Jimmy Page a synth star?

Thanks to all for the appreciation.

I had been toying with the idea in my head for quite some time and mentally collecting the information I knew, but before I started writing I thought that it would be quite a short article with just a few basic comments on each instrument. When I started searching for the pictures and a few more details to complement what I already knew I learnt many things I did not know and the thing got longer and longer, it was great fun working on it 

Let's say that from the moment I started writing and collecting pictures until I posted it a few weeks and some sleepless nights have passed 

Holy smokes, well done.  I loved the keyboard section which I was at least somewhat familiar with.  Once I realized that you went into the other instruments, I realized 'I've got to get back to work'.  Let's just say that I know what I'm reading tonight after the family goes to bed.

Not being English perhaps the expression 'upside-down' is not really the correct one, I meant this

Should I have said 'from behind', 'flipped over' or something else? or I can add the picture so people will get what I meant, I have this one and i think that also some of his knife-stabbing.

In any case it's a good suggestion to include a reference to Emerson's spinning piano, I'l do an edit in the piano entry, I have pictures already 

And I'm of course open to remarks, corrections or criticisms, during my research I found contradictory information regarding certain subjects and at some point I had to choose for the version which seemed most logical or reliable, but there can certainly be mistakes and if anyone finds one I'm happy to edit.

 

Yeah, I did not mention their brands (Gibson and Rickenbacker if I'm not wrong) but they are there, it's not the purpose to mention and show every instrument ever used, there are so many others missing as well!

But some mentioning to fretless basses is perhaps indeed deserved.

We used a Hammond M-3 (easier to carry)

Mini Moog

Arp String Ensemble

Farfisa organ/elec piano mix (like on Bad Dream)

And in the studio Yamaha or Steinway grand pianos - hear Sad Forgotten Song

I also use Roland Guitar synthesizers since 1978

I am writing a book and would love a review. Let me know where I can send CDs (I hate MP3s)

- Vincent

I added you to my Buddy list.  Ok?

A Mander Pipe Organ being played live on tour?  I'm not aware of that and I would be surprised if that was true.

The Mander Pipe Organ he played for the recording of CTTE and Jane Seymour (Six Wives of Henry VIII) was the one at the church of St. Gilles, Cripplegate (which is actually an organ from the 18th century but fully rebuilt by Mander).

He also recorded at the church of St. Martin, Vevey, Switzerland for Parallels (Going for the One) and Judas Iscariot (Criminal Record).

Keith Emerson used the organ at the church of St. Marks for The Only Way (Tarkus).

Good idea, I'l add an entry!

I would like to see a bit more about Robert Fripp regarding his use of the Roland synth guitar system, as he really drove that innovation very far.  This is a very good interview:   http://www.joness.com/gr300/fripp.htm" rel="nofollow - http://www.joness.com/gr300/fripp.htm

Your history of the Chamberlin/Mellotron was excellent, and I appreciate its accuracy!   Even more information about these amazing instruments may be found at this exhaustive website: 

http://www.planetmellotron.com/index.htm" rel="nofollow - http://www.planetmellotron.com/index.htm

Please keep up the good work!  Much could be written about guitar effect pedals....Fripp told me that he always used the "cheapest fuzz tone he could find since they all sound the same," and he first used the guitar volume pedal "to emulate the sound of a violin."  Steve Hackett, Peter Banks and many others also used the volume pedal extensively throughout the seventies.   

Other common devices were the wah pedal, and various delays & chorus sounds.   Fripp was an early pioneer in many of these, with his "Fripp pedal board" (which, when I saw it up close, was quite primitive and jury-rigged!)

Of course, these guitar devices weren't exclusive to prog, but the prog musicians seemed to use them in novel ways that were distinct from musicians in hard rock, blues rock etc.   John Wetton employed a fuzz tone and wah with bass on occasion, and David Cross used wah pedal with his amplified violin.  

As I recall, Wakeman toured with a portable Mander pipe organ for the "Going For The One" tour, which I saw in Chicago in September, 1977.  Great show!  

Wakeman talks quite a bit about his touring rig in this interview, it is especially interesting for keyboard fans! 

http://zenponies.com/yitp/1979/feb/febxx_79.html" rel="nofollow - http://zenponies.com/yitp/1979/feb/febxx_79.html

Nice articles

My band used a lot of that "stuff" we even put together a device we called the Bluechestra for guitar

If you get a minute check us out at www.reverbnation.com/thestoryofbluebeard and play Bad Dream and They're Not Like They Used to Be and maybe Come to The Dance

Looking to make new friends ere!

