New Sound: Jordan Rudess LTE Lead! (Accurate)

enigmahack · Post by **enigmahack** » Mon May 11, 2015 5:17 am

Just a quick blurb:

I wanted to make JR's lead sound on the Kronos. I know it could be done, but I don't have my old Kurzweil anymore so I had to go on sound clips and memory. I can DEFINITELY get it closer sounding if I could get my hands on an old K2500/2600 keyboard and throw my sounds on there... My PC3K just isn't the same unfortunately. (Had I known, I wouldn't have gotten rid of my old Kurzweil)

Anyway, I digress.

This sound is Jordan Rudess's old lead from LTE/SFAM days, and I wanted to get something usable. When I manage to sell my PC3K8, I'll get a K2600 board or rack and load up my old sounds and convert them all over but in the meantime, this is a pretty decent replication which is more accurate than any other I've heard so far.

Here's me playing the Fatal Tragedy solo (I haven't played this is YEARS so advance apology for the mistakes. Need to practice this solo to get it back up to speed)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/490 ... LDLead.mp3

And for those interested, here's the Combi/Programs that make the sound:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/490 ... LDLEAD.PCG

There's a nice little surprise in there for those of you who download/load this up by way of complete combi's for the entire Erotomania song. (From the Awake album)

I'll get this lead more accurate once I get a Kurzweil 2500/2600 but for the meantime, it sounds pretty good to me though there is still work to be done.

I hope you all enjoy

jimknopf · Post by **jimknopf** » Mon May 11, 2015 9:36 am

Great job, enigmahack! I really like that lead, thank you very much!

The roots of this kind of synth lead programming are quite obvious:
- it's clearly a Jan Hammer derivate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n58nn2nDXrE
Listen from 1:20 onward.

Jan Hammer was THE groundbreaking synth programmer for any guitar-like synth leads and synth playing techniques, and everybody else later profited from that groundbreaking work. Jerry Kovarsky is just publishing a very nice series of Jan Hammer sound programming tutorials in the "Keyboards" magazine. He starts with the basics and will probably add the overdrive/sync sounds it the follow-ups.
http://www.keyboardmag.com/create-sound ... ound/51986

drama1 · Post by **drama1** » Mon May 11, 2015 2:03 pm

This guy is killing me. Programming skills are killer. Thanks again and again.

plisken · Post by **plisken** » Tue May 12, 2015 1:05 am

Its not to hard to make the Kronos version of his lead that he uses now. It sound pretty similar to the old one minus a few things like the piano layer.

I will check it out when I get home, Im always interested in seeing how different people go about making the same sound. Sometimes some people use some weird or unexpected ways to get the same sound and the original they are trying to emulate.

plisken · Post by **plisken** » Tue May 12, 2015 1:18 am

I made this video almost a year ago, but its a bunch of lead sounds I did using only the Kronos without any external samples. I have tweaked the last one quite a bit since then but the main sound is the same. Would love to know what you guys think of the sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XldxZS2SFe8

Pedja · Post by **Pedja** » Tue May 12, 2015 7:49 am

First Thanks enigmahack,
For your great collection of sounds, you share with us (again). You are very productive and very good sound designer. Thanks for tutorials too, they really helps. One, maybe stupid question: What sounds from JROLDLEAD.PCG did you use in JR-OLDLead.mp3 sample? I tried all programs and combies from collection, but I didn't succeed to find same sound, that you used, in your mp3 sample. Thanks for all you effort, to help us, to use Kronos in much higher level.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Tue May 12, 2015 9:24 am

I think you pretty much nailed it. What do you mean by "I could get even closer than this"? It's pretty much spot on. Well, perhaps slight tweaks to the sound of feedback layers...

enigmahack · Post by **enigmahack** » Tue May 12, 2015 11:16 am

plisken wrote:Its not to hard to make the Kronos version of his lead that he uses now. It sound pretty similar to the old one minus a few things like the piano layer.

There's no piano layer in his actual lead. The Liquid T Lead in the K2600 was a "public" version which was sonically similar but had a distinct lack of attack compared to his actual lead sound which used the Orchestral and Contemporary ROM's, and trying to recreate that on a different synth can be a challenge. If you're moreso referencing his existing lead that he uses on the Kronos, I'd be curious to see how you approach his multi-layer harmonic "feedback" programs. I could give you examples if you want, I'm always down for learning how to do things potentially differently.

I guess easy is subjective to your level of accuracy that you're going for
too though, so what you consider accurate, I might not or vice-versa.

Pedja wrote:First Thanks enigmahack,
For your great collection of sounds, you share with us (again). You are very productive and very good sound designer. Thanks for tutorials too, they really helps. One, maybe stupid question: What sounds from JROLDLEAD.PCG did you use in JR-OLDLead.mp3 sample? I tried all programs and combies from collection, but I didn't succeed to find same sound, that you used, in your mp3 sample. Thanks for all you effort, to help us, to use Kronos in much higher level.

The main lead is in the combi. It's too complicated for just a single program to handle in the Korg world of 2 oscillators per engine. If you go to the Combi's, they reference the programs that you're talking about so if the programs are stored in the wrong location, the combi has nothing useful to reference.

EvilDragon wrote:I think you pretty much nailed it. What do you mean by "I could get even closer than this"? It's pretty much spot on. Well, perhaps slight tweaks to the sound of feedback layers...

What I mean is that there are sonic characteristics that I want to get even closer. The higher end of the keyboard to me sounds almost spot on but the lower end has less grunge and cutting through than the real lead from the Kurzweil. The feedback layer is pretty close to my ears, but that also wasn't the focus of the sound either though very much an important aspect.

Anyway, the nuances and details of how the sound "feels" to play isn't exactly the same as when I had my old Kurzweil and that's one of the ways that I know I've nailed it.

