I'm going to be playing some keys in a and and am looking for good early Motown kind of horns.
You're in luck, quite a few MIDI synths and samplers, the Horn "Section" Patches can do that task very well, and likely are targeted at them to begin with.
And, John, do not overlook Hammond Organ patches as substitute for many of the Motown horn section stuff, works a treat in actual practice, adds drama that the static horn part on one keyboard can't, provides the ability to also become a PAD for the parts where the horns might drop out and just plain works better in the combo band performance.
Or as we used to say back in the days when the Hammond with Leslie was king keyboard, "Just hold down two keys and flick the Leslie switch off and on, the singers'll do the rest..."
Playing live, I think this will be a better option than the "horns" synth patch you would likely find in your keyboard banks.....
Run a good DAW in your laptop and be sure to use a quality interface with ASIO drivers since you will need this to run in real time with extremely low latency.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.com Add nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.
The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
Playing live, I think this will be a better option than the "horns" synth patch you would likely find in your keyboard banks.....
Run a good DAW in your laptop and be sure to use a quality interface with ASIO drivers since you will need this to run in real time with extremely low latency.
Thanks. I'm DL the free player & free sounds. Need to try it on my XP machine and see if it works.If it does the horns sound just like what I'm after.
Here is the reason why I personally have found more success as the sole keyboardist using Hammond Organ or MIDI keyboard solutions to same in cover band work of this type:
The target recording that has the Horn Section in it likely always also has keyboard parts in it, and when we are talking Motown recordings of that era, more than likely there is more than one keyboard in there as well. Not uncommon for the Funk Brothers to have a Pianist on an Acoustic Piano plus at least the Mighty Hammond in there. Or Pianist on Wurlitzer Electric Piano and again the Mighty Hammond in there, at least padding away as only the Hammond can do. There can also be Vibes as well. Or Clavinet. etc.
This type of keyboard ensemble work took some thought and quite literally some communication between the players as to who would play what and when they would play it in an arrangement, quite often the keyboard players would not be playing full two-handed style, but playing just enough with one hand, or just utilizing a rather small number of notes fro each keyboard, yielding a sound in the mix that was not going to muddy things up. "Put one hand in yer pocket" was the mantra delivered on how to accomplish this sort of thing in studio work.
But out there playing live in a combo situation, with only one keyboardist available, concentrating on only the Horn Parts leaves the rhythm section sorely lacking.
Some keyboardists attempt to do both tasks simultaneously, using two or more keyboards, setting one keyboard for a Horn Patch and another for Piano, etc. I have yet to hear one that could do the Motown thang much justice by attempting that, although I suppose it could be possible - with a lot of work on the part of the keyboardist.
But Motown backing is more about the GROOVE than about covering all parts heard on the studio cut.
Of all the keyboard sounds available to us, the Hammond Organ is the one that can bring all aspects of what is needed to the song by simply playing what is needed to played at each certain point in the song. Judicious use of Patch Changes or Drawbar Settings throughout, coupled with things like Leslie spinups and spindowns, use of Hammond Percussion when the percussive sound of piano or electric piano is needed, all of these can work in your favor and make the performance so much more of a success than attempting to be a Horn Section that it is what I choose to do the majority of the time.
Horn Section should be saved for the time when the group can afford to utilize two or more good real horn players.
Avoid the Cheese, man, go for the sound of "Music's Most Glorious Voice" as Laurens Hammond used to advertise his creation.
The real trick to B3 in this aspect is to figure out how to keep changing things on the organ as the song progresses.
ANIMATION of the sounds is the most important aspect.
If using a MIDI keyboard or synth with built in B3 sounds, find the Patches that will go together within the framework of the tune, and be able to switch between them midstream.
And SWITCH.
Sometimes in mid phrase.
Use one hand on the keys and the offhand on the Vol slider at the same time. If you have an Expression Pedal, by all means plug it up and use it instead.
Change Patches
Change Dynamics
Glissandos and Smears -- But do not overdo them. There are three basic smears for Hammond, one is all white key smear, one is all black key smear and the last is combination of both white and black keys at same time. They fit into different keysigs. Use yer ears. Upwards is likely used more than downwards. The number of keys pressed at same time makes for vastly different sounding smears, experiment and find yours.
Change Playing Sytle (for example, hold one key that is in both successive chords down while changing chords. like in the case of moving from C7 to F7, keep holding the C note while switching the other two notes.) OR move from Legato style playing to Chopping - and back.
Don't overlook the "thin" sounding Patches where there is typically only one white drawbar pulled, these settings are the heart of B3 Padding - and sometimes soloing as well.
Avoid the "Jazz" patches (88800000 or 88880000) for the Motown work - "Gospel" patches are the choice, but don't hesitate to do anything that works in context with your singers.
Keep changing things throughout. Nothing worse than having to listen to some cat pounding one MIDI organ patch throughout the entire song. Organ ain't Piano.
They're fundamentally different products. Vintage Horns is set up to copy the sound of "vintage" horns, and expects that you're going to multitrack the parts in a DAW.
Session Horns assumes you want the sounds of a horn section, and automatically split parts "live" for you, sending different notes to different instruments. You can't actually play any single instrument using this library.
As for getting "that" sound... I bow to Mac's expertise.
They're fundamentally different productes. Vintage Horns is set up to copy the sound of "vintage" horns, and expects that you're going to multitrack the parts in a DAW.
Session Horns assumes you want the sounds of a horn section, and automatically split parts "live" for you, sending different notes to different instruments. You can't actually play any single instrument using this library.
As for getting "that" sound... I bow to Mac's expertise.
John, now, if'n they're going to cover "Heard it Through the Grapevine" - forget the hammond organ and find yourself a nice Wurly Electric sound that has the Wurly Tremelo on it, 'K?
If you have two keyboards available, set the upper one to String Ensemble as well. But with one keyboard, go with the Wurly.
When the various Motown acts toured to promote their hits, The Funk Brothers did not go out with them, there were touring bands put together to back them.
Many of those touring acts did not feature the horns, dual keyboards and three guitars plus two drumsets and a separate tamborine player with congas, etc. as in their studio recordings, and so the backup bands had to work with the instrumentation they had at hand rather than attempting to cover all that was heard on the target studio recorded records.
The GROOVE being the most important part of the thing, that's what they would go after and it always worked out fine.
If you got the right groove, you can do those Motown covers with just a single acoustic guitar and a cajon backing a singer that can sing the song:
The most important aspect of these type of tunes is the timing - which points directly at "the dance" I've talked about before around here. These guys, you could dance to. Because the music dances. And to your audience, that is what counts, even if they aren't dancing.
Gettin' the groove comes before concerns about instrumentation.
Adding Bass, Drums, Keyboards, whatever else, is then just icing on the already tasty cake.
On the other hand, you could get into a situation where you have every instrument available on the original studio track available including background vox, but don't got the groove. And then you don't got nuthin'.
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