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Smiley Smile Stuff => General On Topic Discussions => Topic started by: PaulTMA on November 08, 2011, 06:08:09 AM



Title: Has anyone ever come across a Reason patch that resembles Brian's late 60s piano
Post by: PaulTMA on November 08, 2011, 06:08:09 AM
?

In one's wet dreams could a Beach Boys equivalent of the Abbey Road Keyboards package be made available (or even possible), but I wondered if anyone ever found a sample that is fairly close to the piano heard on the late 60s home studios recordings?  Wouldn't it be good, as Nik Kershaw famously said.


Title: Re: Has anyone ever come across a Reason patch that resembles Brian's late 60s piano
Post by: guitarfool2002 on November 08, 2011, 09:03:22 AM
An email to Kurzweil might be worth a shot.


Title: Re: Has anyone ever come across a Reason patch that resembles Brian's late 60s piano
Post by: TheManchesterMan on November 08, 2011, 02:37:13 PM
I don't use Reason but have found that the "saloon upright" on my Nord replicates the Smiley Smile/Wild Honey era BBs sound pretty well. The HonkyTonk Upright is a good tack piano sound and the Chamberlain Harpsichord does a great impersonation of the Wonderful type of sound. Not much use if you don't have a Nord keyboard though, but they are well worth it if you can stretch to one (I did have to sell a Farfisa Compact and a Vox Continental as well as take out a loan to afford one but I don't regret it).


Title: Re: Has anyone ever come across a Reason patch that resembles Brian's late 60s piano
Post by: PaulTMA on November 09, 2011, 05:13:44 AM
I don't use Reason but have found that the "saloon upright" on my Nord replicates the Smiley Smile/Wild Honey era BBs sound pretty well. The HonkyTonk Upright is a good tack piano sound and the Chamberlain Harpsichord does a great impersonation of the Wonderful type of sound. Not much use if you don't have a Nord keyboard though, but they are well worth it if you can stretch to one (I did have to sell a Farfisa Compact and a Vox Continental as well as take out a loan to afford one but I don't regret it).

I have the Abbey Road Keyboards for Reason - absolutely great, only a small range of keyboards but you'd have to be a bit demanding to expect much more in one package.  A Nord was twice as expensive as I could have afforded when I bought a stage keyboard.

Either way, I'm still yet to come close to finding something that sounds close to the SS/WH piano, which I'm sure I'd use all the time.


Title: Re: Has anyone ever come across a Reason patch that resembles Brian's late 60s piano
Post by: Joshilyn Hoisington on November 09, 2011, 09:33:44 AM
I'm not a great expert on programming such things, but in theory it wouldn't be that hard to make a sample; just make two copies of some already existing bright grand piano sample, and start detuning them to taste, combine the original with the detuned one, and you'd basically be doing what Brian's tuner did acoustically.


Title: Re: Has anyone ever come across a Reason patch that resembles Brian's late 60s piano
Post by: TheManchesterMan on November 10, 2011, 02:47:58 AM
This has probably been covered many times here so I apologise if I'm retreading old ground, but was the detuned Wild Honey piano a grand or an upright? It sounds more like an upright to me.

Also, what exactly was the harpsichord used on Smile? Was it an electric Baldwin? It sounds like one but the photos of Brian and Van seem to show what appears to be an acoustic instrument.


Title: Re: Has anyone ever come across a Reason patch that resembles Brian's late 60s piano
Post by: Joshilyn Hoisington on November 10, 2011, 04:15:28 AM
This has probably been covered many times here so I apologise if I'm retreading old ground, but was the detuned Wild Honey piano a grand or an upright? It sounds more like an upright to me.

Also, what exactly was the harpsichord used on Smile? Was it an electric Baldwin? It sounds like one but the photos of Brian and Van seem to show what appears to be an acoustic instrument.

Mostly on Wild Honey, it was Brian's Chickering Grand, which was a gift from his Dad.

It seems that the harpsichord they were using was some double-manual job, certainly with a buff-stop.  I haven't seen enough of it to determine much else--though I guess at that time the harpsichord-maker market was probably less widespread than it is now, when you can order pretty much any kind of harpsichord you want.


Title: Re: Has anyone ever come across a Reason patch that resembles Brian's late 60s piano
Post by: TheManchesterMan on November 10, 2011, 04:20:41 AM
Thanks, I did not know anything about the Chickering. Was this instrument confined to use in Brian's home studio only?


Title: Re: Has anyone ever come across a Reason patch that resembles Brian's late 60s piano
Post by: SMiLE Brian on November 10, 2011, 04:24:13 AM
Somebody needs to make a book about the instruments of the band because this topic is so interesting and detailed. The stuff used during pet sounds or smile would be amazing to read about,