So I'm not a synth guy. What am I hearing (besides magic ) in the intro to "Baba O'Riley" by the Who? It's a synth, but what kind of synth-y stuff is it doing? Some sort of delay and different playing speeds? Cool panning...

Howard Stern sort of plays it here at 2:00 YouTube - Won't Get Fooled Again synth sound

get the making of "Who's Next" DVD:

Amazon.com: Who's Next: The Who: Movies & TV

awesome, i hadn't heard of this! thanks man

I can highly recommend that DVD! Some highlights: Glyn Johns soloing tracks and marveling at Keith Moon's playing. Townshend doing a solo rendition of 'Won't get fooled again' that is simply stunning, fantastic rhythm playing on a J-200....

The whole 'Classic DVD' series is great, with 'Dark side of the moon' and 'Never Mind the Bollocks' being my faves so far.

"Dark Side of the Moon", "Nevermind", "Songs in Key of Life", "Joshua Tree" (see Daniel Lanois special!) are all jems. thumbsup

I'm not really sure what synth that is.. but if you have access to a Yamaha Motif ES or XS series keyboard/module you can get a patch library called Vintage Keys from Motifator.com - Official website for the Yamaha Motif Family which has a 'Baba O'Reily' patch. That, 'Babe', and 'Jump' are worth the price of the library alone...

Not sure about Baba,but Won't get fooled is a B3 through an ARP 2500.
MY buddy has the exact same setup at his place.
amazing sounding little wall of a synth.

..

I am preety sure I remeber seeing a clip where townsend was doing baba with an old EMS synth.

Baba O' Riley is an ARP. Not sure if it's a 2600 or and Odyssey. Think it's one of the two. I don't believe that Townsend ever owned a 2500 (the big modular).

It's definitely sequenced, probably an old ARP sequencer.

The Alesis Ion has a reasonable facsimile of the Baba O' Riley sound as a preset. It's pretty decent.

Personally I recommend getting the real thing... nothing is as glorious as the older synths. After the Korg M1 they kinda lost the magic in making cool synths.

Erm... yup. Believe he has a 2500. Early on it was an EMS but here's a clip from the above mentioned DVD of him playing his 2500. Have no clue on the "Baba O'Riley" sound.

YouTube - Won't Get Fooled Again

That's cool if he had a 2500, wouldn't surprise me because Townsend has always been forward thinking. Besides, it's not like he couldn't afford one.

Are you guys kidding? I thought everybody knew that was a Lowrey Berkshire Deluxe TBO-1... that's right, a home organ that your grandma would have.

You probably think I'm joking... but I'm not.

what's the mystery here? on the credits on the record...that's right, the record, as in vinyl, which is the way i had it...it says (if my memory is correct) "vcs3 organ". vcs3 was an ems vcs3 synth (also called the putney)."won't get fooled again" is pete playing chords on an organ through a vca and a low pass filter (vcf).

and just watch the damn video.

That's for "Won't Get Fooled Again"

This thread is about Baba O'Riley.

and what was that about?

He is absolutely right. My buddy has an organ just like it and if you put on the "Doubler" it is the identical sound. The doubler is a basic delay.

So organ +simple delay = WHAT YOU WANT.

Rufuss is right. It's a Lowrey Berkshire TBO-1 on Baba. Not run through a synth at all - it's a feature of the organ called "marimba repeat."

For WGFA, it's the Lowrey again. This time through the EMS VCS3.

It's been a confusing thing because Pete had initially claimed that he put details about Meher Baba into a synth and the resulting sound that came out was what we hear on Baba.

Here's a great resource on the details: Pete's Equipment | Home Studio Equipment | Whotabs | Pete Townshend

You guys keep for getting Petes the father of the loop !!
James.ca

I've always heard it was Pete cutting tape as well. It sounds like tape composition.

You just don't get it because you think the song is called "teenage wasteland"

ooooh... just kidding... just kidding...

i think i was thinking of "marianne with the shaky hands".

Thanks bro...I wanted to get some vintage sounds so I bought a little Alesis Micron (some nice little analog modeling patches). Now, if I outfit my Motif ES with this library...I should be set. I took the tour...not the real thing...but pretty solid.

https://audioboo.fm/boos/989882-baba...organ-sequence

AS far as the parts, it's two separate parts. I used to play them in slowly on a sequencer and speed them up, it sounded perfect, spot on. One part is the octace notes, then a little chromatic walkup, you just play them slow in relation to each other, then speed it up. It's in the key of of F major.

The root notes, the one's that start is FF-CC-FF-CC (each letter is a note played). The other part is the octave above middle C, and it starts after four repeats of the first part, play DCDCEDEDFF-FF the F after the dash is the first F above middle C. Timing is everyhing. I used to use a synth string sound with the filter opened up a litter and sustain turned down.

Just speed it up and it works. It's freakily exact when you play it back and it's
spot on. Townsend fooling with early arppegiators. As a keyboard player, he
favored big two fisted playing, but was immensely sloppy. I always enjoy pounding out Won't Get Fooled.....I think he probably killed the keyboard on that recording. You can here slight "force induced" distortion in the part in a few parts of the song where he is just hammering away.

Great info,and I think "Who are You"-title track video,demonstrates this[Piano parts] as well,so musical,but gutsy.

Agreed. I also meant to mention that this somehow enhances the emotional effectiveness of the song.

We have a tendency not to look at pop songwriters as composers, and most of them do, in fact, just sing. But I look at Lennon/McCartney, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Pete, Prince, and several others as modern composers because they are filling the musical canvas with the full range of colors, tones that is, and paying special attention to the layering of instruments, and ultimately the vocal becomes a melodic instrument, rather than gaffing the whole track in a non-melodic way.

THat's also why I think it's a greater challenge to write instrumental music and bring the tonal and melodic combinations to a level of interaction where it does as much musically as a voice, maybe even more. I also find purely instrumental music to be more musically challenging since the ensemble IS the music rather than just a backdrop for a singer or a vocal. I sing backups in bands sometimes, and I sing bass in church, but my music is ever only instrumental because in my compositional thinking I only think instrumental.

This.

Erm...

I was Googling for some other ARP info when I found the posts on this forum.

I just thought the speculators might be interested in this:

https://www.thewho.net/whotabs/gear/guitar/lowrey.html

He was a renowned 2500 owner AND it wasn't an ARP on Baba O'Riley. There's a radio interview of him somewhere confirming it was originally a Lowry organ. Interesting, eh?

Yes, it was a Lowrey organ. There was a paddle tab on the organ, when you pressed down on it it made the organ "trill" (repeat like an arpeggiator). It was supposed to imitate a marimba.

The other "famous" Who sound that involves an ARP 2600 is the "synthesizer" arpeggio sound for the song "Who Are You". That was Pete Townsend playing a guitar plugged into his ARP 2600..it was not played from a keyboard.

There are some tips and tutorials on how to accomplish the arpeggios on modern equipment on the Nord User Forum.

My Keys To Music
Nord Stage 3 Discovery: Training/Tutorial (The Who: Baba O'Riley synth)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYelOuB-G3w

Really wish Arturia would release a Who Sound bank. The Who made so many iconic synth sounds. Guess I need to devote some time to designing the presets on my own.