Saturday, February 17, 2018

Update

Two significant things happened on 15 February.  First, I finished transferring my old posts from tumblr to this blog.  I did skip a couple, but mostly they were just links to interviews that I'd posted without any commentary.  All of the "essential" things are here now.

The other bit of news is more exciting.  I finally acquired a Nord Electro 5D (which I've been eyeing since at least December 2014), so now I can play a whole host of keyboard parts with more accurate sounds.


I'm still figuring out how to use it, but one of the first things I did was load the Hohner Pianet sample.  Other relevant sounds for this project include Vox Continental, Hammond B-3, mellotron (flute and strings), and Fender Rhodes (for some of the later Argent material).  There are some harpsichord sounds, but they're recorded from actual harpsichords rather than an electric harpsichord, which is what Rod Argent used on "I Want Her She Wants Me" (I'm not sure about the specific instruments used for others things like "Imagine the Swan" and Colin Blunstone's version of "(Care of) Cell 44").  The piano sounds are vastly superior to the old Yamaha PSR-320 that I'd been using for the last five or six years.

One of the reasons I wanted the Electro 5D is that it has physical drawbars.  I couldn't really do anything to alter the organ sounds on the Yamaha keyboard, but I can on the Nord.  Because I'm in the midst of FAWM though, I haven't had much time to play around with them yet, and I still have no idea what I'm doing.

I have a notion of going through the whole catalogue and re-recording everything for which I know keyboard parts, but I'm not sure I'll actually do that.  Learning how to use drawbars is my first priority, and then I think I might make a list of the specific keyboard instruments used in each song.