Moog Music Forum

Barry's hits used guitar bass..

No ones mentioned Kraftwerk here?

Both progressive and funky, they primarily used the MiniMoog and Arp Odyssey all over all of their 70s albums for bass, leads, drums and fx. They used a number of other synths too, but mostly the Mini and Odyssey.
Also, reportedly, the bass synth on Kraftwerk's "the Model" was a MicroMoog, which you can see them playing live on a number of TV performances along with their Minis and Odysseys. Check out YouTube for a ton of great Kraftwerk live synth performances.

analogbass wrote:ELO was rock lite; not any more memorable than any number of other groups that have faded away, except to ELO fanatics.

FYI in the 70s the keyboardists had a limited choice of a Moog, Arp or Oberheim mono or modular; it was usually easy to tell what they used.

I could see how a person could have that impression of E.L.O., but as an :::ahem::: ELO fanatic, I could easily cite popular tracks which would be less likely to cause that confusion. : ) E.L.O. began as a psychedelic band in 1972. They quickly became a prog band, and within a year established themselves quite comfortably as a rock band. (Remember "Evil Woman?") With the release of New World Record in 1976, they became a "pop" band... call that "rock lite," if you will.
Still, memorable Moog tracks are not limited by whether or not the genre is macho, hard, or... whatever else.

There are and were plenty of famous Moog users and tracks that were "lite," anyway... hell, look at Perrey-Kingsley, Wendy Carlos, Even the Beatles stuff. Most Prog can hardly be considered "heavy," especially in comparison to what came later.

I am comfortably aware of what synthesizers were available to musicians in the 70s. All of the analog synths available, at least brand-wise, were available in the seventies. FYI, here's a short list of available synths in the 1970s:
Pretty much every Moog of note excepting the Source and Memorymoog. The Minimoog and the Sonic Six are similar in sound in nearly no way at all.
Pretty much every single ARP, including such totally disparate sounding devices as the 2600, Pro Soloist, and the Omni.
Rolands as far apart in sound as the SH-1000 and the Jupiter 4.
Yamahas as far apart as the SY-1 to the CS-80, and some of the later monophonics... the CS series monophonics, which sound nothing like the SYs or the CS polyphonics.
Oh, my GOD, Korgs... How similar is the Minikorg to the Maxikorg? Well, closer than, say... the Minikorg and the Micropreset. How about the Polyphonic Ensembles... the two of them as compared to all other string synths that were available from nearly every major synth manufacturer? While the PS-3100 has a very distinctive sound, it can sound like several polyphonics available from 1975 on(the polymoog and the PS both featured a voltage controlled resonator). What about the Korg MS series as compared to their several string synths?
What about Aries, and EMS, and Sequential Circuits, and etc. etc.
Almost all of the famous analog synths (excepting things like the Roland Junos, Jupiters, the MonoPoly, etc. were available in the 70s.

Keyboardists in 1970-1972 had a pretty limited choice of synthesizers... but it wasn't long after that before keyboardists in the 70s had most of the same analog choices we do today.

Well...no. Not at all in fact. ELO using a Mini was pretty much standard practice then-the common choice was basically which camp you would elect to side with through the 70s, Mini or Odyssey.

Minis were marketed based on their superior sound, the Odyssey for stable oscillators, lower price and greater flexibility in programming. Basically most synth sounds in the 70s excluding strings were a Mini or an Odyssey. There really wasn't much else that sounded good and was easy to use, save for an occasional Oberheim or modular. Oberheims like the OB-1 and SEM were around but in smaller numbers, as were early Rolands like the SH-1000. Modulars were expensive and much harder to tour with let alone program.

The next wave of monophonics from Moog, Yamaha, Sequential, Korg & Roland weren't heard on record until the end of the 70s; virtually the beginning of the 80s. That included the Prodigy, the Multimoog, Source, the Prodigy's rival the Pro-One, various Rolands like the SH-1 and later the SH-101, and the versatile Yamaha CS-series.

I do remember Evil Woman-it was drummed into everyone's head along with all the other top-40 pop played then; basically they were competing with the Bay City Rollers. Thank god they & other 70s pop groups haven't been revived!!!!

MC wrote:I was in a bar that was playing a Barry White CD. That characteristic Minimoog "boink" bass was all over that CD.

Hello,

In the late eighties/early nineties, Barry White did start using electric keyboards and drum machines in his arrangements. On many of those releases, he utilized the talents of keyboardists like the Terry Lewis/Jimmy Jam duo, as well as his godson, Chuckii Booker. During that time, Booker
used a Minimoog D for many of his bass tracks. The Mini was a gift to him
from Barry and his wife. His name appears on some of Barry's credits as
'Eugene Booker'. You probably heard one of those tracks.
He was actually a very high-profile producer/keyboardist during that time and appeared on a number of releases with people ranging from saxophonists Gerald Albright and the late Art Porter, to rapper Tupac Shakur.


Regards,


Lawrence