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...

https://app.box.com/s/rl68cn8757fji3u1ar0snfqge7o7qrjd

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.