Saturday, September 27, 2008

Root Down



Funny. I remembered this as Tony Rich on a real Hammond, not emulated. Still, that is a Leslie next to him, and a big one.

And there is no Telecaster in sight.

I'm thinking about keyboards these days, and what you hear here are two of the sounds necessary. The Hammond organ sound and the Rhodes electric piano sound. I'd take the Farafisa and the Wurlitzer, even.

Thing is, I don't know enough about the technology, and I'd have to spend time and money to learn hands-on, and I don't have either. I see virtual instruments online, and I wonder how I can control them, whether I would need to gig with a computer to run this stuff through or what.

So, I guess, this is what I need to know:

  • What are the cool keyboard sounds? The ones that really rock? The crucial ones for butt thumpin' music?
  • What gear is available that can emulate those sounds well? Because, y'know, even Goodwill has an ear to the vintage market, making bargains for the real stuff too hard to find.
  • What cheap gear is available that can emulate those sounds not-too terribly?
  • I see MIDI In, MIDI Out, MIDI Thru, and I get confused. How much of that do people who aren't, for example, Crystal Method, use?

2 comments:

Pribek said...

That is a very cool performance.

Clavinet-that's another sound that was on a lot of cool records.

Dave Jacob said...

How could I forget the Clavinet? Of course, that's one of the great sounds.