Won't get fooled again

Rayblewit

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Why can't I see any vids of the synth being played on this song. None ever feature a keyboard. This song has an awesome synth intro and outro synth riff . .


Anyone have a link to a keyboard visual?

Cheers ray
 
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I would hazard a guess in that (a) it was a studio recording just played back when the band played live (b) it was not a synth as we know it but a Hammond which was then fed through a filter box.

It was Pete Townsend who created the sound in the studio and this is a vid of him showing how it was done

 

SeaGtGruff

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What I've heard on other forums is that they use the studio recording in concert. I think it would probably be tricky to try to duplicate in a live performance on stage.
 
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What I've heard on other forums is that they use the studio recording in concert. I think it would probably be tricky to try to duplicate in a live performance on stage.
Yes they always have used a backing track for this song. In the clip that Ray posted you can see Keith Moon wearing cans which I presume are feeding him a click so he can stay in time with the track.
 
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Wow! My wife and I were just listening to that the other day, and musing over how it was done. This was pretty much what I'd predicted. Yeah, the Who NEVER used keyboards live on stage, and it actually helped drive Moon to his death (probably would have done it anyway). Townsend always wanted to have a keyboardist play live, but Roger wouldn't have any of it (didn't want to split the check). So every time they had a keyboard heavy tune, Keith had to play to a click (including the entire Quadraphenia album), and often times the tapes would break or warp mid-show and cause him a whole lot of stress. It was on the Quadraphenia tour that Moon upped his drug regiment to ridiculously dangerous levels.

Folks, this is why you hire a keyboard player!
 
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Anyway, I have an idea how you could fake it on stage pretty well, hear me out. So the sound has 3 components: a hammond organ, through a resonant filter sweep (driven manually or by a very slow LFO), than a square-wave AMP LFO timed to make the eighth-notes.

The first two stages are easy, just pull up a good hammond patch, create a filter sweep, and modulate it with a very slow LFO. For a quick-and-dirty, you could just stop there and play the eighth notes, which would probably satisfy most shows, though it won't be 100% authentic, and maybe a bit tiring after a while.

If you want to put in the amp LFO but not have to use a click, here's what I've done with similar things in the past. Most synths have a monophonic LFO trigger option, so that all notes are modulated by the same LFO timing, but not a "sync" LFO which is constantly driven by a timer (you'd need to give the drummer a click to that... and then... drugs). The nice thing about this is that as long as one key is still being held, the LFO produces exactly the same timing, so you can go a few measures with the robotic pulses, and slightly slippery chord changes as long as one note remains the same (which in that song, many are). But then the moment you feel it getting slightly off, you can play the chord again, and the LFO will restart and snap to the beat you played it on.

I use this trick with an accordion patch in a Pogues song ("If I Should Fall from Grace with God"). The accordion player starts madly pumping the box and doing sixteenth-notes that work very well with a pulse LFO. So I just through on a mono-LFO, but every time I switch chords, I can sync back to the drummer, no matter how much he drifts (and he does!).
 
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Yeah, honestly, I think playing all the notes seems like the best idea to me, and you can make sure to stay locked with the band. My band does "Bet Your Life", and even after just 4 bars of that sequenced pulse wave in the beginning, the drummer can never seem to stay locked with me, and I just shut it off and play it manually. I just hate doing sequenced shit... such a pain, drummers hate it, and it feels really unnatural. I've played in a few bands where someone had the bright idea of doing it, and it was always a disaster.

Baba O'Riley is the greatest, because you never have more than two notes sequenced, so you can be absolutely sure to be locked with the band at all times. I get all kind of weird theories from fans as to how it's being done... no, Baba O'Riley was just played, period... it just repeats the note when you hold it down. It wasn't sequenced, it wasn't some kind of mathematical fractal formula, it was just Pete screwing around on a cheap organ with a "vibraphone tremolo" setting. Genius!
 
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HAH! I just read that, unsurprisingly, "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" both use the same organ, the "Lowrey Organ" (not a hammond), which is a transistor organ like a Vox Continental or Farfisa. This would make it even easier to approximate in a non-sampling synthesizer using basic waveforms, especially if you've got a wavetable synth around (like NI Massive, my go-to, which has additive transistor waves built in).

For those of us who couldn't view the original video of Pete explaining, here's a kid who does a really good job:
 
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Wait... why does LFO1 continue over multiple notes and is monophonic, but LFO2 is polyphonic and locks to the attack? Are these two LFOs setup differently? That's kind of a shame he can't make them both monophonic. Otherwise, the Sledge looked like a pretty neat device. By Fatar, right?
 

happyrat1

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The Sledge is by Studiologic, uses a Fatar keybed, I'm not sure if Studiologic owns Fatar or if it's the other way around.

AFAIK both LFOs are configured the same by the same menu controls and can be set to identical settings.

I own one but I'm not that much of a sound tweaker.

I do love mine a lot though.

Gary ;)
 
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StudioLogic is the consumer division of Fatar. You used to be able to buy "Fatar" hardware, but now they brand all of their consumer products as "StudioLogic", with Fatar being the umbrella name and the brand associated with hardware supply. Same company though.

Anyway, sounds like you're saying it the LFOs CAN be setup for monophonic triggering, he just didn't happen to have it setup right and wanted to keep the tutorial short. He did a nice job, but that detail had me worried about whether the synth was capable of changing it's LFO triggering. Good to know. I've been thinking of pickup up an analog or virtual analog at some point. Though, I figure if I'm gonna do it, might as well go all out and get a DSI Prophet 6. Huge fan of the original, and they can do just about anything.
 

happyrat1

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I just watched the video again.

The problem was that the sledge itself was set to polytonic instead of monotonic. Necessary for the tune.

Like he said, the LFO's have no gate setting.

Gary ;)
 
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So... when the full synth is set to poly the LFOs automatically become poly? That's kinda unfortunate. I'm used to playing poly with mono LFOs. I don't find Poly LFOs to be very useful.
 

Rayblewit

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Paul,
From your posting above of TheWho tabs .

Those photos of Pete T's home studio from the 60's are fascinating. Thanks for the link. Most interesting.

Ray
 

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