LeChuck

While looking through old photos of Le Studio, I noticed the rack effect I'm trying to identify is in this photo (right side under the two white units, right at the top of the head shadow): https://2.bp.blogspo...eights_pic5.jpg Terry Brown responded today and said his recollection is that it was an Eventide phaser or flanger effect (with the caveat that it was a long time ago). It does look roughly like an Eventide unit, but I haven't found any that match. And it does make sense that it would be in Geddy's live rig, since he pulled the effect off live too. Anyone have ideas? Looks like it's a relatively small device, with only those few knobs and jacks. And it's got those extension faceplates to mount it into the normal rack width space. The make/model name looks like two words. So far nothing's turned up .. time to make a big pot of coffee ..

I don't even know what that is. Do tell! I love dissecting songs, so listening to the isolated tracks is a treasure trove

A bunch of isolated tracks used to be available for listening on YouTube, but they seemed to have disappeared (e.g. the one I'm after is the isolated synth track from Subdivisions). Does anyone know if those are still available anywhere online? I guess I should have saved a copy when it was there .. sigh PS - I don't know the legality of this stuff, hopefully it's not frowned upon to talk about these. I see a few threads in the past where people were sharing these or posting links to them. I just enjoy hearing more clearly what the individual instruments sound like. I've actually got the Jammit isolated track for Subdivisions synth, but there was one on YouTube that sounded different (I suspect Subdivisions uses multiple tracks of synths layered up, so maybe that's why - in the missing one you could hear the 'choir' effect really prominent).

Don't know what to say except that I liked it. Great music and playing as usual. I like how most of the song is relatively sad or dark, but it has the section towards the end where everything gets upbeat briefly ("Science, like nature, must also be tamed .."). Reminds me of the ending to Jacob's Ladder, which is probably my favorite track on the album.

As usual, the synths are completely ignored ;) Neat video though, I love nerding out on stuff like this. Is that harmony part actually in the final mix? I have listened to it several times and the vocals are easy to hear, but I only hear the one lead part. Wonder where he got that track from (sounds like Ozzy)

KISS did it first, but I would really love to see a Rush pinball machine

Any idea when the interview will be published for all to see? Can’t wait!

So sue me! Carl Spackler : So I jump ship in Hong Kong and I make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. Angie D'Annunzio : A looper? Carl Spackler : A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-lagunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice. Back on topic .. it must have been magnificent when they listened to the entire album playback after it was recorded. They have a lot of amazing albums, but that one is definitely special. Hard to pick a favorite song .. probably Limelight, although I love every track (especially the long synth intro to Camera Eye - what a great and strange atmosphere that creates).

It’s the Flute sound, that’s the note I was referring to above. It really makes the whole song for me ;)

How about that one creepy Mellotron flute note before the second chorus? That note makes the entire song! I’d love to know more about Tears and his Mellotron usage too. My guess is that the sound choices were just dictated by him having the “standard” tape frame with flutes, violins, and cello.

Wow, that is a neat opportunity! I would be interested to know more details about how he made the 2112 opening sounds. Supposedly it was an ARP Odyssey synth with an Echoplex delay. It would be great to know which exact synth and delay he used, and how many tracks they combined to make that intro (my guess is four). If it's an ARP Odyssey, then it would be awesome if he could confirm if it was a Mk I revision (white color scheme) or the relatively-new Mk II revision (black/gold). These are the kinds of details that nobody on the internet seems to be 100% certain about, so final confirmation would be fantastic!

Good to see they're making some progress at least. I wonder if they have any rough timeline on how long this rebuild will take. I'd love to take a trip out there when it's all done and they have the museum and recording classes operational. If they have the guest rooms available to rent that would be even cooler.

Anyone know if there is a way to contact Jack Secret? I pinged him a long time ago on Facebook and he replied, but it looks like he's not on there anymore. No reply yet from Terry Brown on this stuff, so was looking for other angles to try. I'm sure since he maintained the keyboard rig that Jack would know the answer to this too.

This guy is fantastic. Being able to sing Geddy's parts always blows me away a lot more than being able to play the rest of the instruments (even though those aren't easy either). I like listening to this guy hit the high notes after the solos in Freewill .. he makes it look so easy ..

For physical Rush items, probably my older brother’s concert gear from the Signals tour (3/4 sleeve shirt and cap). Or maybe a 3/4 sleeve shirt from the ESL tour (eBay). For non-specifically-Rush items that remind me of Rush, it would be some of the bass / synth gear I’ve acquired over the years. Once I find an Oberheim 8-voice I want to build Geddy’s massive synth console from the Permanent Waves era ...

Jacob's Ladder for me as well! What a fantastic and musically interesting song. I love the middle section with that great Minimoog lead part and the minimal percussion effects.

