As much as an influence as Rick Wakeman has been on
me, I have to agree that his audio palette has gotten thinner and wankier as the
years have gone by - I really think his work on Going for the One/Tormato was
the last time he used good patches, and his brush with Ensoniq gear was
especially catastrophic. Much as I love the guy, and as much as I owe him,
I have always felt that it was his association with Anderson/Squire/Howe that
really brought out the "Wakeman-ness" in him. Rick, if you're listening,
sorry, but you need to go back home to those guys and turn back into Rick
again. I miss Rick.
The Korg Mono/Poly, however is a MONSTER instrument,
incredibly versatile, tremendous oscillator assignment resources, REAL
polyphonic portamento, and all controllable in realtime. I lost mine in my
house fire a few years back, and hope to find another one someday (although my
insurance company was "persuaded" by my music store that my Roland JD-800 was an
"equivalent replacement"!!!!!!!) I think that the chief problem is that
the filters do have a bit of an "asian" tonality to them, but believe me, you
get inside of programming the instrument for a few months you can do some
unbelievable things with it. I used mine to emulate Hammonds, cellos, and
the "Lucky Man" patch would part your hair from a hundred feet away! I
also used it to double the guitar solo in "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and took
advantage of the "chord hold" feature to simulate the octaves/fifths harmonizer
program that Trevor Rabin used, and everybody wanted to know how our guitar
player achieved "that sound!"