Keyboard/organ > distortion pedal (a la Pavement's "Texas Never Sleeps")

Organ*distortion - keyboard < 0 isn't really a proposition I'm willing to accept.

I used to date a girl who'd do a hit of nitrous and turn that intro up to 11 on the speakers. Good times.

that sounds like it'd be absolutely fucking amazing, considering how almost-dizzy/high it makes me feel when it's at 11 without drugs.

I have an old old track where I was recording some highly distorted keyboard sounds, and I realized that it was so amplified that the keyboard itself was working as a microphone, picking up the sounds in the room even though I was running it straight into the recorder. I ended up recording the vocals through the keyboard as well. I would upload it but my computer is fucked right now.

uh, sister ray

A guitar amp is unlikely to enjoy the low register keys without incident.

I've run my Farfisa through a fuzz pedal into a bass amp, and it sounded fairly cool. Mitigated somewhat by the fact that I am a terrible, terrible keyboard player.

A guitar amp is unlikely to enjoy the low register keys without incident.

I was j/k re: imm meme

I figured as much, but you just never know, right?

That one Brad Mehldau album that Jon Brion produced has some sick distorted organ sounds.

http://www.amazon.com/Largo-Brad-Mehldau/dp/B000068WXL

Listen to the end of the 'Sabbath' clip

rocking the farfisa through distortion and amp is one of the funnest things ever. and you get some wild overtone action too.

We tried it with a Rhodes once, and it didn't work out very well.

I may have to try this with the sad, abandoned Roland Stringer that we have at the shop. It's a slow day.

By the by, here is Texas Never Whispers in case you haven't heard it. Just the first 5 or 10 seconds will get the point across, really.

Charlatans - Weirdo - how did they get that organ sound?

casio into a boss/dod distortion pedal. easy as pie.

Distorted Rhodes is great!

chroma-polaris keyboard thru marshall shredmaster pedal = gold

then again, chroma-polaris pretty much always = gold

You don't even really need a distortion pedal, if you've got a mixer with preamps you can crank beyond necessity, you're on your way to gnarlytown.

Rhodes sounds great with distortion; somewhere out there there's a metal band that only play distorted Rhodes pianos (also those Rhodes bass piano dealies), but I've forgotten their name, and google is a whole click away.

I always run my rhodes and wurli samples thru the DG Stomp, it sounds much better.

Small amount of OD on electric organ sounds is good, more doesn't do it for me unless it's mike ratledge or dave stewart playing, not me.

drum machine kick and snare through rat pedal is always good for a laff or two.

all the guitar on cockney rebel's one album is distorted rhodes... sounds just like guitar.

I always think of Boards of Canada's sound of using a lot of distorted organ and keyboard sound, paticularly those with long attacks and sustains

Apart from one post no-one seems to mention Mike Ratledge of the Soft Machine who always played his non-Hammond organs through a fuzz pedal and then overdriven through a valve amp. He used to be so at risk of feedback that if he took his fingers off the keyboard it would scream like mad so he always played legato. He also got some incredible other sounds - I really, really love the bit 1'20" into the version of Facelift on Third. You'll note he also uses wah. This was his way of compensating for not having a Hammond, having first (I believe) a Farfisa Holiday Organ, but then moved on to something else but I don't know what it is. I don't know whether it was in tribute to Mike Ratledge but Yamaha brought out a series of organs with fuzz on them! As for distorted organs - that's what Hammonds almost always are. They don't sound much good unless they are distorting through every valve on the Hammond and the Leslie. The motto has always been to play it on full volume. John Lord of Deep Purple used to play through a Marshall as well as a Leslie to get Marshall distortion as well and had what I call his "Make your Hammond sound like shit pedal" for extra distortion on solos. Most rock Hammondists had some extras in the back to provide extra distortion - e.g. Vince Crane in the Crazy World of Arthur Brown - there was a great sound. So, as usual, it's all been done before - and it was much easier to do because most people were using valve amps (cheaper than transistors at the time?). It's also the case that fuzz sounds much better through a valve amp than a tranny amp. The point is that however you play you want to get a sound that inspires and directs your playing - this is always easiest with a tonewheel+valve Hammond + valve Leslie, but there are other ways of doing it as Ratledge proved.
And if you really know what you're doing (and have a valve amp) then you can make a Vox Continental sound good (step forward, Alan Price).
Love Andy.

Can anyone tell me what exactly Pavement did in their song? Or something that would accurately approximate the sound?

i think it sounds a lot like that if you run a shit yamaha keyboard tone with a bit of sustain through a big muff it sounds a lot like that pavement sound, i think, but i don't know exactly what they did.

you should write steve young a letter, he'll tell you. there's a cool article in an old issue of tape op that's in the tape op book where he talks about he recorded all the pavement stuff up through watery domestic.

and by steve young, i mean gary young. steve young doesn't know shit about that pavement record.

run a shit yamaha keyboard tone with a bit of sustain through a big muff

Putting a nearly flat battery in the BM is good too. I get a lot of crunchy keyboard tones this way, although in my case the shit keyboard is a Casio and the fuzz is a homebrew op-amp circuit. One of those small battery powered guitar amps works as well.

Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues ran his mellotron through a Marshall too

Write gary young a letter? 4realz?

yeah, i'm being kind of serious. i figure he'd probably tell you. i used to be a journalist, though, so i'm in the habit of making audacious phone calls and whatnot.

How? Do you have contact info?