it was a good move!


 

[stillearning]

3 hours ago, Losendoskeys said:

…The most complete track for me is "Can - Utility and The Coastliners" - it's got everything…
 

That’s one of my all time favorites also, along with Stagnation and The Knife.  I feel lucky to have seen every tour they did with Gabriel. And a couple post Gabriel. Not the same band w/o Gabriel for me, and not just vocally. More the abstract, story telling aspect of the songs.

 

I’ve played in a couple Genesis tribute acts, and a few ‘Genesis heavy’ bands, and anyone who pulls off the solo in Robbery Assault and Battery perfectly live has my respect.

[Losendoskeys]

28 minutes ago, stillearning said:

That’s one of my all time favorites also, along with Stagnation and The Knife.  I feel lucky to have seen every tour they did with Gabriel. And a couple post Gabriel. Not the same band w/o Gabriel for me, and not just vocally. More the abstract, story telling aspect of the songs.

 

I’ve played in a couple Genesis tribute acts, and a few ‘Genesis heavy’ bands, and anyone who pulls off the solo in Robbery Assault and Battery perfectly live has my respect.

10 years ago, two vocalist and a couple of fluffs but its not too bad an attempt!

 

[stillearning]

There were certain songs I never wanted the stress of, and R, A & B was one of them! I was more comfortable with Cinema Show, Supper’s Ready, Return of the Giant Hogweed, Watcher of the Skies,  Dance on a Volcano/Los Endos, etc. Songs I felt were more in my comfort zone. Plus we focused more on earlier Genesis. Just not as much audience for it anymore. Pity, it was fun!

[Losendoskeys]

13 hours ago, stillearning said:

There were certain songs I never wanted the stress of, and R, A & B was one of them! I was more comfortable with Cinema Show, Supper’s Ready, Return of the Giant Hogweed, Watcher of the Skies,  Dance on a Volcano/Los Endos, etc. Songs I felt were more in my comfort zone. Plus we focused more on earlier Genesis. Just not as much audience for it anymore. Pity, it was fun!

We play the Gabriel/Hackett era as I genuinely lost interest after And Then There Were Three. Interestingly one of the first songs we played was Battle of Epping Forest - a bit of a Marmite song - but it sounds so complex yet plays so easily when it's in your genes!

[stillearning]

I miss playing Genesis songs on stage, but I’m grateful I had the opportunity when I did. 

[kpl1228]

Dodo/Lurker....from Abacab........the whole song. It's really a Banks showcase.

[mate stubb]

I used to sneak Fanfare For The Common Man into the half time part of Abacab. Much fun was had.

[ABECK]

2 hours ago, kpl1228 said:

Dodo/Lurker....from Abacab........the whole song. It's really a Banks showcase.

Thank you.  Always one of my faves from that era.  Especially the version from Three Sides Live.  I believe he ran his Quadra through distortion on the live version, which is killer.

 

[Mills Dude]

I was just listening to Trick of the Tail in the car on the way home. Its been a while since I had a listen and this thread was on my mind.  

 

As others have stated, Tony is less pyrotechnics and more compositional.  On this record, he really shines on the later.  The outro on Entagled is a tour-de-force, some of the best Mellotron playing he's ever done.  That middle section in Mad Man Moon, and the rest of the tune, just amazing. Ripples, with all that tension and resolution, so well done.  He's like a one man orchestra.

 

I wont even discuss the big tunes from that record that everyone talks about. I always loved those "hidden" gems. Its always been my favorite Genesis record because for me its all Tony and what he does best.  You could make a similar argument for Wind & Wuthering, but I lean towards Trick.

 

He is the master of the mellotron.  Such a clunky, finnicky instrument but I don't think anyone used it better than he did.

[pawelsz]

I really like this. Nothing fast or that much technically challenging but the composition and mood is top notch.

 

P.S. Anyone agrees with me that we need Behringer ProSoloist synth?  

