So I’ve just taken on the keyboard role for a Steely Dan tribute band and I’ll be doing the first of two shows starting in two weeks. I’ve been busy learning 22 Steely Dan songs and I’m having to use very different sounds than for the other bands with which I play.
In particular, quite a few Steely Dan songs require a rather nice phasey “wah-ey” clavinet. I discovered that Modartt has an Hohner add-on for Pianoteq (my go-to plugin for acoustic piano).
I like its sound much better but I didn’t love the auto-wah. However, separately from this, it turns out that if you want the “Donald” sound, you have to use an MXR Phase 90 phaser with your Rhodes (Lounge Lizard for Rhodes of course).
My partner Nebojsa, a guitarist pointed me in the direction of the Overloud plugin TH3 (aimed at guitarists) which has a great MXR emulator (here’s a picture of it) and yeah, you get the great crunch Rhodes sounds out of it so I started using that.
But TH3 plugin also has a great Wah Wah pedal - here’s a picture of it
and so I fed the Pianoteq clavinet into that pedal and via a widget on a GP panel, I’m controlling it with a footpedal.
Sounds awesome and seems to have very little impact on CPU.
There’s really nothing to see — here’s a picture of the connection view. That’s really all there is to it. I don’t even have any front panel controls for it.
Oh – standard Gig Performer host automation. I have a widget that learned the TH3 Pedal Move parameter in the plugin, and that same widget learned the MIDI message generated by my physical pedal.
Sounds like an awesome setup! I gotta give a shout out to the ClaviD9 from Acousticsamples that runs on UVI workstation. It has several built in wahs that are also easily assigned to the expression pedal or whatever you want really. Also has amp models and Flanger, Chorus and the essentials ready to go on the front panel. Also, the exact D6 UI with even the damper slider. What I like about it (and also +1 for Pianoteq in this regard) is it has that really slight “hammer stick” on the release of the note that really gives it that feel of a real clav. Granted, the load times are obscene on UVI, and even with predictive loading, I like having lightweight, minimal samples loading, but just thought I’d throw this one out there, for anyone looking. I did a mad hunt for authentic Clavs a while back, and my top 3 ended up as the Pianoteq Hohner, the ClaviD9, and actually Keyscape, for the other non-D6 Clavs…
Man, I love where plug-ins have gone the past few years!!
Thanks for the info. I’m definitely interested in that but can’t figure which package I would need to buy to get it. TH3 doesn’t appear to be offered anymore. Is the most closely related package you’re talking about the TH-U Rock Edition for $89, the full TH-U version for $299, or something else?
and yeah, you get the great crunch Rhodes sounds out of it so I started using that.
