Help me please! Emerson Lake and Palmer

[exodus1925]

I havent got a clue about moogs or anything like that, so please dont answer in any way that i wont understand lol.

I really like the solo on Emerson Lake and Palmer's title album. Its at the end of Lucky Man, i think its a moog, am i right?

If it is a moog, then which one is it and how does he do it?!

Any help is greatly apprieciated!

[Don]

To the best of my knowledge, this particular solo was recorded about a year before the Minimoog was released. It was a very simple "patch" (i.e., using electric patch cords to set up a sound) on Emerson's large modular Moog. Such beasties haven't been made for many years.

The story, as i remember, was that Emerson heard the recording and was just improvising to the recording before actually doing something. However everyone liked his little fooling around on the keys. If you note, the song doesn't really end. It just sort of putters out. My guess is that the original plan was to have a fade out at the end.

[MC]

This is the huge modular that Keith recorded "Lucky Man" on. No other synth sounds like these due to 1) the sonority of the original VCOs 2) the unique sound of the filter module and 3) the portamento has a curve unique to the modular keyboard - it is logarithmic not linear. All of those elements combine to get the sound on "Lucky Man"

I played this system when it was on display at NAMM2001. Very big sounding synth.

[gd]

EMO is my all time hero, I have a Source and try to emulate some of his great sounds. I hope the re-unite for another tour and cd.

[littletanto]

Don, you are right on the money. Keith was putzing around on his 55 (?) and I guess the folks in the studio (Greg Lake, Pete Sinfield possibly, etc.) were taken a back a bit by the sound and wanted to include it. I had always felt that particular Moog solo was a bit out of place and the story later confirmed it. The later ELP Moog stuff are things dreams are made of (Hoedown, Karn-Evil, etc.). But many, if not most, folks recall the Lucky Man solo.

[Brian G]

If I read correctly in his Autobiography ( Pictures of an Exhibitionist) he used a Modular Moog that belonged to the studio they were recording in, his had not been delivered yet. KE was not happy with the solo but Greg Lake and engineer Eddie Offord convinced him it was "the solo".

I think a short time later his modular was delivered, which was one of the ones used ( a IC I think) for The Jazz in the Garden concerts in New York. One unique thing was it had a hard wire preset box. Through the years Keith kept adding to Modular till it grew to the photo MC posted. On Trilogy it's identified as a IIIC, by then he had added another tier or two, the by Brain Salad Surgery he added the 960 sequencers. Unless I read it wrong somewhere

I don't think the System 55 came out until the early to mid 1970's
Brian

[ebg31]

I've always considered that Jazz in the Garden concert to be even more significant to the history of Moog's development thanthe recording of Switched on Bach, or its immediate successors. The event was organized by Prof. Herbert Deutsch, with whom Dr. Moog created his original synthesizer, in the first place. Hofstra University comissioned the building of all four of the custom modular systems for the event, and the concert was a success - though Dr. Moog was not too thrilled. Afterwards, Moog didn't want to let the gear collect dust, so the one who suggested selling one of them to Keith Emerson was a man named Dag Felner. (I got some of this from Herb Deutsch's Moog Archives interview, some from the pilate issue of Keyboard mag and some from Mark Vail's Vintage Synthesizers book from five years ago.)

One thing that always fascinated me were the hard-wired preset boxes. Those things were derived to spare the performers the hassle of re-routing patch cords and twisting knobs. What I'd like to know is whether the design phillosophy of the preset boxes went into the building of the Satilite and Minitmoog synths. If this turned out to be accurate, I wouldn't be surprised in the least.

[littletanto]

Cool Brian. Nice to see that there are folks out there who know a considerable bit more than me about ELP. I always wondered about some of KE's early preset gear. By the time I saw them in Baltimore (1976??), Keith had gone to that multi-kybd Yamaha setup with the modular doing sequencer runs. I came to appreciate presets back in the day by jumping about during a gig and pulling out about 5 patch cords from my Paia 2700. Basically, my contribution ended for about 10 minutes while I tried to figure out what had just happened.