Question and Answer

Hi Pat from Australia , i've been meaning to ask for ages , who's playing the synth solo & the melody on the song Daulton Lee of The Falcon & the Snowman album. Regards Frank

hi frank,

that is actually kind of an interesting question because it kind of gets to the heart of a certain confusion regarding the different types of guitar synths that i have used over the years. that solo on daulton lee, and the melody, are in fact the synclavier guitar. as far as i can remember, except for the tag at the end of "praise" that track is the only one where the synclav guitar is used as the main lead voice and it is the only one where i played an extended solo on it. all of the others, like "are you going with me" all the way through "the heat of the day" or the new live trio record "question and answer" track are the old original gr-300.

the synclav guitar was intriguing, but really difficult because it was in fact the first commercially available one that allowed a kind of polyphonic pitch to synth thing to happen (don't forget, this was still several years BEFORE midi). the tracking was never great, and there were very limited editing possibilities then in terms of how you could get the axe (which was in fact the same roland guitar 303 as the gr-300) to "hit" the synclav and get the notes to sound. but, still, there it is on that record.

thanks from pat m.