Yep, I had that approach at first and tried to recreate this sound on my OB-X. But it's not really capable of making the kind of sound you hear on the isolated track. Sounds like something a PPG Wave could do, although of course he didn't have that yet. I don't have a Jupiter-8, but it's capabilities are not really all that different from the OB in this regard. It is interesting that he uses a choir sound on The Analog Kid, and that one can be patched on the OB-X(a). But for Subdivisions he uses this other weird sound that isn't a choir patch, but sounds like a choir patch in the full mix. Mind blowing ;) At the risk of derailing my own thread, for New World Man I was referring to those single notes that float around in the slower sections before the chorus ("Trying to save the day for the old-world man .."). I haven't tried to recreate those yet, but my recollection is that they also have a weird modulation going on that may or may not be possible on these synths. PS - I would like to know the story of how they made that "bullfrog" sequence for the intro. That is an interesting sound choice ..

It is kind of torture - there are a million more I'd love to know. Is the Minimoog making those ray gun sound effects on Cygnus X-1? What's that chime-sounding thing in the second half of Witch Hunt? How did they make the intro sound effect on Distant Early Warning? What synth is that in the background of New World Man? Ahhhhh! The worst part is knowing that guys like Geddy and Terry Brown and Jack Secret could probably answer all these in a few minutes. If only I could get in touch with them .. (I had an idea of buying up about 100 books for the signing and then asking Geddy everything I wanted to know ;))

I wish I could find the better isolated track that used to be on YouTube. You can hear the effect pretty clearly, and it sounds like something that was applied really thick to another synth track. One of my guitar buddies listened to it and said it sounded like a phaser, which I agree it does. But it doesn't seem to be a cyclical effect. And it doesn't seem like something a synth could produce (atleast not any of the synths he was using then). I'd love to figure this one out someday. It was my number one question to ask Geddy about at the book signing (although I blinked and it was over before I could ask anything ;))

Old thread bump, but does anyone know of a place to grab the isolated tracks nowadays? The link posted on the first page doesn't seem to have them anymore. And some of the ones I was interested in seem to have vanished from YouTube. I'd like to grab them and save them locally once and for all - any tips would be great!

(Yet another lingering question that's been bugging me for years ..) On Subdivisions there is a synth track with an effect that sounds loosely like a choir in the full mix. It comes in around 0:27 in the intro, and comes back again at the very end of the song. When you listen to the isolated synth track, it sounds less like a choir and more like a weird phaser-like effect. It's not the same choir sound from The Analog Kid either, which is a synth patch on the OB-X(a). This just sounds more like a thick effect that got applied. Anyone have any idea what that is? Per my Jacob's Ladder vocal effect thread, I sent this question to Terry Brown in a mail earlier today .. maybe if I'm lucky he'll reply back with some good info. PS - I also can't find the isolated synth track on YouTube anymore - does anyone have a copy saved? I have the isolated synth track from Jammit, but it's not the same as what used to be on YouTube (where the 'choir' effect could be heard really clearly - I suspect there are multiple synth tracks stacked up on Subdivisions). Edit - Here is a 'vocals only' isolated track still on YouTube where you can hear this sound a little better at 0:27 and 4:50

Yeah, some of those great gear shots of his live rig show a Roland Space Echo and a Korg Stage Echo (besides the Oberheim DS-2(A) sequencer and one other box I can't recall). For sure he has some kind of tape echo on the album version, since you can hear it do a fast repeat at the end. I'm not sure how you could achieve the rest of the effect with a tape echo though, especially the live version. PS - Here's a decent quality version of that shot where you see the two echo units. Anyone recognize the unit in between them (with the cord going off to the left)? https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rScBRKlTdoE/ScfDz_hHn5I/AAAAAAAALE8/N1lu6GOGbq8/s1600-h/blender_geddy.jpg

Just as another data point, I've been listening today to various versions of Jacob's Ladder from the Permanent Waves tour (and one early version apparently from late Hemispheres timeframe). In all cases the vocals sound like what you hear on ESL. So I guess he really was pulling it off live, and the effect is laid on thicker than the studio version. It's interesting in the live versions how nasal the effect makes his voice too. I can't think of how he could do that with the tape echo or their usual effects (phaser, chorus). Hopefully Terry will reply and give a clue.

For sure the effect isn’t as heavy on the studio version. I’m guessing it’s the same thing since they tended to reproduce those kinds of things pretty accurately live. It doesn’t sound like a vocoder to me (and I love vocoders). Here’s an interesting quote about those from the great Keyboard magazine 1984 interview: “I used a vocoder once, but I didn't have good success with it. I couldn't get it to work very well.“ Does Terry Brown actually reply to emails from fans? I didn’t even consider pinging him about something like this - I'll send a mail to him today. I wanted to ask Geddy at a book signing, but there’s barely enough time to chat (especially when you’re star struck and at a loss for words).

(In the continuing search for answers to my lingering Rush questions ..) This seems like the kind of question that would be answered somewhere already, but every time I search I come up with nothing. What is the effect Geddy has on his voice during the middle section of Jacob's Ladder? Presumably there is a tape echo since the "s" in "beams" at the end repeats off into infinity. But what is the rest of the effect? My only guess is that he's running his vocals through the Minimoog so it has the same filtering as the Minimoog lead part (for some reason listening to the ESL version especially makes me think this). Anyone else have ideas or already know what this is?