Comfortably Numb

[rockit31]

Anyone have experience pulling together what are at least 4 patches I would venture to give this song justice for your cover band?   I love to sing it to but sure could use some pointers  on pads/horns/strings/kitchen sink/etc... and splits,  yes,  must have splits.     Thank you in advance.

[D. Gauss]

Ha! can't say i've ever thought about the keys in this song, and i doubt any punter in a pub has either.  If it sustains like a string pad, you're probably good for a bar gig. Cue seriously major differences in opinion in 3,2,1...

[OB Dave]

I think that descending string line during the chorus is pretty key to the song. 

[EricBarker]

This song is about the vocals and the lead guitar. Everything else is utility and “icing” if you’d even call it that. The keyboardist could be out stone cold drunk at the bar and the drums could be an 808, and no one would notice. No disrespect to Nick and Rick, it’s just not our event.

 

The best (and worst) a keyboardist could do is grab a keytar and try to be David Gilmour. The problem is, the better you do, the more pissed off the audience is going to be, so I don’t recommend it without some seriously large-scale rearranging (like solo piano).

[CowboyNQ]

Hi there.  My method:

 

During the start of the song it’s brassy but subtle chords going through the Bm, A, G, Em, Bm sequence with LH.  With RH I play the C#, B, A, E sequence as per the album.  Second time I give it the embellishments you can hear on the record.

 

When we get to “there is no pain…” I’m moving to a strings patch in both hands.  RH does the descending add 9ths and LH does a sequence that goes D, C#, D, A, B, A.  Same Octave so some pitch shifting or two keyboards required.
 

Then from there we move to LH doing something along the lines of G, C, B for the last part of this sequence.  Sorry for the imprecise recount but I’m on a plane and I’ve played this song literally thousands of times so it’s muscle memory at this point.

 

During that first guitar solo it’s the same but the RH arpeggio is not descending, same notes though and you can hear this on the recording of course.

 

Good luck!

[mynameisdanno]

The two crucial keys moment to me are:

 

1) the Hammond fading in in the build to the end solo.  This song actually got me to connect separate organ swell and control pedals for my NS2 so I could play the body of the tune with strings, fade them out and bring in Hammond for the end solo, and then bring the strings back in as it builds to the peak of the final solo, all while keeping both hands on big wide two-handed voicings.  

 

2) The sixteenth note string figure on the choruses (and the modified, less busy version of the same motif that happens behind the first guitar solo).  I use a synth string sound for the 16th notes; the part feels right to be a little more pure/simple than a big string sample, and I also feel like I can get the necessary shorter attack without them feeling too grossly artificial in the way that a non-round-robined string sample with a shorter attack quickly becomes.  I back that part up with whole note 4ths/5ths using a "real" strings or full orchestra sample in my left hand, played from a separate board with a separate volume pedal to get the balance just right.

 

Obviously you have to make your own decisions on how to condense the orchestration on the verses, and it doesn't matter much what you pick, but there are plenty of gorgeous lines.  I like to do that horn counterline in V1 if I can find a brass or full orchestra sound I don't dislike too much.  In V2 I do those low tight chords with tron flutes and have a Rhodes with delay for the "pinprick" answer.  

 

This is one of the only songs I will bother with changing patches in the middle of.  It feels worth the hassle to me.

 

[TommyRude]

A few seconds in youtube shows some pretty good tutorials with some sounds to get you thinking.  Definitely get the organ Danno talks about.  You nail that and your bandmates will look over their shoulders with their eyes open

 

[Synthaholic]

Heh.

 

[niacin]

my method:

 

verse: synth brass, top octave ‘pin prick’ electric piano

 

chorus: right hand synth strings 16ths with xylophone layer on top a and g notes, left hand other slow rising orchestral string line.

 

end solo: synth brass continues, add Hammond

 

set-up: upper keyboard split Hammond/synth strings with xylophone layer g to a (or whatever bell sound works).

lower keyboard: 2 patches: 1. synth brass/‘pin prick’ ep split. 2. orchestral strings.

[Delaware Dave]

I had all of this programmed into my Ensoniq SD1 back in the day.  Took alot of work to get everything right back then.  Unless I was playing in a PF tribute band I don't think I would invest that kind of time again.

[Stokely]

I don't overthink this one.  Then again I probably do a lot less "get it like the record" programming than most here.  I also didn't learn the orchestra parts other than listening and doing a "sounds sorta like it", the chorus string pattern is pretty close though as that is recognizable.

