How to Synth Solo Like a Guitar Hero!

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[@Emmanuel.Gasser]

A true master of his craft. This channel is just the best for us synth and keyboard nerds. No nonsense, just great tips, great sounds and, above all, great playing. So grateful for this!!

[@federicokalayjian]

if your keyboard allows it, it's great to have the pitch wheel set to 2 semitones going up and 12 going down. You can do some pretty cool slide in/out

[@jeremythornton433]

That's one of the things I love with my Korg Kronos. I can set the bend up differently from the bend down. Plus I can pull the stick back for a wah effect. I have a lead sound that I made that has a very nasty growly wah. When I do a very slow dive I also slowly pull the stick back and the sound just screams. I actually have the down bend set for 2 octaves.

[@KirklandWilliamsWorkout3000]

I like 12 up and down Ear training has helped me to be able here and know we’re i wanna stop

[@kauyumusic]

P

[@radio.m.i.x]

early jazz fusion players like Jan Hamner or George Duke set the pitch wheel to 6-7 semitones for 4-5th degree bend.

[@walterdaniel1060]

@@radio.m.i.x Earlier mono synths like the Minimoog and Micromoog did not have a pitch bend range control--you got what the circuit gave you and there could be variation between units. My Micromoog (still have it) was right around plus/minus 6 semitones with the pitch ribbon. Setting 2 semitones up/12 down is great for pitch bending and dive bombing (see Jordan Rudess). Matt uses plus/minus 2 semitones and it clearly works for him. I prefer plus/minus 4 or 5 semitones as that allows accurate bend-and-hold of a whole tone while having enough range to fall off a note at the end of a phrase. YMMV

[@rellenosanitarioposting]

I've been a Jamiroquai fan since I was a little kid and it's great to be able to learn directly from a great musician like you. thank you so much for these videos

[@eligioelini9194]

The best message you convey is your modesty. it's a great idea to recommend pedals suitable for synts. It is always a pleasure to listen to your performances. As an amateur as I am I will try to do something that looks like what you make us feel ... Greetings from Italy.

[@nadiagiovini9209]

l agree.....Però oltre ai tanti commenti giustamente positivi sulla persona empatica e sul suo splendido lavoro, anche di insegnante, nessuno(mi sembra) che abbia chiesto a Matt se sta lavorando a un nuovo progetto con Jamiroquai.....O mi sto perdendo qualcosa.....

[@eligioelini9194]

@@nadiagiovini9209 Salve...Naturalmente posso rispondere solo per me. Non conosco il tipo di relazioni che intercorrono tra i componenti della band e quindi in questo caso specifico il rischio e' quello di passare per il babbu che fa la domanda imbarazzante nel momento sbagliato...Frequento questo ambiente di tasti bianconeri da non molto e mi muovo un po' a caso . Matt e' stata una piacevole sorpresa come persona e musicista ed il mio commento nei suoi confronti era sincero. Non credo comunque che ci sia all'orizzonte quello che lei auspica , altrimenti i commenti di quelli ben piu' esperti di me lo avrebbero senza dubbio evidenziato......Greetings from Lombardia.

[@3vrgalois]

Worth a like just for the shirt alone! Also, I had no idea what the oscillator "sync" setting was for. So thank you! Another synth programming masterclass!

[@zzush]

your content is on point there not much videos on yt regarding this TY

[@michaelwarren824]

What a great tutorial! As a guitar player of some 50 years, Im switching to keys and this is important to me. Thanks Matt!!

[@Audiosculptor]

You are such a legend Matt - you’re helping my sound heaps - Thankyou Brother

[@joglou7247]

I first discovered soul as a young teenager in the early eighties. This sound was predominant in so many tracks of that time. And a sound that I've been trying to recreate ever since. This video has just resolved my quest. I owe you a drink 👍🏻

[@simonjackman6135]

A ton of great advice both on sound sculpture, performance tips and their intersection, delivered cheerfully and generously. Thanks Matt, you packed so much into that 15mins. The effect pedals video will great.

[@karma133]

Your tutorials are packed full of great tips- thanks

[@laurasongsandsuch.6567]

Wonderful as always! So cool! We have a word in Japanese "音色”（Ne iro)which literally means "sound color" and evokes the timber, feeling and emotion of the sounds. (It is actually rather hard to translate.) Anyway, I always love your playing style and the wonderful "音色" (Ne iro) you create. By the way, I love the visual color sense in this video as well!

[@deliusmyth5063]

Yours is the first comment I've seen on this subject. The color schemes for these videos are always striking. Is it accidental? Is it Matt's intention? Or does he have a designer?

