EEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOWWWWW!!!

[klothos]

Im trying to think of songs that have prominent synthesizer filter sweeps.....and which synths were used (and correct me if my facts are wrong)

RUSH - Tom Sawyer I think stands as the epitome, and was that the OB-X? O was that from the Moog Taurus? Polymoog? or something else? (Chroma Polaris?)

others I can think of

Duran Duran - Planet Earth - Which is a Roland Jupiter 8
Depeche Mode - Enjoy The Silence - Not sure, although I think its the analog synth section of a E-Mu Emax II or Emulator
Lita Ford/Ozzy Osbourne - If I Close My Eyes Forever Roland D-50
Black Sabbath - Johnny Blade Don't Know, sounds like a Prophet 5 but probably a Mini-Moog


What else?

[Dave (in MA)]

I thought perhaps you'd had a zipper incident.

[klothos]

I thought perhaps you'd had a zipper incident.

That thread title would be titled "EEEEEEEEEOOOOWWWWW <wimper>"

[Adrian]

Styx - "Too Much Time on My Hands"

No idea what synth would have been used. I know Dennis DeYoung used ARPs and Oberheims.

[progeezer]

I thought perhaps you'd had a zipper incident.

You mean I wasn't alone?

[Digital_Man]

The opening growl on Tom Sawyer was an Oberheim. Not sure the specific model. Maybe guitar geek knows.

[Digital_Man]

Styx - "Too Much Time on My Hands"

No idea what synth would have been used. I know Dennis DeYoung used ARPs and Oberheims.

Well for a sweeping sound I might say "come sail away."

I also want to mention the title track to Alan Parson's Project's "iRobot."

[jowallan lid]

The song that popped into my head was "Frankenstein" by the Edgar Winter Group. Not sure which synth it is.

[trurl]

Tom Sawyer was an OB-X (or maybe an OB-Xa, I don't know for sure- one of the two!). Frankenstein was an ARP 2600.

Another good one is the opening to the Hero and Heroine album, pretty sure that was an ARP Odyssey. And the VCO 3 arpeggiator sweeps on On The Run on DSotM.

[walt]

I assume(correct me if i'm mistaken) that what i hear on Bitches Crystal- ELP is filter sweep.

[trurl]

I assume(correct me if i'm mistaken) that what i hear on Bitches Crystal- ELP is filter sweep.

Hehe, what you hear on nearly every note Keith ever played is filter sweep. Of course, those final notes of Lucky Man are epic and famous...

There's also the intro to Riding The Storm Out, which is more of a note portamento (glide) combined with some filter.

[dropforge]

[klothos]

One I forgot to mention is Mister Kingdom - by ELO, but thats a layer of a Mini Moog and a Wurlitzer with a Flanger, but there's times when the Wurlitzer catches the flanger's downsweep that it overshadows the Moog...Richard Tandy had a stomp-box rig that would make some guitarist's blush ...I thought it was very creative of him to use stompboxes that way, often getting synth-like sounds out of his Wurlitzer that couldn't really be reproduced accurately any other way

[Supersonic Scientist]

The song that popped into my head was "Frankenstein" by the Edgar Winter Group. Not sure which synth it is.

I'm fairly sure that that was an Arp 2500

[GuitarGeek]

Tom Sawyer was an OB-X (or maybe an OB-Xa, I don't know for sure- one of the two!). Frankenstein was an ARP 2600.

It's an OB-X. I don't think OB-Xa existed when Moving Pictures was made. There's some nice filter sweeps on some of the other Rush records, though they're far subtler than the Tom Sawyer thing. There's a bit of a filter sweep on the intro of La Villa Strangiato, though I'm not sure if that's the Taurus pedals or the Oberheim 8-Voice. There's some filter sweeping on Jacob's Ladder too.

The filter sweep that kicks off Van Halen's 1984 is an OB-Xa.

Rick Wright had some nice filter sweeps on the Welcome To The Machine solos, and also on Have A Cigar. I believe both of those was done with a Mini-moog.

There's a bit in The Cinema Show solo where Tony Banks uses a filter sweep sound, I think during the bit just after the big Mellotron choir section. He had a nice filter sweep patch on The Light Dies Down On Broadway, too.

Black Sabbath's Who Are You has a nice filter sweep sound on the main riff.

There's also a really cool filter sweep at the beginning of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Sternklang. I think that's several synths being played together to form a big chord, possibly some of them are the various acoustic instruments some of the musicians are playing, being processed through the synth filters.

And of course, there's Won't Get Fooled Again, which is of course the Lowrey organ being played through the VCS3 filter.

And I think there's a bit of filter sweep on Wakeman's synth interlude that precedes the lute section of The Remembering.

[trurl]

I'm fairly sure that that was an Arp 2500

From what I remember that patch having been a 2600 was a pretty big deal back in the day... I suppose maybe it could have been a 2500 on the recording but all the material I've seen pertaining to it says 2600

[Digital_Man]

Please excuse my ignorance but what exactly is a filter sweep? I think I know but not entirely sure since I've never really heard the term until this thread.

[klothos]

Please excuse my ignorance but what exactly is a filter sweep? I think I know but not entirely sure since I've never really heard the term until this thread.

"Filter Sweep" a.k.a. "Q-Filter Sweep" a.k.a "Resonance Filter Sweep" is that sweeping sound that a synth makes (Think Rush's "Tom Sawyer")...The synth basics to do this is set the Resonance, oir "Q", on a Synth to a specific point and then use the Cutoff control for the amount of slope (shallow to steep)....Using Sustain and Decay, the Cutoff can be set to go from shallow to steep or vise-versa, emulating ascending or descending the Resonance (Q) slope on its own accord (ascending creates a synth "rise", like the opening to "I Ran" by A Flock Of Seagulls)

[Progbear]

The filter sweep from Hell occurs mid-way through “Introduzione” from Il Balletto di Bronzo’s Ys.

Metamorfosi’s Inferno is another great one for filter-sweeps; really the entire sound-library of Mini-Moog settings, actually.

[trurl]

[Adrian]

Poking around a little bit online, I guess DeYoung's sound on "Too Much Time on My Hands" was an Oberheim.



The song is so-so, but I loved that big swooping synth intro even as a kid. I assume that's a filter sweep -- though, like Digital Man, I admit to not being all that familiar with the term.

[trurl]

Just think of a filter sweep as going from a fat to a thin sound, or vice versa, on a single note or chord. That's a gross oversimplification but reasonably accurate. You're using the filter to add or subtract frequencies in the sound to change the sounds harmonic richness. It's a big glorified sweepable eq- the same could be said of a wah-wah pedal which is kind of a dedicated version of the same idea.

[ThomasKDye]

Wow, what perfect timing. A song I've been listening to a LOT lately, Zebra's "Who's Behind the Door." It comes at the end, and it really MAKES the song, giving it that wondrous cosmic sendoff the song deserves.

[trurl]

Oh, good one!!

[3RDegree_Robert]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!