I certainly haven’t taken mini mooging to the levels that you have but I am impressed with this plug. The filter sweeps and resonance controls work as I remember and the ring mod is like it too. With it and Diva I am very happy, I like OP-X Pro too but it has let me down live so I shied away from it and use it in the studio more. Welcome to the Machine I thought was primarily Mini Moog but those cats had their hands on all nature of stuff, if it was out there I think they tried it and may have used it on their albums. Just curious but which sound are you not able to clone? Anyway I need to check that track out again and listen to the synth work, my personal favorite keyboard work by Rick is ‘Sheep’ FWIW.
That is the one that led me to try Synapse, but I was not happy my results, but that could have been me as I had little time to experiment. So I must try again…
Thanks, as per reply to Corky, It looks like I need to check it out again.
It’s exciting times in Welsh floyd, as after ten years of the PULSE set and not much else, we are looking at ditching the “Gilmour era” songs (form Momentary Lapse and Division Bell) and getting some “new” material in like Echoes (VB3 and IK Leslie are doing well on this one!), Welcome to the Machine, all of Side 1 of the Wall. At some point we hope to do songs like Sheep as well, but I vetoed that for our first new outing as there is so much going on in it. To do it justice needs a lot of analysis (and I need to improve my playing chops!). If you’re interested, I’ll post my reference track for “Welcome to the Machine” - from memory I have about 17 layers of keyboard sounds as every time I listened to it and thought I was finished I heard something else in there…
It never ceases to amaze me how you listen to songs without really listening. I’ve been listening to the Wall since a teenager in 79, but in prepping tracks for In The Flesh and the Thin Ice, I am hearing things I have never heard before…
VCS3 was heavily featured in “Welcome To The Machine” (1975) and was also used for various effects in Animals (1977)
Also:
There is some ambiguity as to which synth leads are played with a Minimoog and which with a VCS3. As a rule of thumb, the sweeping synth effects and drones are made with a VSC3, whereas most post-Dark Side leads are played with a Minimoog. Floyd’s gear during the ’77 tour included no less than three(!) Minimoog units. It is believed that the parts that were originally recorded with a VCS3 for the studio version of “Welcome to the machine” were recreated with the Minimoog in the ’77 Tour, and that Rick did not actually carry a VCS3 on tour with him in 1977.
Strange the Mini Moog is not mentioned as it is most definitely in there. I am sure VCS3 was used for a lot of the industrial effects, but I think I need to tinker and see if it is the source of the sound I am referring to.
@dave_dore, it is the sound that is slow, slightly wavering, going from E to C, occasionally to A, with a bit of filter sweep and vibrato. I am wondering it is VCS3 as the combo of sweep and vibrato could be via a joystick control - which is how I am controlling it from my Kronos vector joystick (a nifty thing to have!)
Hi, Dave, OK, I’ll do that when I am back home and have five mins.
It’s one of the reasons why I am adamant that to do a Floyd tribute you need to play to backing tracks - there is no way Welcome to the Machine could be done fully live. In “in the flesh?” under the vocals there is organ, synth, heartbeats. In Echoes I can do piano or organ, not both (so I swap - piano in the intro and outro with organ on backing track and swap in the main song to playing organ with piano on backing track. there is an ambient guitar effect, the “Echo” ping in places where it could not have been played live unless Rick had three hands. In fact, I listened to the Pink floyd live at Pompeii show a few months back where it is just the four of them and nobody else, and it sounded so lame!
And this is where Cantabile helps massively in our show. It is now a MIDI processing hub since none of my new keyboards do MIDI Echo (why have manufacturers dropped this?), I am slowly moving over to VSTis for more realism in the sounds (VB3, IK Leslie, Arturia Mini), the backing tracks, DMXIS being triggered from a MIDI track for the light show and also a trigger for our laptop running the videos
I just checked out The Legend. It’s great for that money -and it’s very CPU friendly.
I set up the Diva default patch type sound on it… the first thing I heard when I got Diva and made me go ‘OMG - I’m playing hardware’.
After an hour or so of tweaking, I have to say that Diva just has something that Legend doesn’t; It’s a kind of visceral thing - it just feels ‘real’ to me.
If I was concerned about CPU at a live gig, I could definitely see using Legend. If it was just about the sound, at this time, it’s Diva. A work of genius. (And it can play more than 4 notes)
Not to argue or judge either, I agree that the u-He products have a _feel_to them that is different than the Legend. Also I think there are cases where neither can replicate the Hardware. In head to head tests I would want more testers to make sure it was thorough, one test is not enough for me. Also, Monark, Diva and Legend all have strengths and there are cases where one can do it closer to the hardware than the other. But as has been stated for live work and with some tweaking the Legend sings just fine. I made a great patch for “In the Light” with it along with the trusty EchoBoy that is very effective. The Diva for me has always had a great patch without as much fooling and it’s Engine sounds different to me, I guess I’d say more refined. Lastly, the effects that are added to the raw synth sounds on all these products can make or break the appeal factor of them IMO and is probably why Legend uses them on a lot of the factory patches as does Diva. It’s was how I first heard them when they were first recorded, through echos and reverb units and chorus devices etc … Anyway, Great input folks!
@dave_dore -
I guess, as you brought his name up - and this is a Cantabile community, and it’s that Moog bass that was so defining in Gary’s music, that you may be interested to know that I actually played a few dates with Gary - probably back in 2011-12. I was on synth bass! I used Cantabile 2 and Trilogy/Omnisphere and the sound was just amazing live. He loved the sound - so much so that we had a separate bass amp rigged right behind him so that he could really feel the bass - and get to the volume control!
We had all the backline stuff supplied by the various venues - and some places liked to get involved with the ‘look’ of the amps. We finished sound check and the bass was roaring at Gary - just the way he likes it.
The stage hands began attaching black cloth over the amps as we headed off for a pre gig beer.
“Please welcome to the stage… GARY WRIGHT!”
I played the first note and the cloth flew off the bass amp and covered 3 people in the front row.
