Wednesday, November 08, 2017

Keyboards, Then and Now

I heard this song from Booker T and the MG's this weekend:


Listen to the sound of the keyboard.  Doesn't it sound a lot like the keyboard in this Doors classic, Light My Fire?


To me they share a very distinct sound.  Now compare that sound to the (stereotypical) keyboard sound of this 80's song, Who's Zoomin' Who:


A very different kind of keyboard!

2 comments:

  1. Electric organ is different from analog synthesizer which is different from digital synthesizer.
    I bet the first two are electric organs (Fender Rhodes, maybe?)
    and the 80s is an early digital synth.
    Missing from the mix is the analog goodness of Jean Michel Jarre, Vangelis, and Tangerine Dream. (To be fair, they did use digital as it became available, but their earlier works were all analog and patch cords.)

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  2. cthulhu4:23 PM

    I think there's a huge difference between the organ tone on "Green Onions" vs "Light My Fire". Booker T. played a Hammond tonewheel organ (likely either a M3, or a B3/C3 without a Leslie speaker). Ray Manzarek played something like a Vox Continental or maybe a Farfisa organ, a significantly different instrument with a more restrictive tonal palette than the Hammond tonewheel organs.

    The '80s song is probably a Yamaha DX7 synth.

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