Genesis Tony Banks sounds on Kronos

[laandodeman]

Online you find a lot of tutorials on how to emulate Tony Bank's sounds, but not much for the Kronos.

I am looking, for example, for ways to create:

* The typical phased / chorussed organ sound
* The quadra and pro-soloist sounds

Does anyone know of a tutorial? Is it easy to remake these sounds on the Kronos? I do have mellotrons and CP80 samples already.

[GregC]

Online you find a lot of tutorials on how to emulate Tony Bank's sounds, but not much for the Kronos.

I am looking, for example, for ways to create:

* The typical phased / chorussed organ sound
* The quadra and pro-soloist sounds

Does anyone know of a tutorial? Is it easy to remake these sounds on the Kronos? I do have mellotrons and CP80 samples already.

Tony uses a mellotron. That sound is available on the Kronos

[laandodeman]

Tony uses a mellotron. That sound is available on the Kronos

That's what I said Greg: already have the Mellotron and CP80

[GregC]

Tony uses a mellotron. That sound is available on the Kronos

That's what I said Greg: already have the Mellotron and CP80

LoL. Well, I tried

[geoelectro]

You can take the CX3, disable the Leslie, and run it through an IFX Chorus, Phaser or Flanger. I've played with this and it makes some Genesis type sounds.

The analog solo sounds came from an Arp Soloist I believe. A very limited, preset synth. Those sounds should be fairly easy to make on one of the virtual analog engines available in the Kronos.

Geo

[laandodeman]

You can take the CX3, disable the Leslie, and run it through an IFX Chorus, Phaser or Flanger. I've played with this and it makes some Genesis type sounds.

The analog solo sounds came from an Arp Soloist I believe. A very limited, preset synth. Those sounds should be fairly easy to make on one of the virtual analog engines available in the Kronos.

Geo

I tried this, but I can't quite nail the typical Banks organ sounds with the chorus and phaser. Which settings did you use?

[jorgemncardoso]

Hi, i'm a huge Genesis/Tony Banks fan too

You've mentioned the typical organ sounds and the Quadra/Prosoloist sounds, so this leads me to the first question:

Are you trying to replicate just one period of Tony's sounds, or his sounds in its entirety for the duration of the band?

As you know Genesis started in the end of the 60's and the last album was in 98, so Tony used literally dozens on different keyboards, from analog to digital, to even analog modeling with the Oasys in 2007.

Apart from the organ (run thru phasers, an always slow Leslie, and even fuzz boxes) and mellotron in the early days he also used the RMI piano (run thru phasers and even fuzz boxes), the Arp's as mentioned, the Prophets, string synths, ocasional CS80's too.
Then the CP70 and 80, Emulators I, II, III and IV, Synclavier, DX7.
In the 90's came the Wavestations, JD800, Ensoniq, Proteus modules, O1/W, Trinity, Akai samplers.
And finally the Oasys on the 2007 tour.

I'm sure a lot from the 70's can be replicated oh the Kronos by itself, and with some good samples. A lot of specific stuff from the 80's/90's requires the actual samples to sound the most authentic.

I have a great deal of samples from the Emulators to synclaviers, etc....

Is there any specific sound or group of sounds you are after apart from what you've mentioned?

[Joe Gerardi]

Agree here with Jorge: which organ sound are you looking for? The original organ was a Hammond Model T never with Leslie- he loathed that sound, that 's where the MXR Phase 100 and Chorus started. Also, unlike the other keyboard heroes, Tony was more into original and new sounds than either Rick or the late Emo, so it was always something different from him.

Later, he used the Prophet-10's and -5's for his organ sounds: with the -10, he doubled the keyboards, so everything was playing on either keyboard, with a maximum of 5 notes. (Basically 2 Prophet-5's on one leyboard.) He used 2 sine waves at octaves, (think 16' and 8' drawbars) then set the filter to oscillate as a 3rd oscillator, and tuned it a 5th above to give him the third (5 1/3') drawbar. With the synths of the -10 slaved, it was very thick sounding.