 

 

[EricBarker]

I would snatch up a BroSoloist in a heartbeat! That said, much of what makes Tony iconic isn't just the ARP, it's his array of home-brewed effects pedals. Whoever sells a ProSoloist clone is going to make a lot of people very sad if they don't build in some decent effects modules. The Pro is a neat but extremely basic synth that cries out to be drenched in processing. Behringer includes some gorgeous choruses and distortion circuits, but their offerings have been quite anemic when it comes to Delays/Reverbs or Phasers, and that's Banks.

[Tusker]

3 hours ago, EricBarker said:

I would snatch up a BroSoloist in a heartbeat! That said, much of what makes Tony iconic isn't just the ARP, it's his array of home-brewed effects pedals. Whoever sells a ProSoloist clone is going to make a lot of people very sad if they don't build in some decent effects modules. The Pro is a neat but extremely basic synth that cries out to be drenched in processing. Behringer includes some gorgeous choruses and distortion circuits, but their offerings have been quite anemic when it comes to Delays/Reverbs or Phasers, and that's Banks.

 

I see it this way also. Two years after the Minimoog provided an affordable version of the Moog modular, the Soloist was released and later became the Pro-Soloist. Arp already had the semi-modular 2600 so now they had one product slightly more complex and one product slightly less complex than the Minimoog. By having only one oscillator, yet providing it with performance features, filter banks and presets, ARP created quite a lot from very little in the Soloist/Pro-Soloist. The features are congregated towards those of a melodic solo voice, so it's a perfect fit for a keyboardist who plays amazingly melodic solos. I am not trying to diss the Pro-Soloist at all. It's just that TB was looking for something simple which would allow him to speak ...

 

TB took this melodically oriented little synth and brilliantly made the most of it's features and his pedal collection. True it's really hard to cover TB with any other analog synth, so if Behringer made one, it would be a no-brainer to Genesis fans like us. After all, Joachim Verghese is no longer making his Pro Soloist+ Rack. Agreeing with your point, I can't see such a synth being useful to anyone who is not doing Genesis tributes, unless they paired it with a multi-effect like the H9, in which case it could be a lot of fun due to it's performance features.  I am not certain, but I think TB had a space-echo and spring reverb on the Pro Soloist on the 77-78 tour.

 

Alan (Losendoskeys) is gigging with Joachim's synth and has seen this thread. Fellow forumite Ian Benhamou is currently recreating the Lamb on tour and probably hasn't. Both of them have had to work out the complicated choreography of the Pro-Soloist and pedals. They would know a lot more about this than I would.

 

[EricBarker]

Is the filter in the Soloist substantially different from the 2600? Obviously a real 2600 would struggle to reprogram all those different settings the Soloist effortlessly switches between. However, there are some damned good 2600 software models out there. I would expect that to be a good starting place for Soloist tones. But you can do anything in software. For hardware that would be tricky.

 

I think you hit the nail on the head why Behringer would likely not create a ProSoloist. Melodic lead work. The recent vintage analog craze is really funded by the EDM Eurorack crowd who wants dirty and rhythmic. The Soloist is about as symphonic rock as a synth can get (even naming their presets after orchestral instruments). Most of the basement kiddos would find the ProSoloist to be the opposite of what they were looking for.

 

Then again, I’ve long suspected Behringer does lot of small projects for fun. This would be a fairly low risk endeavor. If one of their team had interest in a Soloist, I think it could happen.

 

It’s also sort of a good toy. Kiddos love presets.

[Tusker]

2 hours ago, EricBarker said:

Is the filter in the Soloist substantially different from the 2600?

 

As I understand it the main filter is very similar to the 2600 filter but a lot of the character of the synth comes from several high pass and band pass filters that the various presets sent the sound through. One could imagine that ARP patched some very melodic sounding "instruments" on their modular ARP 2500, then made a preset monosynth with only the modules needed for those patches. So it's light on the oscillator department and quite unique and intricate on the filtering and routing.

