what are your "go-to" sounds that define you as a player?

my main sound is the hammond organ sound. somewhere around 668868041 percussion fast and soft. no chorus, no vibrato. i use a lot of 2nd inversions out of habit.

synth wise i pretty much just use sinewave leads and AIR/goldfrapp string sounds.

i played nothing but an old rhodes for a year straight last year but dont really anymore.

so thats what...three sounds?

what are your go-to sounds?

keyboard is my sound. Piano, B3, steel drums, accordian,rhodes If i am feeling playfull ,, i might give you a barking dog while you are announcing a song. The guys i play with have no idea what kinds of sounds that keyboard can make.

Piano and Wurlitzer

HOLLA

Detuned saw wave.

I usually find myself starting out with either rhodes or a punchy/squonky bass patch.

Rhodes via Nord Stage and OASYS

Yamaha VL-1 leads

Mono leads courtesy of my SCI and modular gear

Pads with lots of movement via Absynth, MicrowaveXT and OASYS

Anything with too much PWM, and too much modulation of any other sort too.

Usually i rein it in a bit when i'm recording though

phased rhodes and low passed organ = standard

Two detuned saws, then getting funky with the envelope and LFO.

My signature sound is eeeee---ahhh---ooo---waaaaah----zzzzz-z-z-z-z

My sound is single VCO leads with portamento over hand-sequenced percussive/pad progressions. The organic touch in music and self-training are central aspects in my synth hobby. If it's not playable in real time "by hand" - it's out of my interest (as a musician, not a listener).

Chorus, gotta have chorus.

I can usually make do if all I have is a Hammond.

Of course, hauling my A100 around ain't that easy...

Show off!

get a portable version and call it a day.

on the record there are a few pianos, bells, and synth parts along with organ...i just mock that non-organ stuff with the organ on stage and it sounds pretty rad actually.

an organ is all you need if youre playing tasteful music.

Show off!

Hmm, if 2 detuned saws with ENVs and LFOs is showing off, you're not going to like my stock sound: 2 saws, trombone, and bell sound, with low to med filter ENV Amt, with velocity and aftertouch to open up the filter and amp to touch. The attack of Filter and Amp env is around 50ms, with harder velocity bringing that down to less than 10ms. Bell sound has FM self-modulation on soft touch, obscuring it, and harder strikes reduce FM, giving more clang.

I don't like detuning too much in the higher frequencies, so I use keytrack to make the bottom widely detuned, going less detuned as the notes go higher. Keytracking is also set to alter the slight LFO tremolo on the filter, slower on lower frequencies, faster on high. This gives a very expressive, wide dynamic range, soft and woodwind like at the soft end, loud and brassy at the harder end. Useful for bombastic Beethoven piano sonatas and whatever muse strikes... especially good for lots of 80's full synth sounds, like Rush, Journey and Van Halen.

Layered, of course, in the MIDI rig with a woodwind/organ from the EX5r, and fully open hard sync pulse on the 6HD, and a modified VA bass trombone on the Micron. Can you tell I like brash brass?

i seem to just be able to add white noise and distortion to most osc patches and filter them according to taste and amuse myself.

bit reduction, looping of 'colder' parts (rhodes, piano, smooth synth) and lots of delay.

i'm really paranoid about bass seperation, i would rather there be no bass in a track than muddy bass.. but anything above 1.5k gets a lot more blended. everything is severely lowcut, vocals are chopped off at the balls. that's how i like it to sound. its definitely against some of what i was taught, but oh well.

bass tones on the Future Retro XS....

3 sounds typically make up about 90% of what I use for full set up gigs:

Rhodes w/ a heavy dose of reverb, bass boosted and the tone dropped a bit

Most things and whatnot. Rhodes, piano, organ, clav, synth... whatever suits the music the best. Not that I care that much about signature sounds anyway - I prefer to be defined by my playing.

SID-Style pre-VCA chord emulating arps.

Sine wave lead sounds.

Linear analog FM.

Use of TR-X0X emulations. (303, 808 mostly, occasionally 909)

Modular noodlery.

Piano, rhodes, wurly, a rocking hammond (either 888000088 or 888866400 with plenty of overdrive, chorus 1, maybe third soft percussion), moog-y leads and freaky leads with lots of overdrive and delay.

Oh, and BIG pads.

you guys actually play your keyboards?

I don't get it, our keyboards have like hundreds sounds on board and most of us use 3-5 at most so what's the point to have a synth? what a waste of sounds...

I was actually berating myself for this. As I'm rewiring my rig, I've used my workstations' audio INs as a submixer, and this will force me to play the synths thru the songwriting tool, which means individual sounds. No more comfort zones, playing MIDI layers to noodle on the same ol' songs over and over.

But the counterargument also goes like this -- if it were just all about accessing hundreds of sounds, then any decent preset keyboard would work. But we don't use those. We use synths capable of customizing sounds to get our exact desire.

"Go-to" sounds are just the ones you gravitate towards with the least resistance, ready to go when the playing urge hits. That's not to say we don't also synthesize and use other sounds as well...