Caravan sound

[Don Tillman]

   Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 11:40:51 +0200
   From: Ingo Debus <debus at cityweb.de>
   Don Tillman wrote:
   > I believe it's an organ through a fuzz box.  

   So (to get back on topic again), how could I reproduce this sound? 

Get an organ, get a fuzzbox...  I'm serious.

   Any hints which fuzz box was used and how the undistorted organ
   sounded? 

It doesn't matter much in this case.  With only a couple of exceptions
there's not a heck of a lot of difference between fuzzboxes.

You will also need to kill the fuzz frequencies over 4kHz or so.  So
either use a guitar or organ amp without tweeters or a "speaker
emulator".

   I listened to the "Grey and Pink" album once again carefully, and there
   might be a hint to answer the second question: on the piece "Winter
   Wine" there's a keyboard solo with a sound which could be from a "cheesy
   organ", immediately afterwards the solo continues with "that sound".
   Maybe he just turned the bypass of the fuzz off?

Yeah.

That first part of the solo on "Winter Wine" is a Hammond (not
cheezy!), for the second part he turned on the fuzz box, and a little
later he hits a wah-wah pedal for a brief bit.

Wicked solo, by the way.

   Remarkable: "That sound" is always played monophonic. But it's often
   accompanied by a Hammond playing chords. They didn't use a synthesizer
   in 1971, did they?

Prog Rock in general uses very few synths.  Canterbury especially.
When the machines are monophonic and it takes a while to set up the
sound you're sort of forced to use it sparingly.

Also Canterbury keyboard players tend to play monophonic organ solos.
You can tell that the player is really happy with the character and
sound of a single organ note and wants to see what he can do with it.
So running it through a fuzz box is the next step.  

Chords don't work through fuzzboxes because of intermodulation.  But a
good Canterbury keyboard player will use the "intermodulation chiffs"
from multiple notes as an expressive tool.  Listen closely for that;
it's pretty neat.

  -- Don

-- 
Don Tillman
Palo Alto, California, USA
don at till.com
http://www.till.com