Arturia ARP 2600v for covering The Who - "Relay" ?

[lanfisher]

Hello,

My band is doing The Who's "Relay." To get the signature guitar sound in the song, Pete Townshend apparently fed his guitar into an input in the VCF section of the ARP 2600 synthesizer.

I am just wondering if anyone would be able to comment on the viability of recreating Townshend's signature sound using Arturia's ARP 2600v. It is my understanding that you can feed an external audio signal into the ARP 2600v using a digital audio interface. And if it is viable, would it be very difficult to program this type of effect? Here is the song:

Thanks,
Lanny

PS - I know this seems like a guitar question, but the ARP 2600 is integral to the sound.

 

[Ted Nicoson]

This is an excerpt from a review of the 2600v by Gordon Reid at Sound-On-Sound (SOS) that describes what you are talking about:

If you wanted to get silly with an ARP 2600, you could present external signals to its inputs and see what happened. However, there was just one place where ARP intended that you should insert such signals. This was the Preamplifier, with its associated Envelope Follower. These are recreated on 2600V, and using them proves to be simple. In my case, it meant loading 2600V as a VST instrument under my chosen VST host (Plogue's Bidule), whereupon it appeared with two audio inputs as well as two outputs. I could then direct the output from other software synths to these inputs, patching the output from the Preamplifier and/or the Envelope Follower to the destination(s) of my choice.

For the entire review article, see:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun05/articles/arturia2600.htm

The only current hardware device similar to this that I can think of is the Casio XW-P1 synth. It will allow you to process an external audio signal, not only through the synth's effects banks (which several other recent keyboards will do), but also through the unit's envelope generators as thought that signal were a wave from one of the WX-P1's own internal oscillators. So you can control that external signal's ADSR, vary the TVA and TVF parameters and cutoff and resonance, and still run it through the effects banks. It makes for some really interesting sounds, but what I'm hearing in the video you posted sounds a whole lot like a standard vocoder, only with ooohs and ahhhs instead of words as the modulating source.

 

[lanfisher]

This is an excerpt from a review of the 2600v by Gordon Reid at Sound-On-Sound (SOS) that describes what you are talking about:



For the entire review article, see:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun05/articles/arturia2600.htm

The only current hardware device similar to this that I can think of is the Casio XW-P1 synth. It will allow you to process an external audio signal, not only through the synth's effects banks (which several other recent keyboards will do), but also through the unit's envelope generators as thought that signal were a wave from one of the WX-P1's own internal oscillators. So you can control that external signal's ADSR, vary the TVA and TVF parameters and cutoff and resonance, and still run it through the effects banks. It makes for some really interesting sounds, but what I'm hearing in the video you posted sounds a whole lot like a standard vocoder, only with ooohs and ahhhs instead of words as the modulating source.

Thanks! I'll try playing around with the pre-amp input and see what I can come up with, in that case. I thought it sounded fine with our guitarist just using his wah-wah peddle, but he wants it to sound as authentic as possible. I love the challenge, so I'll keep toying around with the 2600v and see what can be done.

 

[Ted Nicoson]

When I made that comment about it sounding like a vocoder, I had started to put wah-pedal, but the more I listened to it the more I realized there was more to it than that, so apparently I was hearing what your guitarist hears in it. Also, that kind of randomness is a bit hard to get with a wah-pedal, unless you are really good with it. Most of us "think" we are being random when we are really being repetitive. Anyway, here is another link that is a little more to the point. Scroll about half way down the page for a very brief description of exactly what Pete did with the Arp 2600 for "The Relay". If you click on the words "The Relay", it is another link that will take you to some guitar tabs of various sections of the song. Your guitarist might appreciate that as well. If you read the entire article, you will come across a statement that he did most of the work with the Arp at home and brought it to the studio already recorded. When you see the size of that thing, it's no wonder. Who would want to lug that beast around ?

http://www.thewho.net/whotabs/gear/guitar/arp.html

Good luck !

 

[lanfisher]

Thanks! I think I'll have to read the ARP 2600v manual in detail, because I wasn't clear from the article as to where exactly Pete plugged his guitar into -- the Sample and Hold, the VCF, or the Pre-amp. I wish I had a real ARP to play around on. Speaking of which, Korg has announced that it is releasing a brand new model of ARP Odyssey this September.

 

[Hodor]

That is definitely a sample & hold effect. There are various options, all cheaper than a 2600, lol.
One of these pedals would do it - fast-forward to about 2'45". . .