With the -5 he only got half the thickness, and you can hear the difference in some of the tunes.

He also used the Synclavier for the organ lead on "That's all." It's the bog standard organ sound from the Synclavier.

The leads were all very different because of the synths he used- an example is the Arp Quadra- it was a Top-Octave Divide-Down synth, and as such, had a different sound to it than, say, his Arp Odyssey.

Finally, a lot of his sounds were burned for him on custom Protei from E-Mu. They burned chips for him so that he could take them on tour and leave a lot of stuff at home, and those sounds are unavailable anywhere, except in his instruments.

..Joe

[alanjpearson]

You can take the CX3, disable the Leslie, and run it through an IFX Chorus, Phaser or Flanger. I've played with this and it makes some Genesis type sounds.

The analog solo sounds came from an Arp Soloist I believe. A very limited, preset synth. Those sounds should be fairly easy to make on one of the virtual analog engines available in the Kronos.

Geo

I play in a Genesis trib called Los Endos and have been doing this for years
It depends on how close you want to get.

It was the ARP Prosoloist and you couldn't be more wrong about the sound being easy to replicate.
The "effects" section (Growl, Wow, Pitch Bend etc) all added to the sound and are NOT easy to replicate authentically.

To get the correct phase sound as used by Banks you need an MXR Phase 100 pedal - I found the only thing that gets close to this are the effects in the Roland JP/XP series.

You could try the sounds from Burningbusch which are good but not quite there IMHO.

[alanjpearson]

You can take the CX3, disable the Leslie, and run it through an IFX Chorus, Phaser or Flanger. I've played with this and it makes some Genesis type sounds.

The analog solo sounds came from an Arp Soloist I believe. A very limited, preset synth. Those sounds should be fairly easy to make on one of the virtual analog engines available in the Kronos.

Geo

I tried this, but I can't quite nail the typical Banks organ sounds with the chorus and phaser. Which settings did you use?

You need to get the correct drawbar settings as well as an MXR100, just Google Hammond drawbars.
http://keyboardservice.com/Drawbars.asp

He used presets on the L100/T100 which you can find mapped by name as above.

[BillW]

I'll agree with Alan that the Pro Soloist is not easy to replicate. It had a fixed architecture with several types of filters used in various configurations and was incredibly expressive. I am also in a Genesis tribute band in the US and have been using samples of the Pro Soloist in the Kronos rather than trying to program those sounds.

As for organ, PM me and I'll send you the organ patch I used for Afterglow and Burning Rope.

Here's an example of it live, and I've improved on this one a bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3OuPqra_mE

[alanjpearson]

The presets on the L100 series are :

upper :
Clarinet 008080800
Trumpet 006688888
Full Organ 868868446

lower
Ensemble 6644222 ( edit : beware , only 7 drawbars on the lower manual . it start at 8' so enter 006644222 on a regular 9 drawbars setting )

[laandodeman]

Hi, i'm a huge Genesis/Tony Banks fan too

Is there any specific sound or group of sounds you are after apart from what you've mentioned?

Thanks for all the great tips and tricks guys.

My main interest is in the Seconds Out time. This record got me into playing keyboards in the first place

[keego]

There is a pro soloist sample set on the Kronos Sound Library page.

https://shop.korg.com/Kronos/EXS-62

[Derek Cook]

Don't forget on the CP70/80, you need to run it through a chorus effect to get the Banks late 70s era piano sound. Pianoteq, its free CP model and its chorus effect is pretty good at providing this sound.

BTW brilliant keyboard player and in my top three. As it happens I was listening to "Bankstatement" tonight whilst cooking supper; 26 years on and it has not dated at all. When I play his solo albums, I always ask myself why he was not as successful in his solo career as other Genesis members. He had a great ear for chords, structure, hooks and melody, and in his solo albums he rarely trod into Genesis territory.