70s - 80s patches

[zeronyne]

Hello,

This is my first time posting here, but I've been a long time lurker.

Is anyone aware of sound libraries, commercial or free, that specifically emulate synths from specific songs, especially those from the late seventies and the eighties? I'm talking about patches that would be named something like "Big Time Brass" or "Baba O'Riley".

There must have been someone or some company that put out meant & potatoes sounds like this in a single library, right?

[billbaker]

Close to right... but

Where you might get a few INSTRUMENTS specified or implied (tine vs. Wurlitzer (tm)) song specific patches were pretty rare. No maker wants their instrument pegged to a specific tune, genre or time period - "good for playing every tune up to March of '84!" is not a slogan I remember seeing.

It was way more likely that you'd get a style appropriate patch than one identified with a specific artist (particularly since the artist would have had to be in on it) - so you might not find anything as obvious as say "Maceo Sax" or even "JUMP! Obie", and it's why those trademark protected brand names don't usually appear either...

On the other hand given the instruments of the day there are a lot of sounds that are pretty stock -- virtually all keyboards up to the mid 70's were rhodes EP, wurlitzer EP, Clavinet, Continental Organ, and a number of 'signature' B3 organ sounds -- so you can do a lot of things right out of the box just by looking for the right sounds and NOT using instruments that a given artist didn't have access to.

One of the things guitar players are fanatical about if finding out what particular piece of gear was used on a tune to change a "stock" clean sound to what's on the record - hence all the amp modeling and stomp box emulating gear out there.

As keyboard players we have a different set of parameters to try and deal with -- most keyboards sounds depended on model that was new at the time, and a lot of DX-D50-M1 era sounds heard on record were actually 'factory' sounds with little or no tweaking.

But being able to analyze what you hear is the biggest component in what you're asking for. Being able to hear -- then find something close and duplicate the signature sound in the amp, filter, the insert effects sections -- is a simply part of what being a synth player is all about.

--------- Sermon over --------

To your original question - I've been playing for 30-some years and had a lot of models and used a lot of 3rd party sounds and have only very rarely seen SONG SPECIFIC patches.

BB

[zeronyne]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

This question was posed because a colleague swore that he had seen a set of patches like that, and I had explained that they were probably combis that were customized for a cover band. That being said, it seemed like a natural thing for someone like Kid Nepro to do. Sound designers do genre, era, and instrument specific libraries, and we are just seeing the beginning of studio and band specific sets...I just thought there might be album or song specific ones; the big three certainly had a lot of them with intentional puns or misspellings.

[Synthoid]

But being able to analyze what you hear is the biggest component in what you're asking for. Being able to hear -- then find something close and duplicate the signature sound in the amp, filter, the insert effects sections -- is a simply part of what being a synth player is all about.

Exactly. I recommend spending less time searching for specific sounds and learn to create them yourself.

[billbaker]

ZeroNyne,

As to the glimpsed bank - if you looked at my Tri-X program bank you'd see the stock sounds ('cus I didn't care to hack it as radically as I did my classic) with about 2 banks of tweaked/rewritten/original sounds. [I presently have about 50 initial patches that can be overwritten.]

But if you look at combis it's very much as your friend describes [with the exception that all my stuff is tailored for MY needs - I don't know anyone else that does exactly what I do]. I've completely scrambled the combi section. For one, I've brought forward from the classic about 200 "song named" combis that support tunes I do as a solo/duo (and many I don't -- but which I like to have around for inspiration). There are an additional 100 or so other "name brand" combis.

Virtually all of my combis are active, with drums and sometimes bass arps running from the first hit.

I addition, I've rewritten the categories so that I can find stuff by tempo and some by genre. The frist five banks are my gigging banks.

Specifically;

A: Fast set (alphabetically) - rock and dance remix tunes.
B: Slow set (Alphabetically) - ballads, chill and reggae tunes
C: Chill - Jazz - World (not title specific)
D: Classical / Orchestral / Church (my sunday gig)
E: "Mirror" This is a 'combi-fied' version of the E-Program bank - making it easier to remember. Passive (arps off initially) but with a variety of rhythms programed in.

H-M: "Tempo" - Combis are grouped by BPM from below 80 Bpm to 150+ Bpm - and have been re-set to the closest 5bpm making it easier to segue from one tune to the next.

N is a smaller compilation for a duo I'm putting together with a long time singer friend - with genre's ranging from dance/techno down to traditional jazz / wedding dinner set stuff.

-------

Maybe your buddy ran across someone who'd just owned their gear long enough for it to appear that a third party had supplied the sounds - especially if he's of the widely held belief that the only way to access creativity is to buy it from someone else.

Good - Cheap - Fast : You can get only two out of three.