# Which all-rounder synth for Zawinulesque jazz sounds?



## jsaras (Nov 22, 2022)

I've always admired Joe's synth sounds because they fit organically in a jazz context. The Rhodes sounds are easy to emulate, but his synth comping sounds (especially the brass-like things), pads, and lead sounds (often similar to accordions, guitars and vocals) are harder to cop. Any ideas on how to nail the vibe? I'm working on a jazz recording and I want to branch out beyond my usual piano and Rhodes in a musical way.

J


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 22, 2022)

I'm pretty sure he used an Arp 2600 and an Oberheim 8-voice or variation (they also made a 4-voice and individual modules).

The GForce Oberheim synths are just lovely. If you get the OB-E (8-voice), the SEM - one module - is included... I think, but if not then pay extra for it, because it's wonderful.

I don't have Cherry Audio's CA2600, but they make great instruments too. Their GX-80 that just came out today is freaking amazing.

We have a review up on Synth and Software, but wait until tomorrow to check it out - I added three quick audio demos (even though I didn't write the review).


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## rrichard63 (Nov 22, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> the SEM - one module - is included... I think, but if not then pay extra for it


The SEM is not included in OB-E, but GForce does offer a bundle for about 12% off the prices of the two synths separately. And they're on sale right now.


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## Inventio (Nov 22, 2022)

Hi J,

are you thinking about a specific time period of Joe Zawinul's work?
I ask this because as you know his sounds changed quite a bit from the 70's to his 90's setup, from the ARP2600/Prophets to the Korgs.
I think it has that variety which is difficult to nail with one synth, even a software one.
I personally like for brass comping u-he Re-Pro (soft synth) and I have recently bought a Korg Prophecy which was his soloing keyboard on the right up of his 90-2000 setup. It can do that gentle modelled-reed sound and it's very nice to play on as keybed.

There is a vocal/bell sound from the album My People which I have always been fascinated by. I would think it can be programmed on a Korg M1, at least I was close enough on the M1 vst when I tried to emulate it.

Great topic by the way!


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## José Herring (Nov 22, 2022)

+1 to you have to isolate the time period. Doing a quick youtube search of his gear on stage he was rockin' the Korg synths. I spotted the Korg Triton and the O1w/Fd for sure.

edit: Looking further I also spotted the korg M1 and the Korg Prophecy.


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## CrystalWizard (Nov 22, 2022)

If you want to get the sound grab re-pro and the emulations, if you want to get the Joe Z vibe i would recommend Zebra and a big sample player. He was an innovator in many ways.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 22, 2022)

The time period everyone thinks of is the late '70s, when Jaco was with Weather Report, especially Birdland. Dollars to donuts that's what jsaras is asking about.

It's absolutely true that they had a much longer run, and they made a lot of the best music of all time. Zawinul also played with, say, Cannonball Adderly before fusion. He was on Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, the album that started jazz-rock.

But I'm sure jsaras doesn't wand to know about the keyboards he used with the Zawinul Sindicate, he means Heavy Weather and Black Market - that band.


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## kgdrum (Nov 22, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> He was on Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, the album that started jazz-rock.


Actually Joe Zawinul was Bitches Brew.
From my understanding he wrote and arranged the music, assembled the players and then Miles laid down his parts.
Joe Zawinul imo is one of the most important talents the Jazz world has seen in the last 50 or 60 years.
His musicality,vision,,chops and technical knowledge went way beyond what kind of synths he played. I was lucky enough to see him about a dozen times with Weather Report and actually had a few conversations with him over a 25 or 30 year period. He was obviously brilliant and a total character.
For me Zawinul was the definition of the term : GOAT! A true legend.
Coincidently I have been listening to about 6 or 7 live Weather Report cds the last week or two covering most of the history of the band continually ,it’s simply breathtaking!


