Rocky Mountain Way Synth Break: Need Hivemind help getting THAT sound

[Iconoclast]

5 hours ago, Radagast said:

I’m hearing three note chords off and on behind the guitar solo.

Pretty sure those are all 2 note chords and they are never simultaneous with the L hand pulse beat.

[AWkeys]

I got it dialed in on my BARP Odyssey. Wanted to post a video, but my damn Yamaha expression pedal is so loud, I need to record audio separate from video. However, it is definitely just an ARP Odyssey. Two sawtooth oscillators with an expression pedal controlling the filter. The ADSR is also opening the filter a tad. I'll try to record it and put a link to the video here over the weekend.

[Mills Dude]

Odyssey makes a lot of sense, it came out in '72 and was duophonic, the tune makes good use of that.  Sounds like some kind of PWM.  I get why a lot are saying its a clav or other EM through a wah, as its kinda doing the same thing.

 

I covered this in the late 80s and had it pretty well dialed up in my M1.  Don't remember if the M! had PWM style samples but there was just enough filter and envelope control to get a reasonable facsimile for that era.  

 

Thing about this tune is nobody will even notice what you are doing as long as the guitar player is able to hold court during that solo. So whatever attempt you first posted sounds good enough for me. Guitarist when I covered this had a talk box and knew how to use it., he was awesome.

 

Thinking about this tune reminds me of that band.  We were pretty kicking cover band and the guitarist was probably the best I've ever played with in the rock covers bar band category.  He didn't have the need to noodle around every song, always knew his parts, played awesome solos and knew when to copy an original part or do his own thing.  He didn't have to have a giant stack to get his tone, just a simple princeton 65 or something like that with a modest pedal board.  Things were going well for a few years until of course the bass player slept with the guitar players girlfriend - and well we all know how that turns out.

[The Real MC]

Joe Walsh had asked for the playback near the end of the song so he could warm up for his slide solo.

After the warm up he said he was ready to record it.

The studio said "Already done".

What you hear on the release is Joe warming up.

[Steve Nathan]

If asked to duplicate that sound, I would go with these.  To play this song in a club, it hardly matters if you have the exact same sound.  It's the part, not the sound that matters.

[o0Ampy0o]

Just including that part places you ahead of the (rocky mountain) way Joe has been doing it live most of the time during the past 40 years. I think he has done it once out of the 20 live versions recorded for release solo and with The Eagles. That one time might only have been a radio broadcast or perhaps a Ringo’s All Star Band live album. That snappy interaction between the keyboard and guitar made the talk box portion so good. There have been many songs with talk box but maybe 5 that are groundbreaking. (RMW, DYFLID, Sweet Emotion, Pigs, ?).

[AWkeys]

Yeah, I believe I was just using a Wurli sound through the wah effect on my Nord Stage 2 when I played it with Joe Vitale. As he said, they were still building Caribou Ranch when they were up there recording that record, so who knows what keyboards they had available at the time. The Odyssey was new, portable and de rigueur of the time.

 

I quickly tried to dial in the ARP Odyssey sound on the Stage last night during sound-check and it's so close, though the ARP is way better (of course, it's analog!)  Anyway, what sounds like PWM is actually just two analog sawtooth wave oscillators beating against each other.

[Baldwin Funster]

The one thing absolutely nobody but a keyboard player will ever notice is what's going in behind the slide in rocky mnt way. I've played that song a few hundred times on the guitar in gigs and nobody ever even mention a lack of talk box. The backing, I always assumed it was a clav, is so far off the radar screen as to not even exist. In Joe's TV appearances like Don K's rock concert I don't recall even hearing that part. In many vids I've seen there wasn't even the talkbox. To the op, save yourself some stress about that sound. A clav with any kind of modulation is going to make everyone happy. Except a keyboard player or 2. You can never please them. I mean us. I mean you...

[Docbop]

24 minutes ago, AWkeys said:

Yeah, I believe I was just using a Wurli sound through the wah effect on my Nord Stage 2 when I played it with Joe Vitale. As he said, they were still building Caribou Ranch when they were up there recording that record, so who knows what keyboards they had available at the time. The Odyssey was new, portable and de rigueur of the time.

 

I quickly tried to dial in the ARP Odyssey sound on the Stage last night during sound-check and it's so close, though the ARP is way better (of course, it's analog!)  Anyway, what sounds like PWM is actually just two analog sawtooth wave oscillators beating against each other.  Only place I knew of at the time that had something other than a piano was The Village and they had a Mini Moog mainly out of curiosity.   It was the first synth I'd ever seen and played around with.  I knew zero about piano so I just twiddled knobs and banged on keys.   I was thinking this would be nice to learn, but the price tag was too steep for me.

 

Plus back then studios weren't full of instruments like is considered the norm these days.   Most the time back then was grand pianos in the studio anything else the producer/artist rented  SIR was booming back then. 

[SamuelBLupowitz]

I just played keys on a cover of this song in a rock band I gig with from time to time -- I actually took the talkbox solo myself, so the way I approached the section was to play an overdriven Wurli patch which I split in parallel to the talkbox. Start off with the filtered groove part, then copped the guitar lines after establishing it. Not exactly like the record, but the audience loved it.