[@Sammy-B]

Managed to follow this with my OB-6. A great little tutorial covering so many different aspects. Fantastic. Thanks!

[@PianoXmoll]

Matt, thank you so much! Another Gem of you to us 💎

[@Soundthesis]

Such a great video. As a synth lover and a newbye keyboard player I must say it is an honour to learn from a talented musician like you. Thank you so much.

[@SonicExplorer]

Loving the funky shirt Matt!

[@leandrusi4533]

Oh maestro! We are not worthy of your kindness!!!! Thank you for sharing all of this! THANK YOU!

[@oridoron7]

Just ran into your channel, wow!! What a mastery in all the fine details. Gonna investigate your channel, hopefullly finding not just analog stuff, but vsts of synths, and how to use them smartly. Keep going!

[@iosuagalev]

Yes, great sound design tips for my new Prophet 6 keyboard! Thank you, Matt for your tutorials! You were the one that helped me make the decision to buy the Prophet 6 (was looking for a polysynth but didn’t knew what to choose)! It’s an amazing keyboard!

[@MacedonianGrace]

Fantastic video well done ✅

[@totaltwit]

Matt is a natural, he does this presentation very well with flair, makes me feel like he's talking to me. I was going to ask, then he did it, which notes to twiddle (trill). I have tried a few scales, usually blues (min pentatonic) is a good start, I drop in some others for spice. I sometime get the guitar out, noodle and find the typical guitarists notes, sometimes reveals some surprises.

[@papepcool]

Thank you Matt. Dopeness

[@Tanzi24]

I'm VERY intrigued by this Jam Pedals collaboration... they're one of my favourite pedal builders, everything they make is exquisite. This was a great video, thanks Matt! Really interesting to watch, especially as a guitarist foremost and a keys player second.

[@MattJohnsonJamiroquai]

Yes the Jam stuff sounds beautiful doesn't it!

[@don4476]

Matt "let me show you something really cool. You're welcome." Johnson. Golden, sir. Golden.

[@capslock196]

I fucking love this channel. Thx a lot matt, you really help many amateur musicians and producers.

[@nikoloniusTV]

Wow, what a great guy. Really fun and interesting watching this. Thanks for sharing.

[@crazydigitalmusic]

Just wonderful ! Bert

[@j.juncal2553]

I´m really enjoyning this powerful new sound. Thanks again Matt

[@K.KILLORAN]

Incredible Matt; thank you

[@mikastapes]

Man am I glad I found your channel :) plus now I know how to do the solo sound for Pink Floyd's Run Like Hell :D honestly this is the best kind of education we can get! Thank you :)

[@althejazzman]

That 5th lead with the fuzz at the end really got me excited!

[@Video101TV]

Awesome tutorial! The fact that you're thinking of how to emulate a guitar solo ("kicking in a pedal like a guitarist might do") shows you're not only a great player, but a true synthesist! Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge, worked great with my OB6 and I've been wanting to get that "sync" sound but didn't know how until now. Made my day!

[@MsWonderlicious]

You are the Doc Martin of Keyboard surfing the soundwaves! 🤩

[@quinxx12]

Wow, it's great also seeing tutorials focussing more on the performance aspect. I have always struggled with getting my synth presets to a point where I can just play

[@oOstoneyOo]

This video is awesome. Thank you for sharing all the tips! I got a lot from this.

[@rolandwyss]

brillant! great inspiration. I have spent a lot of time practicing pitch bend to precisely land on these halftones. it really pays off, it gets very expressive... Setting: +3/-12 I find it perfect for bluesy lines.

[@dos_mas_805]

Love all your videos Matt and thanks so much for sharing the skills and 'tricks' that you've honed in over the years. Much love and respect from the Central Coast of California.

[@jessejarrar]

This video was extremely helpful Matt. I really appreciate your time to share these helpful tips with other players.

[@FelixSunMusic]

So much great stuff packed into one video. Thank you!!

[@SynthgodXXX]

Sounds awesome! You ROCK, Matt!

[@gvrcmoti]

Outstanding tutorial 👍🏻👍🏻

[@TheEnemyDD2]

Great video and top tips. Thx Matt!

