I’ve recently gotten my hands on a couple of modern reproductions of ‘70s analog synthesizers. Because I trained with analog synths back in 1979-81 and used them for production, getting back into the field has been a blast. Two of the synths I trained on were the Arp 2600 and the Electro-Comp EML101, a sort of beefed-up MiniMoog. The Behringer 2600 is virtually identical to the original Arp and the Behringer Poly D (my review is HERE) is akin to the EML101. Once I got familiar with these new synths, I had time to tinker a bit and start learning. As I have mentioned in other articles, I am an autodidact – I love to learn and teach myself whenever I can. In this case, I decided to use some classic rock recordings from the period when synthesizers were first being introduced to rock as my tutoring partners. The first time I mentioned to some of my musical friends that I had acquired an analog synth, they immediately asked me if I had tried the tail solo from Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s groundbreaking song, “Lucky Man.” Hehehehe. In fact, I had. That’s basically a sawtooth wave sound on a couple of slightly out-of-sync oscillators with some portamento or "glide" on the keyboard and a gentle attack. Though it was a revolutionary song and application of the Moog in its time, getting the sounds is no big challenge these days.
When I settled in seriously to learn, my first explorations revolved around Joe Walsh’s first two solo albums with his band, Barnstorm. There is some history in there. After Joe recorded his last studio album with the James Gang, the band toured extensively with The Who and Joe became close friends with Pete Townsend and Keith Moon. At the end of the tour, Joe gave Pete the Gretsch 6120 hollow body guitar and Fender Tweed Bandmaster he used for the song, “Midnight Man” as a gift. Pete returned the favor by sending Joe an Arp Odyssey synthesizer. That synth was featured on several Walsh solo albums, including Barnstorm, The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get, and So What? I am a longtime fan of The Smoker album. It came along at a crucial time in my young musical life and influenced me greatly. I love the way that it often flirts with progressive or art rock, and I often have one or another of the songs running through my head.
But before we go any further, let’s review some voltage-controlled analog synthesizer terms for the crowd that hasn’t worked in the field:
VCO - Voltage Controlled Oscillator – a sound generator controllable by voltage
VCF – Voltage Controlled Filter - a tone modifier controllable by voltage
VCA – Voltage Controlled Amplifier - a loudness modifier controllable by voltage
LFO – Low Frequency Oscillator – a voltage controller that creates repeated wave shapes
ADSR – Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release – a voltage controller to shape your sounds over time
AR – Attack, Release – a voltage controller – an abbreviate version of the ADSR.
Slider - On Arp synths, variables are control by linear potentiometers. In a few cases they behave as audio faders but in many others they are adjusting control voltages. Thus, most aren't technically faders. I'm hewing to Arp's own use of the word "slider" in their original 2600 owner's manual to describe the linear controls on this synth.
With those abbreviations in mind, we can return to my lessons.
So, my next learning project was “Bookends,” song number two on side A, written and sung by Barnstorm drummer, Joe Vitale.
There’s a little climbing figure, an introductory voluntary, right at the top and between verses that is played on the Odyssey. The initial sound is easy enough: Two VCOs putting out square or pulse waves, a VCF that is fairly opened-up with a little recirculation/contour/resonance. The filter envelope is driven very lightly by an ADSR and then the signal is sent through a VCA driven by an AR with a softened attack and a gentle release. But what happens at the end of the figure is a very interesting, spacey, bubbling sound. When you listen closely, it appears that the bubbling, burbling sound is just an overlay onto the same sound used for the climbing figure. In fact, it sounded to me as if there was an LFO added in to modulate the VCF rather wildly that created the bubbling sound. I can just see Joe reaching up and moving up the LFO modulation slider on his Odyssey to modulate the VCF.
I first set up this sound on the Behringer Poly D, using the mod wheel to manually introduce the cycling of the VCF. The result was very convincing. A little white noise blended in emphasizes the effect. Next, I tried it on the Behringer 2600. Behringer’s interpretation of the Arp 2600 offers a delayed introduction feature on the LFO with a variable delay length.
You'll need to patch the "LFO Delayed" output into one of the VCF modulation sliders and raise that slider, but then you are set. When you first key a note using this function, the note is pure and unmodulated. However, if you hold down the key longer than your preset delay time, the LFO is faded in on whatever you’ve chosen to modulate, in this case, the VCF. To match Walsh's recording I also added a little reverb, and I was there, automatically.
Side B’s cut two, “Dreams,” also uses this effect for spaciness, with it first showing up at :34 in but repeating at 3:13 and 4:57.
The effect also shows up on steroids (more filter resonance) in Edgar Winter’s hit song “Frankenstein,“ at 3:17, where Winters used an Arp 2600 for his sounds. He actually hung the Arp's keyboard on a strap to play the synth live in concert. Incidentally, that song’s name came from how many edits it took to compile the song from the various sections that were recorded separately.
And finally, I was frittering around when all of a sudden, the bass sounds from 1974’s “Autobahn” by Kraftwerk popped out of the Behringer Poly D at me. It was a bass sound with a tightened-down VCF over two octaves of the fundamental. The guys in Kraftwerk bought a MiniMoog in 1974 and their first experiments with it became “Autobahn.” The Poly D offers an even fatter bass sound because of its additional VCO.
So, it has been fun to play around and reproduce these synth gems from the past by discovery and pursuit in order to get more comfortable with the tools they offer. I'll keep digging in and finding new sounds!
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