 

TB did use the Quadra and Prophet for some of the leads later on, so it can't have been unique enough for him to keep the temperamental ProSoloist repaired. There's quite a nice story about Donald Fagen getting upset with his ProSoloist and throwing it down the stairs, so perhaps as an artistic irritant it was up there with the Mellotron? 😉

[EricBarker]

If I’m remembering correctly, Selling England, Lamb, and Trick were the only albums he used the Soloist on. In fact, didn’t he branch out to other synths on Trick, and then retired it for Wind & Wuthering? Or maybe one album more. But I do know the soloist was gone by Then There Were Three.

 

we think of him as a “Pro Soloist Keyboardist”, but it was only about 4 years of his career! He didn’t even have any synths on Foxtrot.

[HammondDave]

Hard to beat this performance during their Invisible Touch tour (which I saw the final dress rehearsal for at Texas Stadium with 100 others). This is an isolated cam of Tony’s simple, but brilliant solo in 2nd Home by the Sea. 
 

 

[Losendoskeys]

On 3/5/2023 at 9:17 AM, EricBarker said:

If I’m remembering correctly, Selling England, Lamb, and Trick were the only albums he used the Soloist on. In fact, didn’t he branch out to other synths on Trick, and then retired it for Wind & Wuthering? Or maybe one album more. But I do know the soloist was gone by Then There Were Three.

 

we think of him as a “Pro Soloist Keyboardist”, but it was only about 4 years of his career! He didn’t even have any synths on Foxtrot.

I remember seeing the ProS for the first time when Genesis toured Selling England.
The first synth I'd seen on top of a Hammond since Emersons Moog Model D.

He then used it on Lamb Lies Down, Trick, Wind and Wuthering and Seconds Out.
The ProS and ARP2600 were used on Trick and Wind.
The ARP2600 was certainly used on Trick but for Entangled live he used ProS "Song Whistle" for the synth outro.
For ATTWT he introduced the Quadra.
Having had both the Pro S and Quadra there are no real crossovers - you can't get an accurage reproduction of ProS sounds on the Quadra, it always sounds "fatter".

 

[Losendoskeys]

On 3/4/2023 at 12:14 PM, Tusker said:

 

I see it this way also. Two years after the Minimoog provided an affordable version of the Moog modular, the Soloist was released and later became the Pro-Soloist. Arp already had the semi-modular 2600 so now they had one product slightly more complex and one product slightly less complex than the Minimoog. By having only one oscillator, yet providing it with performance features, filter banks and presets, ARP created quite a lot from very little in the Soloist/Pro-Soloist. The features are congregated towards those of a melodic solo voice, so it's a perfect fit for a keyboardist who plays amazingly melodic solos. I am not trying to diss the Pro-Soloist at all. It's just that TB was looking for something simple which would allow him to speak ...

 

TB took this melodically oriented little synth and brilliantly made the most of it's features and his pedal collection. True it's really hard to cover TB with any other analog synth, so if Behringer made one, it would be a no-brainer to Genesis fans like us. After all, Joachim Verghese is no longer making his Pro Soloist+ Rack. Agreeing with your point, I can't see such a synth being useful to anyone who is not doing Genesis tributes, unless they paired it with a multi-effect like the H9, in which case it could be a lot of fun due to it's performance features.  I am not certain, but I think TB had a space-echo and spring reverb on the Pro Soloist on the 77-78 tour.

 

Alan (Losendoskeys) is gigging with Joachim's synth and has seen this thread. Fellow forumite Ian Benhamou is currently recreating the Lamb on tour and probably hasn't. Both of them have had to work out the complicated choreography of the Pro-Soloist and pedals. They would know a lot more about this than I would.

 

You're absolutely right.
I suppose a Chick Corea or Camel tribute would be the others to be interested but its a tiny market!
The great thing about the Verghese ProS Rack + is that those effects are built in because he is a massive Genesis fan.
My fingers are permanently crossed that mine doesn't die on me.

I really wouldn't want to gig a ProS - Tony had SEVEN in The Farm because there were always one or two in for repair!
 

 

[Losendoskeys]

On 3/4/2023 at 7:35 AM, pawelsz said:

I really like this. Nothing fast or that much technically challenging but the composition and mood is top notch.

 

P.S. Anyone agrees with me that we need Behringer ProSoloist synth?  

 

 

You want fast and technically challenging????