Hi All,
I play mostly funky rock and R&B in a four-piece band. I also do some pickup gigs, which can range from rock to country to wedding-band to R&B. The AN1x finds a place in all of the above. I rarely use it to cover "real instrument" sounds -- I have a ROMpler that does fine for that -- but create leads, brass, and pads, as well as some short sequences to add in the most unlikely places, like Deep Purple's "Woman From Tokyo" and Santana's "Gypsy Queen." I like to use sync'ed waveforms for leads, and I usually prefer the sound of synth brass to a half-baked ROMpler attempt at "real" brass.
One thing that I'm a little surprised at is the number of players who depend on factory patches and sound libraries for their sounds. I guess it comes from playing Minimoogs and Putneys in college, and Korgs and Yamahas soon after -- none of which had any presets -- but I've almost always thrown out 90% of the factory patches on a new synth, and replaced them with my own. Even the ones I keep get a healthy dose of tweaking. I suppose there are many different angles to the term "synth player," but I've always thought that the basic sound one creates is part of the artistic expression obtained from a synth. Certainly, early dabblers in electronic music like Keith Emerson, Jan Hammer, Gary Neumann, and Greg Hawkes are known as much for their unique sounds as for their chops playing/programming the sounds.
How many of you play/program vs. play-only?
Oh, and if you want to fatten the "Jump" patch, just back off on the onboard EQ, and use a tube preamp to fatten the sound.
Regards,
-BW
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Bruce Wahler
Ashby Solutions™
http://music.ashbysolutions.com978.386.7389 voice/fax
bruce@...