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## timprebble (Nov 22, 2022)

Worth a read





Joe Zawinul


Joe Zawinul is perhaps the best-known and most influential keyboardist in jazz. He pioneered the use of electric keyboards and synths with Weather Report, and at 70 he's still at the peak of his powers.




www.soundonsound.com





"Zawinul did not stop at the Wurlitzer and Fender Rhodes electric pianos he used in the 1960s. By the late 1960s he was extending his sonic palette with effects like phase shifters, Echoplexes, wah-wahs and ring modulators, and when synthesizers came on the market he was among the first to buy one (the EMS Putney). The list of synthesizers he has used since then — among them the ARP 2600, Rhodes Chroma, Oberheim Four-voice and Eight-voice, ARP Quadra, Sequential Prophet 5 and Prophet T8, Korg Trident, Oberheim Xpander, Korg VC10 vocoder, Emu Emulator, Casio CZ101, Korg DW8000, DSS1, DSM1 and M1 — reads like a synth museum's treasure list.


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## kgdrum (Nov 22, 2022)

Watch this and be prepared to have your mind blown!


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## edhamilton (Nov 22, 2022)

Joe ...
Born with Austrian folk music. Schooled classically.
Jazz roots from the 50's. Pioneer of fusion into the 60's.
Then he followed the blues roots of all of this music, all the way back to West Africa. Not stopping there though. He follows the other lineage of those "blue" notes as they traveled to north africa, morocco, then split into the flamenco of spain going north - and through the middle east to the east. The melodies and rhythms. Hands on drums, double reeds, bowed and plucked strings.
On into Turkey then through the Balkens only to travel over the alps to be found in the Austrian folk music of his childhood.
He musically traveled the world full circle. 
Seldom if ever overplayed. Always melodies. 
And at any point his right hand will become the brass section of big band jazz.

The entirety of synthesizer history.

And he is being overlooked these days.

That video with Trilok is everything. Thanks for posting that.

Today I imagine he'd be all over the modeled synths and morphing the shit out of samples and vocals.


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## cloudbuster (Nov 23, 2022)

Nori Ubukata did a sound bank for Synthmaster 2 with a good bunch of Zawinul sounds from the era with Weather Report and Jaco.


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## Per Boysen (Nov 23, 2022)

I too adore Zawinul's music. I was instantly hooked that day in the seventies when I walked into a small restaurant in Gothenburg and they played Black Market through the house system. I just had to walk out into the kitchen (where the cassette player deck was) and find out what that music was. A life-changing experience. When sitting in with bands on the EWI (not my premier instrument) I've always had Joe in mind. His never-repeating melodies by those ever-changing synth sounds.


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## Monkberry (Nov 23, 2022)

cloudbuster said:


> Nori Ubukata did a sound bank for Synthmaster 2 with a good bunch of Zawinul sounds from the era with Weather Report and Jaco.



There is a patch included with one of Synthmaster 2's Nori Ubukata expansion that has the reverse keyboard Joe had done. It's a lot of fun to play.


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## jsaras (Nov 23, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> The time period everyone thinks of is the late '70s, when Jaco was with Weather Report, especially Birdland. Dollars to donuts that's what jsaras is asking about.
> 
> It's absolutely true that they had a much longer run, and they made a lot of the best music of all time. Zawinul also played with, say, Cannonball Adderly before fusion. He was on Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, the album that started jazz-rock.
> 
> But I'm sure jsaras doesn't wand to know about the keyboards he used with the Zawinul Sindicate, he means Heavy Weather and Black Market - that band.


Certainly that era, and I also liked what he did on Domino Theory. On “Db Waltz” Joe has something that sounds like a cross between ethnic and jazz brass, and a solo sound that sounds like Holdsworth’s guitar: 

The demented stride piano plus “orchestra” on “Can It Be Done” are stunning: .


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## jsaras (Nov 23, 2022)

cloudbuster said:


> Nori Ubukata did a sound bank for Synthmaster 2 with a good bunch of Zawinul sounds from the era with Weather Report and Jaco.



I had no idea that this existed in spite of several internet searches. Thanks!!


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## cloudbuster (Nov 23, 2022)

jsaras said:


> I had no idea that this existed in spite of several internet searches. Thanks!!


I have all of Nori's soundbanks for Synthmaster 2 and this one isn't exactly his strongest work for this amazing synth IMO but the patches can easily be tweaked to taste.


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## jsaras (Nov 23, 2022)

cloudbuster said:


> I have all of Nori's soundbanks for Synthmaster 2 and this one isn't exactly his strongest work for this amazing synth IMO but the patches can easily be tweaked to taste.


