sound on Steve Winwood's "Valerie"

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KarlSutton
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sound on Steve Winwood's "Valerie"

Post by KarlSutton »

I'm not up on my synth history too much, what was the synth he used for the lead on that tune? Is there a way to emulate that with mx4?
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stretta
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Post by stretta »

I'm not up on Steve Winwood tracks, but after listening to it, the entire thing seems pretty synth-drenched. If you're referring specifically to the lead sound, I'll bet two doughnuts that the lead sound is the tried and true minimoog.

Pull up a default patch.

Change the wavetable of an active osc to 'vintage mini' and slide the wavetable index all the way to the right so the waveform looks like a narrow pulse.

Enable a 24dB low pass filter. Pull the filter cutoff to about 44 semitones.

Add some resonance - about .33

Set amp release to about 130ms

Set mode to legato, add a little portamento

If you like, enable stereo, and stereo detune and a little delay.

That should get you most of the way there.
VitcoMusic
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Post by VitcoMusic »

I think Stevie Winwood used a Prophet 5 during that era (as I recall the video) - and it does have that Prophet 'sound'.

DV
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BradLyons
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Post by BradLyons »

Hmmmm would be interesting to know. Years ago from "Mike and the Mechanics" on "All I need is a Miracle", I swore the sound was from a DX7. In a conversation I had with Adrian Lee back in ooooh 1998 or so, he said it was an SH101! Yeah, I was way off :-)
Thank you,
Brad Lyons
db AUDIO & VIDEO
-Systems Advisor, CTS
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