 

So I guess what I'm saying is "one-up your guitar player and get a talkbox." 🤣

[Stokely]

On 8/12/2023 at 12:22 PM, Baldwin Funster said:

The one thing absolutely nobody but a keyboard player will ever notice is what's going in behind the slide in rocky mnt way. I've played that song a few hundred times on the guitar in gigs and nobody ever even mention a lack of talk box. The backing, I always assumed it was a clav, is so far off the radar screen as to not even exist. In Joe's TV appearances like Don K's rock concert I don't recall even hearing that part. In many vids I've seen there wasn't even the talkbox. To the op, save yourself some stress about that sound. A clav with any kind of modulation is going to make everyone happy. Except a keyboard player or 2. You can never please them. I mean us. I mean you...

That is my mindset--I do not worry about that one hypothetical critical keyboard player in the audience taking notes about my patches.   This mythical person is the only one besides myself who cares if I'm even in the mix, or at least it feels that way sometimes.  Honestly I've had some keys player friends see my band and they are drinking and dancing and not giving any more of a crap than anyone else   

That said--more power to the patch seekers, it does feel good to nail something (playing or programming).  Certainly doesn't hurt to get the sounds right!  Just because I'm lazy doesn't mean I frown on the diligence of others  

I have a bit of a problem playing that part due to the syncopation, my left hand is not the strongest and wants to follow my right.  So I have bigger fish to fry than the patch   Our singer got tired of this song and dropped it but I kind of miss it.

[analogika]

4 hours ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:

I just played keys on a cover of this song in a rock band I gig with from time to time -- I actually took the talkbox solo myself, so the way I approached the section was to play an overdriven Wurli patch which I split in parallel to the talkbox. Start off with the filtered groove part, then copped the guitar lines after establishing it. Not exactly like the record, but the audience loved it.

 

So I guess what I'm saying is "one-up your guitar player and get a talkbox." 🤣

is there a recording of that? Sounds like awesome. 

[Docbop]

5 hours ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:

I just played keys on a cover of this song in a rock band I gig with from time to time -- I actually took the talkbox solo myself, so the way I approached the section was to play an overdriven Wurli patch which I split in parallel to the talkbox. Start off with the filtered groove part, then copped the guitar lines after establishing it. Not exactly like the record, but the audience loved it.

 

So I guess what I'm saying is "one-up your guitar player and get a talkbox." 🤣

 

 

That's a great example of the audience doesn't know or even care what was used on the original record.  If you go out and play a good version of the tune that captures the spirit of the song people will dig it.    

[Iconoclast]

8 hours ago, analogika said:

is there a recording of that? Sounds like awesome. 

I was window shopping talk boxes and came across this demo on the Sweetwater site. It's not Rocky Mountain Way, but it sure looks more credible than I would have thought.

 

 

[Iconoclast]

10 hours ago, Stokely said:

That is my mindset--I do not worry about that one hypothetical critical keyboard player in the audience taking notes about my patches.   This mythical person is the only one besides myself who cares if I'm even in the mix, or at least it feels that way sometimes.  Honestly I've had some keys player friends see my band and they are drinking and dancing and not giving any more of a crap than anyone else   

That said--more power to the patch seekers, it does feel good to nail something (playing or programming).  Certainly doesn't hurt to get the sounds right!  Just because I'm lazy doesn't mean I frown on the diligence of others  
 

You're right, this more an exercise in sound design than a desire to satisfy my band OCD.  I don't know if you remember but I also posted about 6 different versions of a Jump patch here once, just to see how close I could get to it on several different platforms.

I'm more than certain you could do this part of the song on a rhodes or clave and maybe a filter/wah and the crowd would go wild as long as the guitar player didn't bore up the solo.

[SamuelBLupowitz]

11 hours ago, Iconoclast said:

I was window shopping talk boxes and came across this demo on the Sweetwater site. It's not Rocky Mountain Way, but it sure looks more credible than I would have thought.

 

 

Yes, that's the one I own. It's a solid box and way less complicated than the old-school "needs an amplifier head to drive it" style. I usually use it with a synth, but the aforementioned Rocky Mountain Way cover (of which there is unfortunately no video) was on a gig where I just had piano and organ, so I made do.

[SamuelBLupowitz]

1 hour ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:

 the aforementioned Rocky Mountain Way cover (of which there is unfortunately no video) 

Spoke too soon! A friend got a little bit of the tune so I thought I'd share.

 

 

[stoken6]

Great playing, and I see the mixer is maintaining the (dis)honoured tradition of having keys too low in the mix.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[Legatoboy]

When I played this tune with the band in the 70's I used my RMI Clav patch with a Wah Wah pedal and  ran that thru the PA with a bit of slap back echo and reverb to give it some ambiance and fatten it up a bit ....about as close as I could gt with the gear I had then.... fun song to play! Hard to get that exact 'clavy' vibe though 

[SamuelBLupowitz]

17 hours ago, stoken6 said:

Great playing, and I see the mixer is maintaining the (dis)honoured tradition of having keys too low in the mix.

 

Cheers, Mike.

Indeed, though in his defense, that band is loud AF and I think the camera being that close to the stage is getting more stage volume than house mix, since the mains are off to the sides (you can hear the lead vocal not quite cutting as loud as it should either). Since I’m running direct (and the talkbox goes through the vocal mic), everything from the stage is drums and guitars.

I’m still happier running direct than lugging an amp!