So it's close, but I'm not happy with it yet. I need someone with a Kurzweil 2500/2600 with the Orchestral/Contemporary ROM files who can sample for me a few different velocities and isolate the individual layers of the sound for me to really absolutely completely nail it.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Tue May 12, 2015 11:31 am

enigmahack wrote:but the lower end has less grunge and cutting through than the real lead from the Kurzweil.

I get you. This might be where two synthesis engines completely differ from one another (VAST on one side and whatever you used on Kronos). Kronos definitely sounds much more polished/bandlimited, and it's harder to get those gritty textures (basically, aliasing, in most cases) on Kronos, because it's so clean.

There was this one video in which Rudess went through his lead sound on the K2500 (I think it was) soloing layer by layer... Can't find it now. But the piano layer (at least in the PC3 lead here) is only ever happening on higher keys. Adds some more punch. Quite a cool idea, regardless if it's a part of the actual lead Jordan uses or not.

plisken · Post by **plisken** » Tue May 12, 2015 6:07 pm

enigmahack wrote:
plisken wrote:Its not to hard to make the Kronos version of his lead that he uses now. It sound pretty similar to the old one minus a few things like the piano layer.
There's no piano layer in his actual lead. The Liquid T Lead in the K2600 was a "public" version which was sonically similar but had a distinct lack of attack compared to his actual lead sound which used the Orchestral and Contemporary ROM's, and trying to recreate that on a different synth can be a challenge. If you're moreso referencing his existing lead that he uses on the Kronos, I'd be curious to see how you approach his multi-layer harmonic "feedback" programs. I could give you examples if you want, I'm always down for learning how to do things potentially differently.

I guess easy is subjective to your level of accuracy that you're going for
too though, so what you consider accurate, I might not or vice-versa.

I checked out your lead, its great man! Its also fascinating! There is quite a few things we did pretty differently. Granted, I'm going for his current lead on the Kronos and you are going for the Scenes Era one but still! The biggest difference I found was our feedback layers. I used a program with 2 AL-1's, each using 2 OSC and a sub OSC. Our effects sections are pretty similar. I also use a total of 3 programs in combi mode to achieve the lead.

As for what I consider accurate? Well if the average person(musician) can't tell the difference then thats accurate enough for me, even though I might not think its accurate enough myself but if I don't put a limit somewhere I will just being tweaking it forever.

Honestly though, if you listen to JR's Kronos lead, I have gotten it to the point where I myself have a hard time hearing differences. There are differences but its within a reasonable margin of error. There are Eq's, and post processing that happens at different shows and on different albums that you just can't account for(nor should you try too.)

enigmahack · Post by **enigmahack** » Tue May 12, 2015 7:48 pm

plisken wrote:
enigmahack wrote:
plisken wrote:Its not to hard to make the Kronos version of his lead that he uses now. It sound pretty similar to the old one minus a few things like the piano layer.
There's no piano layer in his actual lead. The Liquid T Lead in the K2600 was a "public" version which was sonically similar but had a distinct lack of attack compared to his actual lead sound which used the Orchestral and Contemporary ROM's, and trying to recreate that on a different synth can be a challenge. If you're moreso referencing his existing lead that he uses on the Kronos, I'd be curious to see how you approach his multi-layer harmonic "feedback" programs. I could give you examples if you want, I'm always down for learning how to do things potentially differently.

I guess easy is subjective to your level of accuracy that you're going for
too though, so what you consider accurate, I might not or vice-versa.

I checked out your lead, its great man! Its also fascinating! There is quite a few things we did pretty differently. Granted, I'm going for his current lead on the Kronos and you are going for the Scenes Era one but still! The biggest difference I found was our feedback layers. I used a program with 2 AL-1's, each using 2 OSC and a sub OSC. Our effects sections are pretty similar. I also use a total of 3 programs in combi mode to achieve the lead.

As for what I consider accurate? Well if the average person(musician) can't tell the difference then thats accurate enough for me, even though I might not think its accurate enough myself but if I don't put a limit somewhere I will just being tweaking it forever.

Honestly though, if you listen to JR's Kronos lead, I have gotten it to the point where I myself have a hard time hearing differences. There are differences but its within a reasonable margin of error. There are Eq's, and post processing that happens at different shows and on different albums that you just can't account for(nor should you try too.)

I've already programmed JR's current Kronos lead elsewhere which is why our leads would likely sound and be approached differently

http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/ ... ght=rudess

I went for album accurate on this one, and managed to pull it off with some help.

Pedja · Post by **Pedja** » Wed May 13, 2015 7:23 am

Enigmahack you said that main lead is in the combi. But, combi has 14. combis, which I can use to get a sound like in your mp3 sample. Is it JR SFAM ERA LEAD? I tried all programs and combis from usb stick using Open function. Is this correct, from aspect of programs location? Excuse me for my insisting, of maybe to you, stupid question. Thanks for reply and all your attention.

enigmahack · Post by **enigmahack** » Wed May 13, 2015 10:04 pm

Pedja wrote:Enigmahack you said that main lead is in the combi. But, combi has 14. combis, which I can use to get a sound like in your mp3 sample. Is it JR SFAM ERA LEAD? I tried all programs and combis from usb stick using Open function. Is this correct, from aspect of programs location? Excuse me for my insisting, of maybe to you, stupid question. Thanks for reply and all your attention.

Combi's don't work that way. You can't use preview unless the combi is pointing to existing references in their location. That's why it wasn't working.

You have to actually load the sounds.

Pedja · Post by **Pedja** » Thu May 14, 2015 6:04 am

Thanks enigmahack for reply and explanation.

okkopekka · Post by **okkopekka** » Sat Jan 12, 2019 6:39 am

Anyone having this .pcg

?