Your 3 favorite keyboard solos?

Nobody separates anything, I was right, i don't think you understand what this thread is about. 

Genesis - Apocalypse in 9/8, The Cinema Show, Firth of Fifth

IQ - My Baby Treats Me Right 'Cos I'm a Hard Lovin' Man All Night Long

Kansas - Piano solo introducing Lonely Wind (Two for the Show)

UK - Carrying No Cross

Rick Wakeman - Excerpts from The Six Wives of Henry VIII (Yessongs)

Usually, the focus is on the finished work and not necessarily the process.

Let's face it, a lot of the prog guys we love may not be able to cook up something on the spot à la George Duke. That's why he's the Duke!

Emerson's work on the entire first side of "Tarkus" 

Moraz's synth solo on "Relayer" 

Peter Bardens - solo in Lunar Sea.

John Tout - opening solo for Running Hard.

David Sancious - "Matter of Time"

Lee Michaels - "Stormy Monday"

Stressed Cheese wrote: ... You just mention classical music and opera and the vague idea of "history" to appear intellectual and superior to the rest of us. But a real intellectual would know when those topics add absolutely nothing to the discussion at hand. Still inserting them regardless is like a 15-y/o's idea of intellectualism.

Hi,

As if your comment was not about your own superiority, since no one else can disagree with you or the others!

And the discussion, on my part, was COMPARATIVE, not the kind of fan made comments.

I am not sure that "solo" was as "visible" as it has been made today as DE suggests. I do think, from my listening perspective, that in what we call/consider music history going back 500 years, perhaps the scoring that has survived had a tendency to "hide" solos, which nowadays, rock music does not hide at all. So, yeah, and we know (via RW ... hahaha!!!) that Vivaldi liked showing off and it is likely and possible that he disguised what we would consider a solo in his music, but if Rick's comments and study/special on Vivaldi, it seems that he did more than just what we know and seems to have survived, and was more of a solo'ist (for lack of a better term) when he wanted to show off.

But, in essence, music history has (in college) hidden some things, and solos is one of them. Opera "arias" were never intended as "solos" although it would be impossible to tell if Puccini and Verdi created a bunch of them because they had such tremendous singers around them ... one listen to Tebaldi and Nilson in Turandot makes one wonder if a composer would not want to do something for them individually ... or another example was Maria Callas doing Carmen. When I was listening to these things at 10 years old, I liked them, but never EVER thought of them as solos, and the story was complete ... without a hitch.

I have no issues with some "solos" in rock music, and there are many good ones, but the reverse is also true when a "solo" is there, and it is mechanical and boring.

I, personally, as I mentioned above, do not like to consider Keith a solo'ist at all ... his composition skills were immense and even hearing DD discuss them only shows a class in composition that very few folks are capable of being at. I like the "sound" that RW creates, but find his "riffs" somewhat the same in a different keyboard, which to me is ... not quite a good rating of a keyboard talent. I enjoyed many other keyboard players (and still do) whose work will forever be ignored here ... someone like Ryuichi Sakamoto comes to mind, and his talent has included an incredible number of sound tracks, and various solo albums where some stuff is experimental, and tremendous fun to listen to (Beauty/Heartbeat/NeoGeo) ... and like Richard Wright for PF, I also like the sound tapestries that Falk U. Rogner created for Amon Duul 2 i their early days ... up to and including "Wolf City" those keyboard sounds were magnificent.