U-HE REPRO DEMO - Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

[@mapache_al_ataque]

OMD puts on a great show! Saw them last May. ❤️

[@WoodyPianoShack]

i bet they do! nice :)

[@synthverkstad2093]

Great track, always been a OMD fan and deconstructing the track in it's rather simple elements really show the genius in their music.

[@Hamfantasy56]

A great 2023, Woody!!

[@davidspears1452]

..Messages , my all time fave by a great band 👍🏻

[@annother3350]

hear hear

[@arcanics1971]

Messages is under-rated. Good choice.

[@thepaintingtube7965]

One of your best Woody. Its incredible we have such tools at our fingertips today. Back in the late 70's early 80s we had to pay £50 an hour for a studio and bring along our own heavy gear. The original version is more subtle as it was more compressed.

[@Chillnote]

Repro is amazing!

[@derekmillen42]

You can't beat the old classics, great work..

[@XanderX84]

Love the band, love the song and love Repro! Great video!

[@martinmole5741]

Thanks Woody. I've been a big OMD fan since 1982. Happy New Year.

[@BirdYoumans]

I just watched and commented on another of your vids and mentioned the U-he plugs and lo and behold, this one comes up in my suggestions afterwards along with a Hive vid you did that I will watch after this one. Yes, this is a plug of the Pro one. I played electric bass for several years before I started playing bass on a synth (my original instrument that I grew up playing was Piano). I used the hardware version of this for many years playing left hand bass and various keyboards with the other hand. I tried the Moog, the Arp and a couple others but the Pro one won hands down for bass sound. Used an arp to begin with, but it's sound was just not quite right even tho it worked. Sort of had a hard edge to it that I could not seem to conquer. And the Moog had the opposite problem. It was too "mushy". When I heard the Pro one I was smitten and bought one immediately. I kept waiting for someone to emulate it in software once that became a "thing" and these guys did a fabulous job. This is a Pro One on steroids! Never owned a prophet 5, but now have it's software version since it and the one come packaged together and it's just killer as well. Even the free U-he plugs are special. OK. Going to watch your Hive vid since I now own it. It will be interesting to see what you do with it. No matter how much we learn about music and all these incredible resources we now have to perform it on, I always like to see what others are doing with it. Always more to learn. I had a piano teacher once who I loved and one of the first things he pointed out on the first day with him was this. He pointed to his desk and he said "those are two things you can study all your life and never know all there is to know about them". On that desk was a Bible, and a Hannon Studies book. I'm now 78, and he was right.

[@WoodyPianoShack]

thanks for the long and thoughtful comment, appreciated!

[@ramseysounds2086]

It was a Korg M500sp. My very first synth. Cost me 80 quid

[@ma1nsun]

That's right, in the original recording there is only a KORG M500 Micro Preset synth and a Vox Jaguar organ

[@tribalantidote66]

You beat me to it buddy, was going to say the same thing. It was also my 1st synth too..

[@TheUnfinishedSynth]

@@ma1nsun Don't forget Mal's drumming! :)

[@WoodyPianoShack]

nice! yeah,. not shooting to use the same synths here, just approximately similar sounds!

[@ramseysounds2086]

@@WoodyPianoShack no worries mate, just stating it cos you thought it was a SH101. Its all good 👍

[@hankheegaye4490]

I don't comment that often, but just to let you know that i think the world needs more of your satisfied smiles. : )

[@iamyourfuture808]

It was the korg micro preset korg used on meassages. they did use a Pro 5 back in the day though 😁

[@WoodyPianoShack]

yeah, much later than this single I guess, lots of combo organ and string ensemble on this track!

[@bontempo1271]

Fun :) OMD have a great sound. Also, both the REPRO 1 and 5 are excellent emulations, very very close to the hardware.

[@albertocabezas282]

This is the type of songs I called autumnal. Probably the best song they wrote.

[@thearno2885]

Repro comes with an incredible selection of presets.

[@jeffc.7592]

Great recreation of a much loved song Woody - really inspiring!

[@fozzee6999]

Happy New year Woody. That was a perfect recreation of a classic synth tune!

[@PatrickRosenbalm]

Love it!!! Next do Le Femme Accident. The extended version from OMD Greatest hits.

[@fritsvanzanten3573]

You can see how they recorded Messages on YT in the video OMD - Souvenir: The OMD Story 2007, min 39:00

[@WoodyPianoShack]

i'll take a look later, thanks!

[@fritsvanzanten3573]

@@WoodyPianoShack It was rather meant for the viewers ;-) I reckoned you had seen that already, demonstrating it ;-)

[@grahamgartside1765]

It was a Korg Micro Preset they used. Bought from Andy's mums mail order catalogue. This sounds really good-congrats

[@Dudderlyful]

Love how much fun you're having with this! I use both Repros a lot, timeless sounds really.I say it as Repro as in 'repro - duction.' I believe that arpeggio is a Korg Micro present! Thanks for the vid :D

[@WoodyPianoShack]

yea yea, you're totally right! cheers :)

[@jeffblack5024]

U-He do the best analogue recreations I've come across ( and I owned a Pro-One back in he day). You can choose the level of resolution you want to use - and if you select the CPU-bothering Divine/ HD high resolution, it really does sound fantastic. Though unless you have Skynet, it's probably best to save that for the bounce down. Repro and Diva are the nearest you'll get to a synth costing thousands.

[@markbeling3330]

Bloody Brillaint Woody!

[@SOAR-OF-AVEM]

This is a very good composition! Thank you so much for this visual + audio 😊adventure!

[@Janomix]

Excellent demonstration! What drums are used in this project? Thank you!

