[QUOTE=Trane;1056694]The Synclavier isn't a guitar synth. Or at least it wasn't conceived as one. They did eventually equip it with it's own guitar interface (but you had to use one of the Roland G series guitars, or something equipped with the aftermarket kits that Roland offered), adn then later it was MIDI equipped, so you could use it with any MIDI instrument. But most people used it, used it as a keyboard instrument.Actually, I wasn't thinking of Synclaviers or others forms of guitar synths.
I'm not sure what you mean by "everyday synths". Keyboard instruments, perhaps?I was thinling of everyday synths.
There's guitar running through most o fit, but it was kinda buried under the synths.I never witnessed Rusjh on stage post-Pictures, so I don't know what Alex was doing during the newer material's execution.
I seem to recall that when they were gearing up to write music for the next album, I forget which one, Alex suggested that he wanted to do something without any keyboards at all, and he kinda made it sound like that was a big condition for him to even think about going forward with the next album.I mean there is so little guitar (upfront) in those album, that I would've stormed out of the band
Alex was playing bass pedals as early as Hemispheres. Watch the La Villa Strangiato video. YOu can see him playing the bass pedals there. I seem to recall that at some point Geddy got Alex and Neil's case, because he felt he was diong so much work onstage, sometimes doing three things at once, he wanted the others to share in that load. So Alex started playing pedals as well. Eventually, when electronic percussion tech developed suitably, Neil started triggering sequences and synth parts from his drumkit also.Bass pedals were generally used on stage by Geddy while he was on keys, but I guess that got transfered to Lifeson (never heard that before, though) to keep him busy and give him some importance on stage
Also, "bass pedals" weren't always used to play bass lines, and not always when Geddy was playing keyboards, e.g. on Xanadu, there's a synth going during the first vocal section, while Geddy is playing bass guitar. I'm not sure if that's Alex or Geddy playing it, but it's definitely not a bass part.
I think they wanted to move away from the more "metal" sounding stuff. I think at least from Geddy's stand point, one thing was he wanted to be able to sing in a lower register. I've seen at least one interview where he said the reason he sang the way he did in the 70's was because that was the only way you could sing when playing that kind of music. So I think he wanted to take the music in a different direction, if for no other reason than for him to not have shriek his way through everything.But yeah, maybe Lifeson wasn't writing much or couldn't come up with sstuff that would sound like the then-modern Rush sonics.
He might've tried writing more metal stuff (I mean guitars sort of survived the 80's via all those forms of metal musics).
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