Ditto what he said. Except the part about getting a real guitarist<g>. Jan
used to claim that he got his trademark sound with a variety of waveforms,
it didn't really matter nearly as much as the playing technique.
BTW, I once rented my B-3 to Jan for the first Mahavishnu Orchestra tour. I
had the honor of watching him blow up my custom Leslie, toasting 2 Gauss 15"
woofers. It was worth it just to see him play. He sat down at the drum kit
before the sound check and wailed for about 30 minutes in all kinds of time
signatures! A truly amazing guy.
Dave Bradley
Principal Software Engineer
Engineering Animation, Inc.
daveb@... > From: improv@... (Dave Trenkel)
>
> I used to lust after Jan Hammer's lead synth sound, and tried mightily to
> duplicate it. I believe his sound was a combination of Minimoog and SEM,
> through a little flanging/chorusing and a heavily saturated
> guitar amp. The
> envelope had a quick attack and initial decay, like the pick attack on the
> string, and then a long and fairly high sustain. The sound itself was
> probably pretty harmonically simple, with most of the character
> coming from
> processing and distortion. The real trick is in the phrasing. You have to
> think about how guitarists phrase their lines, how they bend strings,
> things like hammer-ons and pull-offs, finger vibrato, etc. You have to
> think like a guitarist (shudder)! I've done some fairly convincing
> faux-guitar solos from my Nord Lead, through a fuzz box or a POD, but
> generally, I'd rather just get a real guitarist.
>
>