A Little Christmas Treat -- "Wonderful Christmas Time" sound for PSR-E433 and up

[SciNote]

On a synth forum, there was a discussion about the main echo-y sound used in Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time."  As far as I've been able to tell, this sound was originally done on the legendary Yamaha CS-80, and I came across a YouTube video describing how the patch was designed.  In case you don't have about $25,000 laying around to pick up a CS-80, I've come up with a pretty darn close approximation of it on the PSR-E433!  Of course, this should also work on an E443, E453, and E463 -- you just have to find the specific tones from the tone lists of those keyboards.

Here's the sound...

Guets are not allowed to view links. In order to access the links, please Register or Login

Keep in mind, this is not necessarily an exactly correct version of the chord progression -- it is just to illustrate the sound.

And here is the patch...

(Be sure to read the notes about the filter settings below)

Main Voice: Synth Bass (Voice 64 on PSR-E433)
-- Volume .............. 85
-- Octave .............. 0
-- Pan ................... 64
-- Reverb .............. 80 (or as desired)
-- Chorus .............. 100
-- Attack ................ 64
-- Release ............. 64
-- Cutoff ................ *
-- Resonance ........ *

Dual Voice: Saw Lead (Voice 165 on PSR-E433)
-- Volume .............. 110
-- Octave .............. 0
-- Reverb .............. 80 (or as desired)
-- Chorus .............. 100
-- Attack ................ 0
-- Release ............. 90
-- Cutoff ................ *
-- Resonance ........ *

Harmony: 1/8 Echo (Number 22 on PSR-E433)
Harmony volume/level: 100
Reverb: Hall 3 (Setting 3 on PSR-E433)
Chorus: Flanger 1 (Setting 3 on PSR-E433)

* For the filter settings, I did not actually save this patch on my keyboard to then be able to read the stored filter settings.  I just tweaked the live-control knobs (set to filter) to get the sound that I wanted, and when you just use the live-control knobs, the actual cutoff and resonance levels are not displayed in the function list until the patch is saved and then recalled.  However, setting a moderate amount of cutoff, with a little bit of a boost in resonance -- to give the sound the little bit of twang that it has -- should do the trick.


Since this sound uses the harmony/echo feature, which is only available on the right-hand side of a split keyboard, this sound would have limited use when playing this song live using this keyboard as the exclusive instrument.  But, it could be used as a track on the onboard sequencer or a DAW to make a recording of this song, or it could be used when playing this song with a band, or it could be used with a multi-keyboard set-up to play the song live.  It should even be possible to pre-record the background of this song using this sound and a background drum track with the onboard sequencer, and then to play along with that sequencer recording, using the recording like a style, to play this song live using only this keyboard.