Beyond This Life - Solos Cover

[Maristokeys]

I'm new to the forums but I wanted to come on and plug a cover video I did with my brother. I play keyboards and he plays guitar. We're both big Dream Theater fans and Scenes From A Memory was especially huge for us so consider this a small tribute. I hope you'll enjoy and I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys are doing as well! I used to go to Jordan Rudess' forums a lot but not so much in recent years. BUT! Without any further ado, here's the link:

https://youtu.be/gj5A0MXHiFc


-Saku

[Kotowboy]

Nice one !!!!

How did you manage to get the keyboard tones so exact ? Are they on the Kurzweil already or did you download a patch ?

[Maristokeys]

Thanks!! A lot of the basic sounds are part of the Kurzweil K2600's ROM. It's mostly just a matter of tweaking and combining the right ones. I also used sounds and effects from the Korg Kronos behind us. The Kurzweil doesn't have seamless patch changing so the Kronos really helped in smoothening those out. I believe JR similarly used multiple K2600 series racks to get more processing power and flexibility live. I also found the notes in The Dream Theater Keyboard Anthology very helpful.

[BlobVanDam]

Perfectly spot on job for all of it, both keys and guitar (no doubt thanks to the help of the guitar faces ).
Did you look at the Jordan Rudess' Keyboard Wizardry DVD to help with any of the layering for the Zappa section, or was it all from the Keyboard Anthology book? I don't have that one unfortunately.

[Maristokeys]

Thank you! Incidentally, those are also his sauna faces 

I have seen both Keyboard Wizardry and Keyboard Madness but for this I mostly used the anthology and listened to the isolated tracks on Jammit (https://www.jammit.com/artist/dream-theater).

[Tiko]

Nice work! Nailed the sounds too. The only thing that felt like it needed a little more work was the first unison. Still great!

[Kotowboy]

Yeah I cannot fault the playing. ( I really can't. i'm a fucking god-awful musician so I got no leg to stand on ).

If I had to criticise anything it would be the energy.

Obviously you're not on stage in front of 6,000 people but it felt like a recital a little

[pcs90]

Great playing from both of you! Your lead sound is very close to JR's lead from that time. Great work! Have you been able to figure out the wah lead as well?

[Maristokeys]

Yeah looking at it afterwards we could've cracked a few more smiles I think we were just concentrating on the long take so much.

What I found out about the LTE Lead was that in the preset one of the layers was a piano sound. That made no sense to me and the sound was also lacking the guitar-like attack. So I just replaced the piano with an electric guitar from the contemporary ROM. Being excluded from the base ROM is probably why the guitar isn't there in the first place. Haven't really looked into the wah lead.

[pcs90]

Yeah, there's no piano in there, at least according to his video on leads. This is what he lists:
clarinet waveform through "gain staging"
flute waveforms x2 (for feedback)
sawtooth waveforms x2
guitar waveforms x2
english horn / oboe combination (distorted)
sine wave