I guess it couldn't be THAT easy!


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## proggermusic (Nov 23, 2022)

Yo! Enormous Weather Report fan-boy, here. I've been geeking out about Joe, Wayne, and Jaco's sounds for about 25 years, and those three guys are an enormous part of why I decided to be a professional musician instead of something respectable. (I joke, mostly.)

The Oberheim sound is definitely a big part of Joe's more "in-your-face" synth string and brass sounds, for sure, but the ARP 2600 is really the essence of Zawinul synth-dom, to my ear. Aside from his (utterly world-class) acoustic piano and Rhodes playing, Joe's "voice" as a soloist is largely, to me, tied to the ARP, and it wasn't until just a few years ago that I realized that. As a result, my Arturia ARP 2600 emulator has become a big part of my creative flow in the past couple years, and they've even got a "Joe Z" preset that serves as a really nice starting point for tweaking sounds, mixing waveforms, and dialing in a wide range of lead tones that can run the gamut from Tail Spinnin' to Night Passage. 

I think it's also worth checking out the work of two of Joe's most brilliant disciples, Scott Kinsey and Jim Beard, and to hear what they've done on more recent digital boards. Kinsey can take a Nord Lead and tweak it well into Zawinul-land extremely convincingly. Beard, one of my absolute favorite musicians of all time, did incredible stuff with the Voyetra-8, but later on got some really phenomenal sounds out of fairly commonplace Yamaha and Roland digital synths as well. So many possibilities with the technology we have today!


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## cloudbuster (Nov 23, 2022)

jsaras said:


> I guess it couldn't be THAT easy!


Of course it all depends but I've coded a good number of patches for SM2 over the years and compared to some other supersynths e.g. Falcon I find SM2 relatively easy and intuitive to work with. YMMV.


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## tressie5 (Nov 23, 2022)

The cool thing about what @José Herring said was that three of those four Korg synths (Triton, M1, Prophecy) are available in software form from Korg themselves. The 01w/FD was basically a workstation/rompler with subtractive synthesis and waveshaping.

I also saw Joe live back in the day in NY. I don't remember, though, if it was at Blue Note or Village Vanguard. I have the memory of a gnat these days.


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## jsaras (Nov 23, 2022)

proggermusic said:


> Yo! Enormous Weather Report fan-boy, here. I've been geeking out about Joe, Wayne, and Jaco's sounds for about 25 years, and those three guys are an enormous part of why I decided to be a professional musician instead of something respectable. (I joke, mostly.)
> 
> The Oberheim sound is definitely a big part of Joe's more "in-your-face" synth string and brass sounds, for sure, but the ARP 2600 is really the essence of Zawinul synth-dom, to my ear. Aside from his (utterly world-class) acoustic piano and Rhodes playing, Joe's "voice" as a soloist is largely, to me, tied to the ARP, and it wasn't until just a few years ago that I realized that. As a result, my Arturia ARP 2600 emulator has become a big part of my creative flow in the past couple years, and they've even got a "Joe Z" preset that serves as a really nice starting point for tweaking sounds, mixing waveforms, and dialing in a wide range of lead tones that can run the gamut from Tail Spinnin' to Night Passage.
> 
> I think it's also worth checking out the work of two of Joe's most brilliant disciples, Scott Kinsey and Jim Beard, and to hear what they've done on more recent digital boards. Kinsey can take a Nord Lead and tweak it well into Zawinul-land extremely convincingly. Beard, one of my absolute favorite musicians of all time, did incredible stuff with the Voyetra-8, but later on got some really phenomenal sounds out of fairly commonplace Yamaha and Roland digital synths as well. So many possibilities with the technology we have today!


I'm hip to Scott Kinsey, but not so much to Jim Beard, though I've heard of him. Etienne Stadwijk is another guy that can get into similar territory. I saw him play with Richard Bona years ago and he stole the show.


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## proggermusic (Nov 23, 2022)

Check out the Jim Beard record "Advocate" – really fantastic! Jim was, reportedly, Joe's favorite keyboardist aside from... Joe.


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