[@JalenRawley]

As more of a guitarist than a keyboardist, everything Matt says here is just spot on! If you're trying to do things guitar-like, some things to keep in mind are what limitations guitarists have built into their instruments. Sure, we can slide all over the place, but most of us don't bend more than a whole step. The occasional minor third bend happens (we call them "overbends") and if their strings are light enough or their hands are strong enough, you can get some major third or fourth bends, but we're really not doing that as often. Also, our initial alphabet tends to be blues-based players, not jazz/fusion players, so most of our fast phrases tend to be pentatonics because we're doing that stuff from damn near day one whereas keyboard players are playing scales and arpegggios (especially anything more than just major and minor scales and arpeggios) way earlier than we are, so our default fallback "I need to just burn a fast lick here to get to the next idea" stuff is often minor pentatonics. The advantage every guitarist has over every keyboardist/pianist has are bends and vibrato, so using your pitch wheel for bends and vibrato is really going to go a long way to cop a guitarist vibe. A nice tip if you want to go more outside or more exotic than a major or minor scale with your runs, just know that that leans more towards the jazz/fusion world for us and those guys tend to have very midrangey tones. Your average rock guy isn't boosting mids and rolling off highs and lows and trying to sound more saxophone-y, he's going for dramatic bends, wah pedal filter sweeps, harmonics (which are easily copped with octave jumps) and big bombastic pentatonic runs. We like our lead tones to be a little wet with reverb and/or delay, we use boosts which give us a little more gain and compression which smoothes and saturates the tone and make it easier to play and get sustain, and our wildest most crowd-pleasing stuff tends to be simpler than you would think. The average audience member is going to get way more out of some amazing divebomb over someblazing melodic minor arpeggio. When we pull the big guns out of the trick bag, we're looking for aural impact over harmonic impact. Of course, this is all very generalized and context will dictate a hell of a lot more than any of these details but if you kind of look at it like being in a guitarist's shoes when you're going for that guitar solo kind of vibe, putting yourself in a box of a guitarist's limitations results in copping the vibe a lot closer, and of course you can pop in and out of that box at will!

[@pneptun]

pure gold, as usual! 🎉

[@magicknight8412]

Loved the sounds you got out of it there, very interesting too !

[@Allsystemsaredown]

Great video and very informative. I love Manfred Mann's solos as he does a fantastic job with the pitch wheel and the filter cutoff in a very expressive way. To me he's the keyboard equivalent of Eddie Van Halen.

[@peppyp7323]

very very very good. matt uploads. i watch.

[@tohellandbacknoface4091]

Amazing lesson on expressive playing from a og! Cheers matt

[@yaronbrecher7397]

❤❤❤❤matt is amyzing awesome keybord player well played

[@JohnSk82]

Dude your channel is always fun and informative to watch.Even if we know already bits of those stuff.Congrats mate

[@deplinenoise]

Excited for the upcoming pedals Matt!

[@merlinoner]

Great stuff ! You put a smile in my face with all your tips and tricks, thank you very much, you're a master !

[@JamesRamboPearce]

Casually soloing for Snoop - what a guy

[@CuNimb]

"You don't need that many licks" ... then proceeds to rip it apart!!! Many thanks Matt, truly excellent advice as always!

[@JayKay0245]

Great video! Great player and generous with your knowledge. Thank you

[@andrewjacobs3731]

Another great video, channeling some Jan hammer 👍👍👍 I was looking behind you for Jeff beck 😁

[@markfrant]

Большое спасибо, Мэтт, отличное видео обучающее для работы с тембрами. Отмечу немаловажное - для музыканта клавишника для имитирующего гитарное соло, очень важно уметь играть и соблюдать на синтезаторе манеру и стиль гитаристов. Придерживаться того высотного диапазона звука и ширины мензуры в котором гитаристы играют.

[@Gracias-por]

Thanks Matt 👍

[@jezza8558]

Amazing! Thank you for making this, I love the tips and ideas!

[@lt15_27]

Thanks for this video❤ I play in a rock band and I often have to duet with my guitarist. I really like the part of the video where you talk about the sound design of the presets: I will use the audio effects and filter controls more often so I can avoid playing so many notes. Merry Christmas Mr. Johnson 🙏

[@jcemagine72]

Excellent informative video. A wonderful lesson.

[@vocalpro]

The release was a nice tip! Cool shirt too mate

[@staceconstantinou9170]

Great video. Loads of useful information and tips. Thanks.

[@have7476]

I loved that opening clip

[@JoseVGavila]

Master Class!!!

[@Doctormix]

WOAH!!!!!!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[@robertwillson9921]

Brilliant, thanks for that demo and explanation.

[@xpepos]

Reminds me of Michael Kocáb`s fantastic synth solo in "Pražákům těm je tu hej"

[@AntonisAdelfidis_UnderGround]

Excellent video, thank you very much!

[@octanehead]

Great tip to have a smaller pitch bend range. Thanks for a great video! Cheers!

[@regnifelrub]

That was a very good lesson! 🙂 Be it about sounddesign or about central tones or modulation/pitchwheeling... Plus presented very very nicely as always. Thank you a lot!

