HoeDown

[Terry Michaels]

Message text written by INTERNET:WeAreAs1 at aol.com
>Note however, that a simple pitch-envelope modulated VCO patch will not 
really get this exact effect.  There also must be a delayed attack, so that

the pitch glide does not start at the onset of the note, but rather about a

beat later.  Keith probably used a trigger delay to achieve this.  Of
course, 
this same effect could also be approximated by simply playing a note, then 
playing the note one octave above, and having portamento turned on.  The
down 
side of doing it this way is that in this particular piece, the intro
figure 
needs to be repeated over and over.  So if he had portamento turned on, the

note would also glide back down every time he repeated the figure (low note

to high note, low note to high note, etc.).  Emerson's sound only glides 
going up, which suggests that he used an envelope to create the octave
jump.  
Also, the tming of the jump is not an exact quarter note, but a kind of
loose 
quarter note, probably because it was hard to get an envelope to always be 
rhythmically precise.  (this looseness adds to the flavor, anyway)

Michael Bacich<

Hi Michael:

I have exactly duplicated this effect with my modular synth, no delay
trigger is needed.  It's been awhile, but if I remember right, set up one
VCO in the usual way, mix the output with the output of a second VCO, and
then run the mix to a VCA and then out to your amp and speakers.  You run
the output of a ADSR type envelope generator into the second  VCO, the
initial attack (A) gives you the desired  pitch ramp-up time of about a
quarter note, the delay (D) is set to zero, the sustain control (S) is set
to give you the desired pitch (a fifth above the other VCO), the release
control (R) is set to zero.  The envelope generator controlling the VCA is
set to a fair amount of sustain (R set for a few seconds).   Every time you
press a key on the keyboard, you get the effect used in the intro to the
song.   If you play legato, you get the VCO's doing parallel fifths,
Emerson did that for a few measures toward the end of the song.    Keyboard
portamento is set quite short, or none at all.

Terry Michaels