PSR Keyboards (11 Boards) > PSR-E Series
Riding the storm out intro on PSR-E453
hlawhon:
Hi all. I am new to the forum and new to the PSR-E453. I am mainly a guitar player but picked up this keyboard to add some variety. One of the things I wanted to try to do was to replicate the minimoog opening to Ridin' The Storm Out by R.E.O. Speedwagon. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do that with this keyboard?
Thank you !
Henry
SeaGtGruff:
Welcome to our cozy corner of the internet, Henry! I imagine that Bob (SciNote) might be able to suggest something, otherwise I'll give a listen to that song to refresh my memory about the Minimoog sound in it.
One thing I've found is that you can get some interesting results from voices you might not expect by editing the filter cutoff/resonance and envelope attack/release settings, so it can pay to look beyond the usual synth voices and tinker with the other instrument voices.
hlawhon:
Thanks Michael ! I literally got it today (thank you UPS) and have been tinkering a little but really have not looked to deeply. Thank you for the suggestions ! I am looking forward to getting to know what this beauty can do.
Henry
SeaGtGruff:
Okay, I listened to the beginning of the song on YouTube to refresh my memory. The PSR-E models don't have portamento, so you'll need to use the pitch bend wheel to imitate the portamento. And the best way to get a smooth portamento effect with pitch bend might be to create a short MIDI file that you can play. It's fortunate that the Minimoog is used to start off the song, because that makes it easier to kick off the song with a recorded passage and then let the band jump in and take over. I'll have to listen more carefully later tonight to make sure the Minimoog isn't used again later in the song.
SciNote:
I wasn't familiar with that song by the title, so I checked it out on YouTube to hear the sound. Check these out! ===>
https://app.box.com/s/ll8n5e79g2kmnqzwrd47ubedjcqln4z9
https://app.box.com/s/yrmbadwt8nxks5ynd0rwi99sazvyxc8v
The first sample was done "live", whereas the second sample was made by piecing together two separate recordings using my DAW (Audacity). Here's why. To get the sliding/portamento type effect, as Michael said, required using the pitch-bend wheel, so I set the pitch-bend range to 12 (1 octave). Unfortunately, at least on the E433, it turns out that the pitch-bend is really made up of a fairly small number of discreet steps. With small pitch-bend ranges, such as a whole tone or a minor third, for example, those discreet steps are close enough that you get a smooth pitch-bend/slide effect, especially when the bend is done quickly. But on this song, the tone starts out with a "C", then slides up to the "C" one octave up, and then slowly slides down a minor third to "A" below the "C". The trip up from one "C" to the next "C" isn't too bad, but to use the pitch-bend wheel to slowly slide down to the "A", I could hear the discrete steps so clearly that it did not even sound like a pitch bend -- it just sounded like playing notes on the keyboard -- except that the steps/notes were not exact chromatic notes, and I could not use the wheel to land exactly on the "A". So, what you are actually hearing on the first sample is me using the wheel to slide the note from one "C" to the one an octave up, and then me actually just playing the "B", "Bb", and "A" keys in quick succession to go down to the "A".
With the second sample, it starts out the same way, using the pitch-bend wheel to go from one "C" to the one an octave up. But then I recorded a separate track of me using the pitch-bend wheel to slide from the higher "C" down to the "A", but the difference is that I set the pitch-bend value to 3 (a minor-third) for that recording, so that the slide from "C" to "A" was much smoother than when the pitch-bend value was set to 12 (an octave). But of course, trying to change the pitch-bend value "live" while playing that tone would be quite cumbersome. So, I made the two separate recordings (the slide up with the pitch-bend set to 12, and the slide down with the pitch-bend set to 3), and then just blended them together with Audacity.
So, if you're playing live, you'd need to do something like I did in the first sample. But if you're making a recording, you can use the technique of the second sample. Or, like Michael said, if you're playing in a band (and therefore don't need to use the styles on the keyboard), you should be able to make something similar to the second sample using two tracks of the onboard sequencer and just play that onboard "song" when needed.
I came up with this sound pretty quickly, so you may be able to improve on it. Note that I did this on a PSR-E433, so the voice numbers are likely different, but the sounds should be available on the E453. Here are the basics of the patch:
I first hit the "Portable Grand" button to essentially reset all of the main parameters, then I selected the following settings...
Main Voice: 80s Brass (Sound 140 on PSR-E433)
Main vol: 90
Main oct: 0
Dual Voice: Fifth Ld (Sound 561 on PSR-E433)
Dual vol: 110
Dual oct: 0
Reverb: Hall3
Chorus: Chorus1
All of the other parameters of the voices, such as filter and envelope, I left as default. However, after setting up the sounds, I used the live-control knobs to crank up the reverb and chorus to their maximum settings, as in the song itself, it sounds like there's a little bit of echo going on with the sound.
Note that for the dual voice, it is important to use the "fifth lead" sound in the XGLite collection of sounds, because, at least on my E433, most (if not all) of the "fifth lead" type sounds in the main "panel voices" automatically use the dual voice to make the complete sound. Therefore, these sounds would not sound as intended when used as the dual voice, and if used as a main voice, you could not add a dual voice of your own without altering the original sound. But the XGLite voices all seem to only use one voice, not two, and therefore can be combined with another voice.
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