I use one patch on my Modx, with two "scenes" (which basically are mixer settings for the Parts that make up a patch).  I have Parts that consist of woodwinds, strings, and brass.  On the verses the scene mixes the strings way down and woodwinds and brass (which only plays on the lower half by its nature) up.  For everything else I bring the strings up and woodwinds down.  Done.   If I have my SK Pro at the gig, then I use my main combi which has Strings on the ensemble part and organ...I only use organ at the end.

[jeffincltnc]

Yup.  Brassy pad, not to much resonance or too aggressive of an attack.  Synth Strings.  Hammond organ in the background.  That's all you need, in my opinion.

[analogika]

Some great advice up there.

 

I really try to avoid the "drunk morons aren't gonna care" line of thinking. I care, and somebody in the audience cares and is worth caring about. 

 

Rick Beato did a pretty good "what makes this Song Great" on Comfortably Numb that goes through the individual backing tracks. The string arpeggios are crucial to the dreaminess of the bridge IMO. 
 

 

[Dave Bryce]

7 hours ago, niacin said:

my method:

 

verse: synth brass, top octave ‘pin prick’ electric piano

 

chorus: right hand synth strings 16ths with xylophone layer on top a and g notes, left hand other slow rising orchestral string line.

 

end solo: synth brass continues, add Hammond

 

set-up: upper keyboard split Hammond/synth strings with xylophone layer g to a (or whatever bell sound works).

lower keyboard: 2 patches: 1. synth brass/‘pin prick’ ep split. 2. orchestral strings.

That's the ticket. 

 

dB

[bjosko]

I am playing it more like this version. I have a string like pad below I can turn up or down with my control pedal, and am also giving the pad some slow flanger. Hammond on the last solo.

 

 

[Shamanzarek]

I played this with a band for several years. In addition to the keyboard parts I had to do the bass. It is not a busy bass line and sits well on one octave of bass pedals leaving both hands free to do the the synth parts. It was a bit difficult to do all the higher parts at the same time so I would play single note low synth in the left hand and do the right hand parts incorporating each part starting from sparse double and single note lines and then going to chordal parts building to a crescendo into the chorus with heavy low notes and high notes. If I didn't have to do the bass too I could have done the low synth parts on pedals and had a free hand for the higher parts.

[MathOfInsects]

You MUST play the string part. You SHOULD play both halves of the polyphonic arrangement, but MUST play the arpeggios.

 

You DAMN WELL SHOULD play the soft brass in the verses. 

 

You BETTER play the "plink" after pin prick--it's the one keyboard part that everyone on the planet knows is a keyboard part and waits to hear. People in your audience will air-play it whether you mean to play it or not. 

You CAN play organ, though the guitar player will be jerking off all over that moment anyway, so if you had to triage, I suppose you could jettison that.

I split the bottom board with soft brass low and plink high. Then I send strings-plus-lo-horns up to the second board, and also have strings as local sound on that board. This lets me play both ends of the polyphonic arrangement in the same range, and later, during the huge outro, lets me add width and depth the harmony by playing both boards.

As for whether any drunk twats will care what the keyboard player does...here's the thing. Pink Floyd is mostly thought of as a guitar band, since it's all those huge iconic solos that people remember. But a Pink Floyd tribute band is 100% a keyboard band, start to finish. The keyboards are the heart of any live attempts to play those recorded songs, and you can bet your middle-aged classic-rock-loving butt that if you DIDN'T play those parts, people would miss them.

 

[HammondDave]

12 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

You BETTER play the "plink" after pin prick--it's the one keyboard part that everyone on the planet knows is a keyboard part and waits to hear. People in your audience will air-play it whether you mean to play it or not. 



 

… and then they will all scream “Ahhhh Ahhhh Ahhhh…” and pass out

[TommyRude]

If you want to get fancy, throw in some mystical seagull echoes in the first verse (and maybe elsewhere if you get inspired).

 

Yes, I know Gilmore is probably doing those parts, but hey

[stoken6]

18 minutes ago, TommyRude said:

some mystical seagull echoes

These are in Don Henley's "Boys Of Summer" as well. (I suspect the same seagull did both sessions - once you get known, the work comes in...)

 

How would you seagull? Medium attack, slow release, pitch-bend?

 

Cheers, Mike.

[Stokely]

I've owned that album since it came out and played it multiple bands, I'd have to listen to it again to have any clue what this "plink" is.

There's a range between the extremes of agonizing every single thing on the album (that I wonder if Floyd itself bothers with) and not caring at all what it sounds like to drunk people.   I'm somewhere in the middle and it works for me.  I like to get the essence of music I play and not sweat the minutiae.  There are riffs I play exact, like the piano riff in the bridge of Listen to the Music, I guess everyone picks these little parts out of songs that seem important to them.  I've heard some doozies from players in bands through the years.  Like ridiculous little cymbal phase sounds and the like.  

