“Birdland” performed live by our company jazz band - drums, bass, trumpet, vibes, and me on keyboards. I pulled this off using Oberheim OB-X, Memorymoog, Moog Taurus 3 bass pedals, and Kurzweil romplers. Not a perfect performance but this is a BUSY song on keyboards!
Nice job, MC, and cheers for the entire band! 
- Greg
Hey MC,
How come you were using Taurus Bass Pedals but you have a live bass player ?? 
i could hear left-hand-bass at the start but not pedals ??
Ta mate,
Paul
MC,
Pretty bold to attack some Zawinul. Good work.
One, they are for accents. Two, the sounds change too fast. Three, both hands are busy.
There’s a pedal part near the end that I had to do with feet, it’s not a Taurus sound.
The LH bass in the intro is the Oberheim, which is What Zawinul used. It’s a signature sound that the Moogs couldn’t do. An Oberheim 12dB filter is radically different from a Moog ladder filter in 12dB mode.
One, they are for accents. Two, the sounds change too fast. Three, both hands are busy.
Oh, so you mean you use the pedals to reigger PROGRAM CHANGES on your synths ?? So on a 13 x pedalboard you could store 13 x different program changes ??
The LH bass in the intro is the Oberheim, which is What Zawinul used.
Did Zawinul use a Oberheim for the start of Birdland ?? i was not ever sure what is was thanks.
He used an Oberheim 4 Voice on this song in live gigs anyway, as seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqashW66D7o
Thanks a lot. i assume this is the same synth he used on the album ‘Heavy Weather’.
Not really. My patch changes are managed by my Kurzweil MIDIBoard. For instance, setup #1 configures oberheim, memorymoog, and bass pedals. But changing patches causes an interruption in the audio. Setup #2 configures oberheim memorymoog but not bass pedals. So while I am playing bass pedals, the patches are changing on oberheim and memorymoog but the bass pedal sound is not interrupted.
For a song with many patch changes, it really requires some planning ahead.
So do you ‘Daisy Chain’ the devices together (In/Thru), or do you put everything through a Midi Patch Bay ??
My MIDIBoard has two MIDI outputs. I have two daisy-chained MIDI lines
- Kurzweil ROMplers → Moog Taurus 3 → Hammond XK3
- OB-X → Memorymoog → Korg SDD3300.
Never had any problems. With few exceptions, I played the synths from their keyboards.
I do use a MIDI patchbay in the studio but don’t need it for gigging. And that is about as big a rig I would gig with these days.
It must feel very good to own an OBX and a Memory Moog !! Do lots of people comment on them ??
Not many in person - most folks at work don’t know what that stuff is. The band likes them, we don’t often do shows that warrants bringing the rig (most shows are lunch hours at work)
Sure feels confident sitting behind all that power though