Best 

Vincent Bitetti newbie 

Guitarist Bluebeard

Thanks for the link, a very interesting interview, I did not know that the pipe organ tracks he played in Vevey Switzerland were actually recorded in the studio in the UK via a leased telephone line, that's really funny.

I have also found some references to a portable Mander pipe organ for the GFTO tour but nothing very clear, I want to believe it but I would like some harder evidence in order to mention it in my article, if anyone can provide further info it would be great!

This guy also talks about it:  

Within that section, the buildup of http://www.rwcc.com/" rel="nofollow - Rick Wakeman ‘s pipe organ solo. Saw this live in concert ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/tom-margie/2866924796/" rel="nofollow - St. Louis Checkerdome , September of 1978, http://forgottenyesterdays.com/date.asp?s=5&tname=9&tdate=1375&navb=10" rel="nofollow - Tormato tour ), when the stage was in the round and real pipe organ – a portable http://www.mander-organs.com/index.html" rel="nofollow - Mander with pipes under the stage – was used.

http://blogdebill.com/?p=165" rel="nofollow - http://blogdebill.com/?p=165

Well done!  You've taken on an ambitious project!

I saw Yes on the GFTO tour, Chicago 1977 (I don't remember which day though).  I DO remember them opening with "Parallels," and that Mander pipe organ just shook the place (a huge hall!).  Steve Howe wailed on a red Stratocaster, it was a fantastic concert!  (well, ALL Yes concerts I've seen have been fantastic!)

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yes_concert_tours#Going_for_the_One_Tour" rel="nofollow - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yes_concert_tours#Going_for_the_One_Tour

A fascinating instrument indeed, it's just that if I start including too many interesting modern instruments this can go on forever, let's see if the Eigenharp or some others find a stable place in modern Prog.

Its operation is simple. You have a stylus. You run a stylus across the pad, making an electrical connection. The tone of the tinny bleeping noise the stylophone makes varies across the pad. It was sold as a novelty and tended to be used by one, but there's a few interesting uses of it on the periphery of prog. David Bowie played one on Space Oddity (accompanied by Rick Wakeman on more grown-up keyboards!), Kraftwerk made use of one on Pocket Calculator, and the "I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside" bit at the end of Queen's Seven Seas of Rhye (album version) features some.

Not, in short, a particularly clever or even impressive instrument, but an iconic one anyway, not least because many British kids of a certain age have fond memories of mucking about with stylophones received as stocking-fillers.

Yeah I remember them in my childhood, nice comment! 

Back in 1897 (that's not a typo - this was a 19th century device) this fascinating electronic instrument was built by a gentleman with the impressively Victorian name of Thaddeus Cahill. The final version of the Telharmonium weighed in at an astonishing 200 tons.

It used tonewheels (that predated the Hammond organ by some 40 years) to generate electronic sounds, several of which could be mixed toegether (additive harmonic synthesis) and controlled by a truely polyphonic keyboard. These sounds were then transmitted by telegraph/telephone wires to electromechanical paper diaphragms (that were an early form of loud speaker) often several miles from where the instrument was located.

 

 

What's your personal take on the first (musical) synth?

I'm not an expert but it seems that the tone generating mechanism of the Telharmonium would classify it as an organ.

Many sources refer to the Hammond Novachord (1938-39) as the first musical (vacuum tube) synth but the Trautonium (1933) even if not having a traditional 'piano-like' keyboard seems to me worth qualifying already for a synth?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trautonium" rel="nofollow - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trautonium

And what about the Ondes Martenot (1928)? Sound was generated from oscillation in vacuum tubes, that would qualify it as a synth wouldn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondes_Martenot" rel="nofollow - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondes_Martenot

Or perhaps any others I'm not aware about?

I guess he could have worse things in his mouth 

 

From a pure technical/electronics point of view there is no difference between an electric organ, an electric piano and a synthesiser, the only difference is in application - an electric organ was designed to replicate the sound of a pipe organ and an electric piano was designed to replicate the sound of a piano and to do that the synthesis of timbres were engineered towards the sounds they were designed to replicate. The tab, stops and draw bars of the Hammond replicate the same tab, stops and draw bars in a pipe organ but operate electrical switches rather than levers and air-valves. Even the famous Leslie rotating speaker was an attempt to make the Hammond sound even more like a pipe-organ so essentially, a Hammond Organ is a fixed purpose synthesiser with presets. And the same is true of the electric piano... a preset synthesiser with foot-switches instead of piano peddles.

