Nord User Forum

The forum has helped me, so here's my stage 3 Floyd Tenor Sax. Just the original tenor sample from Nord, and then I used the effects, remembering what a sax player I toured with used to tell the sound guys about how he wanted his sound set up.

Some doubling delay, quick and with low delay threshold so just one note gets repeated (like a vocal doubling effect.)
Some reverb.
Some chorus. (I also added in a tremolo setting too.)
I used the mid parametric eq sweep to scoop OUT a very 'synthy' frequency that needed to go.
Finally, compression, set to 8. Lot's, in other words ... so the airy tones are up there with the screech timbre. On a big rock stage, it's those timbres you want, all of them, soft and hard, without dropping out or ripping ears. So ... compressed.

All effects, just the original stage 3 tenor sample. It's Pinkish, I thinkish. Cheers everyone, enjoy.

• Us&ThemTenorSax.mp3

That sounds great man!

That's a very useful sound -- not just for Pink Floyd!

Just remember, when sax players bend, they bite down on their reed and it bends ... up. They will create an illusion of bending down when they release that bite down on the reed, and relax back down to the note they actually played. However, unlike guitar riffs, a sax actually doesn't ever bend down, always up. Remember that with your pitch bend technique, and it goes a long way to adding authenticity. Don't bend down, and you're all good. Only up. A real sax can't bend down, except to return to the note it bent up from. Subconsciously, people will notice this and it helps to make the sound do it's magic.

Ya, I'm actually quite happy with this sax patch, which are notorious for not sounding very authentic on most synths. This one, I can live with I think.

I'll add that the patch is bigger than you may need it to be. The sax is all alone on panel B and easy to copy out. Panel A has the organ and piano pad, which is where the patch size expands, likely the piano sample. But you can scrap that panel A and just take the sax panel out and use it in your own program.

That organ on panel A has the rotor morphed so if you set the wheel to just below half way you get the slow leslie effect Wright used on Us and Them. There's enough room under where I have the sax split to play the piano part for Us and Them along with your sax soloing. But you can scrap all that and copy panel B to a new program and you'll just have the sax, and I'm sure it will be a smaller patch then. Maybe. Still on the learning curve over here.

Very nice - thanks!