[@krudler406]

you're the Best, Matt!! 🔥🔥🔥

[@wormholewest]

Was just able to recreate this sound on Moog grandmother very easily, cool tips

[@simonhodgetts6530]

There are simply not enough synth solos! Stevie Wonder and Steve Winwood spring to mind as a couple of my all-time favourite synth soloists - but the true innovator for me was Joe Zawinul - he was quite unbelievable!

[@fedemanfredi]

"How to solo like a Cumbia Villera hero". This type of sync lead is typical from a music style from Argentina called "cumbia villera" (sort of "cumbia from the slums"). It's incredible how this music use synthesizers. The keytar is the stratocaster for this music.

[@paulweller3868]

Brilliant as always .. really useful stuff on Prophet 6 programming too … thanks

[@toto0571]

cool tricks. thank you.

[@giantpurplebrain]

Funky sound, funky shirt, funky man.

[@araguet]

Very nice!, I remember when I first heard Jan Hammer in "The First Seven Days" where there is a paragraph saying "There's no guitar in this album" o something like that. The notes, scales and modulations are more important than the sound of the synth itself, I think. And you are a master in all this things. Gracias por compartir!

[@funkaholic1972]

Fantastic content, thanks Matt!

[@thefumigator]

Amazing! The sound is very prophet (original 5 nostalgia). "Overture" by dream theater (among other songs) includes an amazing keyboard solo, while not a fan of the genre, that band keyboard players are pretty amazing

[@jazzninja77]

Soooo many great tips, thank you!! 🙏

[@Gilbertosfranco]

Nice set for to play Matt !

[@Nathanaelsun22]

Yay🤩😍🥰😘🤑🌶🌈🌶🌶🌐🚀🛸🪂⛵ahhh, thanks for your videos Maestro

[@GrzegorzGrondziel]

Wow. Great Job...

[@peterfeldmeyer1940]

Hey Matt, great content as always, thank you for doing all this ... now have a great weekend....... lets have some beers... greetings from Germany

[@robertmorinlarochette7070]

Bravo et merci pour tout...👍

[@TheRamtops]

Just put an opsix through a death metal pedal...oooh 🤘🤘🤘 Thanks Matt for that, I didn't know it was possible .

[@TheRamtops]

An addition to this comment. I was just finishing my latest release so if you want to hear what an opsix through the awesome death metal pedal can sound like , The Dark Saws by Doomgardener now has lots of it and will be on streaming sites by the end of this week. 30 minutes of electronic ear murder . Link not yet available ( I hope that's allowed ) cheers

[@Akusound]

Great sound 👍👍

[@thesset3666]

Toujours aussi intéressant bravo et merci.

[@christophermhlanga1096]

Thanks so much for the lesson..

[@jeremythornton433]

Great shirt! Love Hawaiian shirts! I do a similar thing with my Korg Kronos using the MS20 engine. Plus a couple of other tricks. There is nothing like a really gnarly nasty synth lead sound. Mine sounds like it's just on the verge of uncontrollable feedback. I have a wah effect too that I use when I pull the joystick back. Tons o' fun!

[@bigglesfm]

Thanks for sharing the settings and style, it's a nice sound, I will try setting my Pro3 to sound like it tomorrow, I've been waiting to allocate one of the spare envelope generators to something !

[@thebreathalyzer]

Great video! I've used breath to sweep the frequency with great effect, you can get a wah like effect depending on the filter settings. Effects like distortion and overdrive are your friends! "When you run out of things to play"...yeah, right. I could listen to you soloing all day long! The phrasing is really important, that you can get from guitar players or synth players like George Duke and Jan Hammer who often use a guitar-like approach to pitch pending and what not. I like bending from the 9th to the major or minor third a lot. And from the 5th to the major or minor 6th depending on what tonality you're in.

[@EnsVocaleNapoli]

Great video, thanks a lot!

[@BougieButler]

Wow what an intro!

[@blindianajones]

This is so helpful and I really appreciate how straightforward you offer the insights. Ive been wondering how to "dig in" when playing a synth and get those moments, like a guitar through overdrive, rings out if you play a note harder. I dont want a fx always on and I want to leveage all the expression I can.

[@MarcWeertsMusic]

Great video, thank you for the tips!

[@danielsonderhoff5882]

Cool Tipps. I tried it with a VST Synth (Omnisphere). It has a nice Prophet 6 Square. I applied the knobs of my masterkeyboard to way of your hardware synth. Sorry about my english I`m from germany 🙂

[@pianistshowtoplaycompimpro8093]

Amazing!