 

All of the early electronic instruments were forerunners of the modern synthesiser, though none of them actually lead to the development of the synthesiser as we know it. This lack of continuity from the Novachord and Martenot to the Moog (for example) excludes them from being seen as the first musical synthesisers - they were just electronic musical instruments that used timbral synthesis to create sounds.

I have no idea but were not the Buchlas and Moogs a development of the Novachord synthesis principles but replacing the vacuum tubes by transistors?

Replacement of vacuum tubes by transistors was a standard evolution in every electronic device so if that was the case that would make the Novachord a direct precursor leading to the 60's transistor synths?

Thanks Pedro,

Indeed the correct title should have been 'An Illustrated Guide To Some Of The Instruments Frequently Used In Classic Prog Rock' but I had to condense because of title length limitations and I thought that in the present PA context that would be evident. I never meant to give the idea that any of these instruments 'belonged' to the Prog genres!

moshkito wrote: We should/could add here folks like Beaver & Krause, the works of various composers like Stockhausen that was a forerunner of Riley and many others, and then Tomita for sure.

The article is about instruments, not about music or musicians, although I admit that Keith Emerson is perhaps a bit over-mentioned but hey, he did really play a role in all of that story and besides, I'm a fan of him 

moshkito wrote:  ... and I like the 12x12 format! Yours would be magnificent in that size as well!

Excuse my ignorance, what is a 12x12 format?

Not really. The type of oscillators used was not a simple replacement of valves by transistors, there was a radical shift in the types of oscillators used. Making stable low frequency valve oscillators is difficult - however you can make a stable high frequency tone and divide that down to the required low frequency. Other valve based musical instruments generated tones that were above the audio spectrum and them used http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetrodyning" rel="nofollow - heterodyning to shift them down into the audio spectrum. This still presents design and stability problems so the Novachord essentially turned to digital techniques: creating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_%28electronics%29" rel="nofollow - bistable circuits that could oscillate (multivibrators) to generate the 12-tones of the top octave which were then divided down by further bistables to produce the full 72 notes of the instrument. The keyboard essentially gated (switched) these free-running squarewave tones through to the timbral shaping section - this is not dissimilar to the techniques by some electronic organs. The Novachord was a hybrid system mixing digital and analogue technology (albeit in thermionic valves).

 

Buchlas and Moogs did not develop their synthesisers based upon this method of tone generation - they used voltage control to alter the frequency of a single analogue oscillator module. The oscillators used were far more complex in design and operation than the bistables of the Novachord. Early analogue synths were wholly analogue. Later Moog would use a similar divide-down technique in the (not very successful) Polymoog, but I suspect that was based upon contemporary electronic organ designs rather than the lesser known 30 year old Novachord.

 

 

Pedro was referring to 12 inch square book format (same size as a vinyl LP) that Roger Dean used on Views and Storm Thorgerson used on books such as Taken By The Storm.

 

 

@Pedro - Dean produced Magentic Storm (Views 2) in 1984 and Dragon's Dream (Views 3) in 2008.

- Mellotron Mk V which was missing

- In the entry for Lap Steel Guitar I have added the curious Lapaphone played by John Paul Jones, it was built by Hugh Manson so that should please Chuck (Cstack3) 

A couple of minor updates elsewhere.

Are you quite sure about that?

I always thought that, at least in common lay-man terminology, the way sounds are generated and/or edited makes such a difference. 

Devices which generate sound by mechanical / acoustic means and then convert them into electric sound signals (typically by electromagnetic pickups, say an electric guitar, a Hammond, a Hohner Clavinet, a Rhodes, a Wurly etc) are not considered synthesizers.

Devices which generate the sound directly from electronic components (vacuum tubes, transistors, oscillators etc) are considered as either 'electronic keyboards' or as 'synthesizers'.

The main difference between 'electronic keyboard' and 'synthesizer' being that in a synth the user has control on the synthesis and signal processing. An instrument with only presets but no possibility for the user to alter them (such as the ARP String Ensemble) would be called an electronic keyboard, while an instrument allowing the user to play with the synthesis and editing of the waveform would be a synth.

