Lyle Mays Lead Sound

[hearttimes]

how might one approximate that bitchin' lyle mays lead sound - the one he uses on offramp, for example? damn that is cool. iheard it was an oberheim 2 voice.

[chrisso]

He has a few lead sounds.

One is kinda droopy - I think that's some kind of Ensoniq synth. Then he has the slightly dodgy harmonica emulation.
His warm analog lead is an Oberheim 4 voice. I've seen him using it live.
The 4 voice is a collection of 4 x SEM's. You could get a similar sound with a 2 Voice or something similar even with a single SEM.

Mays is playing 4 Voice with his left hand in this live vid:
YouTube - Pat Metheny Group - Are you going with me?

[hearttimes]

thanks chris, what do you think the settings are on that patch?

[fross]

The classic Lyle mays sound can be done.
If you have a synth that does a square wave, you can tweak til you get close.
Roland use to have a keyboard, JX-8P I believe, that had a similar patch, named after Mays.
The harmonica, well it's the harmonica
And the rich pads, can be found on most synths and tweaked to taste.

[chrisso]

It's just the thick sound of the OB oscillators (each SEM has 2) and the nice LPF.
The Oberheim Matrix 1000 (very cheap) has some similar sounds.

[spectrum]

You guys will likely enjoy this:

SPECTRASONICS ARTIST VIDEOS - New Lyle Mays and Alex Acuña videos

Three videos featuring brand new music from our amazing session with master jazz musicians Lyle Mays (Pat Metheny Group) and Alex Acuña (Weather Report) are now live! - Spectrasonics - Spectrasonics Newsroom

Check out how Lyle uses Omnisphere and Trilian with the MIDI'ed acoustic piano.

These are completely live improvisations BTW. :-)

Enjoy! :-)

spectrum

[imaginaryday]

lyle cooks his own synth sounds until they taste good. he really knows the technology very well.

spectrum, i think lyle shows what omnisphere and trilian are capable of.

the production value of the vids is fantastic.

thanks for sharing!

[fhames]

That boy's makin' some nice intervals there. Beautiful colors.
Love the Spectrosonics sounds.








Bryant - Hames Music

[guitarmax_99]

Originally Posted by spectrum

You guys will likely enjoy this:

SPECTRASONICS ARTIST VIDEOS - New Lyle Mays and Alex Acuña videos

Three videos featuring brand new music from our amazing session with master jazz musicians Lyle Mays (Pat Metheny Group) and Alex Acuña (Weather Report) are now live! - Spectrasonics - Spectrasonics Newsroom

Check out how Lyle uses Omnisphere and Trilian with the MIDI'ed acoustic piano.

These are completely live improvisations BTW. :-)

Enjoy! :-)

spectrum

Thanks for posting these. It's good to see what Lyle's up to these days. The stuff on these videos is really nice! Of course I'm a bit biased. Lyle Mays is one of my all time favorite musicians. I love his work with Methany, and the eponymous album he released in 1986 might be my favorite album of all time.

[Mike O]

Originally Posted by spectrum

You guys will likely enjoy this:

SPECTRASONICS ARTIST VIDEOS - New Lyle Mays and Alex Acuña videos

Three videos featuring brand new music from our amazing session with master jazz musicians Lyle Mays (Pat Metheny Group) and Alex Acuña (Weather Report) are now live! - Spectrasonics - Spectrasonics Newsroom

Check out how Lyle uses Omnisphere and Trilian with the MIDI'ed acoustic piano.

These are completely live improvisations BTW. :-)

Enjoy! :-)

spectrum

I'm sorry to be OT, but would you happen to know what model of Yamaha Disklavier that is or perhaps what studio this was recorded at? Very nice sounding piano. I've started looking into the Yamaha's and although I've seen several videos on youtube etc., the vids I've seen do not show the green and red lights above the keys. Maybe that is a feature that can be turned on/off? Or something new? Anybody know?

Thanks!

[Chromalord]

the key to those 80s based Lyle mays sounds were positive pitch mod to the envelopes- takes a little fidgeting- but once you get the right speed and amount, add some reverb voila you will have it.

BTW, harmonica wasn't always harmonica (or melodica) it was by Pat Myweeny triggering his Synclavier.

[blairl]

Originally Posted by Mike O

I'm sorry to be OT, but would you happen to know what model of Yamaha Disklavier that is or perhaps what studio this was recorded at? Very nice sounding piano. I've started looking into the Yamaha's and although I've seen several videos on youtube etc., the vids I've seen do not show the green and red lights above the keys. Maybe that is a feature that can be turned on/off? Or something new? Anybody know?

Thanks!

He's using a Yamaha piano in the video, but I don't know that it's a Disklavier. He is using the "Piano Bar" from Moog Music.

https://www.moogmusic.com/newsarch.php?cat_id=24

[Mike O]

Originally Posted by blairl

He's using a Yamaha piano in the video, but I don't know that it's a Disklavier. He is using the "Piano Bar" from Moog Music.

https://www.moogmusic.com/newsarch.php?cat_id=24

Very interesting and much appreciated!