I have always wondered, what would Somke on the water sound like if played on a synthesizer? Or even Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon?

It would be awesome. Why would you think it wouldn't sound good? Just make sure the synth is polyphonic. I used to play Smoke on a Moog Opus 3. Used a distorted organ and square wave sound - dyn-o-mite!



[This message has been edited by cassp (edited 12-11-2003).]

Certainly Dark Side of the Moon was heavy moog synth, with arrpegiators running wild, and one of the forerunners in the use of them. On the other hand Smoke On The Water was much more of a heavy guitar rock tune.
Terry

------------------
jam on,
Terry http://imjazzed.homestead.com/Index.html

I can do a fair rendition of "Smoke" on keys, especially the solo, but... the guitar parts are guitar parts, and to me they'll always sound better on a real guitar. Still, there are plenty of juicy organ parts from "Machine head" ( the album that spawned "Smoke", and one of the three very first albums I ever bought with money that I earned myself.. Brain salad Surgery ( ELP ) and Led Zeppelin ( 4 ) were the others.

I may be able to fool the average listener on a recording though. As an example of this I gave a friend who has played professionally as a drummer a couple of my songs to listen to. He knows I'm not the most proficient guitar player, so he asked who I hired to do the guitar parts ( I can play a little, but not to the level of the intricate solos on the recordings ). He was very surprised when I told him that I had done them myself on my Motif / PA80.

He had also stated that he disliked drum machines ( he was probably thinking of the older ones that sounded very mechanized ), and was very surprised at what I was able to achieve using software and / or real time playing on a keyboard.

Dark Side of the Moon is another story. Lots of synth stuff going on there. It's mainly a matter of emulating the synth sounds and setups that Pink Floyd used. Although there are plenty of guitar parts on that album, they don't always take the forefront, and if one worked at it, you could make a fairly close reproduction on a good synth. I was able to do it on the song " Shine on you crazy diamond " .. a PF favorite of mine from a different album.

AJ

Hi Paul,

I play Smoke on the water on my 9000Pro with pretty decent results.
I used to play it with an internal style, then I got the song specific style from S&M which is very good.
If you have an arranger KB, check it out:
http://styles-music.com/default.asp

Hi AJ,

just checked out your new song on your web side. Love it
Very good guitar and organ play.
http://us.share.geocities.com/bluezplayer/ForeignJourney.mp3

What instruments did you use?

Keep on jamin'

Eric

Hi Eric.. Thanks for the comment. I appreciate it very much. Every instrument on the song came from the Motif ES. The drums were very simple, and they were composed in Sonar's Session drummer plug in, using the ES' "Big Kit" drum kit. The rest was all composed on the ES itself, with arpeggios used for the synth and synth bass sounds, and real time play for the rest of it.

Cheers,

AJ