Am I very mislead?

I said "technical/electronic point of view" you said "common lay-man terminology" ... different.

 

From a technical/mechanical point of view there is no difference between a saloon, coupé and a stationwagon

Well, given your usual great explanatory capabilities, I have to say that in this particular case you did not shed any light on my questions (for myself at least I mean) 

From a technical/mechanical point of view there is a difference between a petrol-engine car, a diesel, a hybrid, an electric or a fuel cell one, the way the power is produced makes the difference.

Gerinski wrote: Dean wrote: I said "technical/electronic point of view" you said "common lay-man terminology" ... different.   From a technical/mechanical point of view there is no difference between a saloon, coupé and a stationwagon Well, given your usual great explanatory capabilities, I have to say that in this particular case you did not shed any light on my questions (for myself at least I mean)  From a technical/mechanical point of view there is a difference between a petrol-engine car, a diesel, a hybrid, an electric or a fuel cell one, the way the power is produced makes the difference.

I don't usually use analogies because people don't really understand how analogies work... They are supposed to clarify hard to understand explanations - I made a mistake in using one this time. Your analogy is simply repeating the same point you made about tone generation, there was no need for an analogy because I already understood what you were saying.

-------------
What?

If you want to add guitar amps, I think Hiwatt amps could be added as they were used by David Gilmour, Alex Lifeson, Steve Hackett, Martin Barre, Peter Banks, Gary Green and Robert Fripp (and more I suppose...)

Great pics there!

Not sure if I will attempt to write about the amps, I don't know much about it, of course I know the main brands, Hiwatt, Marshall, Laney, Mesa Boogie, Supro, Ampeg, Vox or Hughes & Kettner (mine is one of the later) but I'm not really an expert, I should need some research in order to write something making sense. Maybe some day 

Of course anyone more expert than me is welcome to write another blog 'An Illustrated Guide to Prog common Amps' 

My class is working on the history of instruments right now on an assignment and some of that info would help.

What is the history of the guitar? It began with medieval instruments such as the lute or mandoliin and developed from there. Of equal importance was the Oud and the guitarra moresca. I teach guitar and the students are citing these instruments in their projects. These photos are earliest use of guitar:  

Its all part of the progression of music - and as always its interesting to know where the music comes from.

Also the RMI entry has been extended to include some more info and pics.

But who knows, maybe as I learn more these may get a place in my article too

For personal reasons I have been rather away from PA for quite some time (and possibly will still remain little involved for some more time) and in the meantime I had been gathering some additional info for this article, but I never found the time to bring the updates to life.

 

Finally I have found some time and I updated quite a lot, around 5,000 words of text and no less than 83 new pictures have been added, more than an article it's becoming a treaty...

 

There are text updates and new pics a bit everywhere but the most significant new pieces of information are:

 

- Mellotron: added Wakeman's custom dual M400

- some new pics and info for the Hammond, ARP synths, Hohner, Farfisa, Vako Orchestron, Poly Synths...

- added Yamaha CP electric pianos

- the entry for Keytars has been significantly extended

- new entry for the Coral Electric Sitar (thanks to Dennis 'The Crimson King' for the suggestion!)

- extended info in the entries for '5 and more string basses' and multi-neck instruments

- Mister Bassman and BassMate bass pedals added in the Taurus entry

- new entry for 'Other guitars and basses'

- new entry for 'Other drums'

 

I hope you enjoy it!

Cheers,

Gerard

 

 

HOLY sh*t!!!

http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=98771&PID=5009357#5009357" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=98771&PID=5009357#5009357

Yes there have been a few updates but I can't recall them by heart

This is the best damn thread about prog instruments I've seen!  Thanks for your hard work on this one! 

Cheers, Chuck (with Ginny & Rick!)

But you posted in the old version of the thread, for technical reasons I migrated the article to a new thread, here

http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=98771&PID=5009357#5009357" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=98771&PID=5009357#5009357

In the new thread the article has received several updates, one of them in the entry for Acoustic Guitars mentioning Ian Anderson's parlour guitar built by your well-known luthier Andy Manson 

Cheers!

Gerard

http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=98771&PID=5009357#5009357" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=98771&PID=5009357#5009357

I didn't delete this old version in order to respect all the comments by members which are here.

I comment a bit about effects at the end of the article but without many details.