I got a laugh years ago when a friend's band was playing another Floyd song (Run like Hell) and the drummer insisted that the keyboard player (friend of mine) threw in that "eagle scream" or whatever the hell that sound is when it goes to the outro.  Fairly sure it isn't a bird but the drummer said it was, whatever.   After much effort (he had never sampled anything and had to play it from an ipad) he got a sample of some hawk or eagle that met the drummer's approval, at the show I saw he played it and it was twice as loud as the rest of the instrument--scaring the living hell out of everyone there.  Everyone was scarred but hey you got the eagle scream right.

[JohnH]

16 minutes ago, Stokely said:

I've owned that album since it came out and played it multiple bands, I'd have to listen to it again to have any clue what this "plink" is.

There's a range between the extremes of agonizing every single thing on the album (that I wonder if Floyd itself bothers with) and not caring at all what it sounds like to drunk people.   I'm somewhere in the middle and it works for me.  I like to get the essence of music I play and not sweat the minutiae.  There are riffs I play exact, like the piano riff in the bridge of Listen to the Music, I guess everyone picks these little parts out of songs that seem important to them.  I've heard some doozies from players in bands through the years.  Like ridiculous little cymbal phase sounds and the like.  

I got a laugh years ago when a friend's band was playing another Floyd song (Run like Hell) and the drummer insisted that the keyboard player (friend of mine) threw in that "eagle scream" or whatever the hell that sound is when it goes to the outro.  Fairly sure it isn't a bird but the drummer said it was, whatever.   After much effort (he had never sampled anything and had to play it from an ipad) he got a sample of some hawk or eagle that met the drummer's approval, at the show I saw he played it and it was twice as loud as the rest of the instrument--scaring the living hell out of everyone there.  Everyone was scarred but hey you got the eagle scream right.

 

I hope you are not playing the China Grove bridge piano part in the bridge of Listen to The Music.. unless I am mistaken I think you meant China Grove.

[Stokely]

doh, correct.

I do play piano (soft chords)  in the bridge of Listen to the Music though, if the mood hits   

[Dave Bryce]

Speaking of the Doobies...

...does anyone else grab the picked acoustic part in Long Train Runnin' on the keyboard?

 

I happily admit, I just love doing that.  I can play it on guitar too...but it's so much fun playing it on keys.

 

dB

[niacin]

1 hour ago, Dave Bryce said:

Speaking of the Doobies...

...does anyone else grab the picked acoustic part in Long Train Runnin' on the keyboard?

 

I happily admit, I just love doing that.  I can play it on guitar too...but it's so much fun playing it on keys.

 

dB

yep, i build a wurli part around it 😎

[MathOfInsects]

1 hour ago, Dave Bryce said:

Speaking of the Doobies...

...does anyone else grab the picked acoustic part in Long Train Runnin' on the keyboard?

 

I happily admit, I just love doing that.  I can play it on guitar too...but it's so much fun playing it on keys.

 

dB

I actually play that part on "Do It Again," instead, because it pushes it off into a Latin thing which (blasphemy) IMO makes the song more interesting to play. 

[Dave Bryce]

58 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

I actually play that part on "Do It Again," instead, because it pushes it off into a Latin thing which (blasphemy) IMO makes the song more interesting to play. 

Sends me down another tangent.

 

Try singing the words to Do It Again a cappella using the melody of the Suzanne Vega tune “Tom’s Diner”.  

 

Totally works.

 

dB

 

[stoken6]

6 hours ago, Dave Bryce said:

does anyone else grab the picked acoustic part in Long Train Runnin' on the keyboard?

Of course. Clav for me. I add LH organ during the guitar solo - and (mirabile dictu) I get a solo as well!

 

Cheers, Mike.

[stoken6]

4 hours ago, Dave Bryce said:

Try singing the words to Do It Again a cappella using the melody of the Suzanne Vega tune “Tom’s Diner”.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[Stokely]

11 hours ago, Dave Bryce said:

Speaking of the Doobies...

...does anyone else grab the picked acoustic part in Long Train Runnin' on the keyboard?

 

I happily admit, I just love doing that.  I can play it on guitar too...but it's so much fun playing it on keys.

 

dB

Indeed I do.   I sometimes use a guitar-ish patch but most often use a rhodes.   Then about halfway through I switch to organ, got the idea from a live version I saw.

Which is something I try to find if a song has few (or too many) keyboard parts.  I'll never run tracks so sometimes I'll get ideas from the bands themselves by seeking out good live versions.  Or cover versions if I can't find one!  Of course recent "live" versions can be rife with tracks so typically I'll look for older ones.