[@WoodyPianoShack]

not sure, long time ago, probably battery

[@cliffordnealon]

Very cool, thanks!

[@MrPsanterIsBack]

Well done!

[@Teeb2023]

Messages is a great song. Still got my single from 1980(?).

[@markstevens5442]

Love OMD and Messages is one I have done a couple of times, First time on a purely Hardware setup and more recently on my PC using VST's. Agreed it is hard to try and nail OMD's exact sound, more than likely because of the Synths that they used back then. With a little searching you can find out what kit they used and then find VST's which are close enough to those Synths to recreate their sound. I've nailed the drums on Enola Gay nicely using that method :)

[@joesalyers]

Woody I just tried a synth I think you would love its on sale at sweetwater for 49 bucks its the XILS PolyM and it is Unique and fantastic!! You should look at it!

[@ma1nsun]

Happy New Year Woody, thanks for your kindness and music🎄

[@lundsweden]

Everyone's saying the Softube Model 80 sounds better, but I like the sound of the Repro 5 better.

[@fritsvanzanten3573]

The U-he synths like Diva and Repro are 50% off on the NI website, 10 days on offer yet.

[@WoodyPianoShack]

good call. some amazing deals to be had there.

[@Music-tg5is]

Yeah, I bought all of those on a similar deal via Native Instruments (who are acting purely as the seller for the u-he sale) a couple of years ago. Best decision. I highly recommend them to any and everyone. Zebra, Diva, Hive and the Repros all great synths included in that NKS partnership sale.

[@timbeaton5045]

Yep. It is indeed a VST/AU plugin recreation of the Sequential Pro One, with quite a few extra bells and whistles (literally AND figuratively!). Having an actual Pro One which I refurbed after many years of non-use, I can also confirm that the U-He is a pretty accurate recreation sonically speaking. Plus of course the settings are programmable and recallable with in the DAW. Indeed, in a mix, I really can't tell the difference sonically between them. And final bonus, i don't have to use an external MIDI box to control the u_he version. The Repro 5 is of course their Prophet V version, and is equally as good. Can highly recommend them.

[@djGreenALERT]

I always love your work Woody and this is certainly no exception. I also have to confess at never having heard the original of this before.. You have however very much inspired me to take an OMD Song and remix it.

[@graemenelson7956]

Hi Woody Great Track. What did you use for drums

[@DmitryGorbushin]

OMD is good, no doubt. But every time I hear someone mentioned SC Pro One - the Yazoo song starts playing in my head. Yes, yes! "Don't Go!", yes it is. Actually Vince Clarke used Pro One a lot on his productions, at that time Pro One was his favorite synth.

[@juxty3102]

Great video. OMD was one of the bands that first got me interested in synthesisers. I remember when I got my first synth a casio cz 101 back in the 80s, this song was one of the first I learnt to play and do a cover version. As I couldn't afford a drum machine or 4 track tape recorder, I remember getting a drum hardware peripheral for my sinclair spectrum called specdrum made by Cheetah. In the absence of multitrack recording I used an amstrad hifi which had a tape to tape deck to lay down tracks by recording on one tape then recording across to the other tape at the same time recording playing live. Swapping tapes over to build the tracks up.

[@stephengriffiths3302]

Haha I still own a Casio cz 1000.

[@Music-tg5is]

Sounds great! Nice demo :)

[@MrPsanterIsBack]

Very well made.

[@rydinorwin]

Very refreshing channel, thanks, If anyone reads this, can I connect my daughters P45 to a SW synth? She is bored of piano, thought it could be a fun thing to do?

[@WoodyPianoShack]

yeah, would work well, however you see me adjusting knobs, pitch bend and mod wheels, you don't have those so it might be a bit static sounding? still be fun though, i would check out u-he hive which is more versatile and fresher sounding perhaps.

[@cosmicaddress7851]

Cool video. Yep Repro-1/5 are fantastic analog emulations. I enjoyed the way you showed Ableton too. I've never understood how that software worked, and now I do, so it was also a bit of a Live tutorial :) btw the MCORE switch makes a huge difference to the DSP with Repro-5.

[@kuglepen64]

OMD used the Korg M500, not the Roland SH-101. Messages is from 1980 and the SH-101 is from 1982.

[@WoodyPianoShack]

yes, i'm not trying to use the exact same synths as them, as you noted! :)

[@JezzBowden]

Yes, it's the Pro One emulator. I used to own one as a kid, and now own Repro :-)

[@jakoblaban429]

Thanks for the clip. First Album I remember obsessing about at 2 or 3 yo was OMD's Architecture and Morality. They even played a gig in the park in Hamburg so I got to see them then at that tender age. Needless to say I was awestruck. Hehehe. It's entire production is so dark and mysterious sounding. In my view their best one. Wouldn't mind if you elaborated on some of these song's production/equipment at one point ;) ... On an unrelated note I was curious if you had already looked into the new ExpressiveE Osmose Synth? Looks like an absolute game changer or rather the next generation for performance in sound design. Amazing team of creators behind that one. Anyhow, Cheers and thanks again Mate 🙏🕉

[@ShotecMusic]

When I heard that arpeggio riff I thought of half speed Baba O'Riley lowrey organ riff - not exactly but almost :) Amazing video as always.

[@nigelreadon8381]

Yes ableton lite makes some good rhythms as well, my plan was to make half in Ableton and play the tune or melody on a keyboard. if you don't do it that way your missing the point of playing live, i'm not a pro just play for fun.

[@LFOVCF]

Hey Woody, it was a Korg micro preset M500 (my first synth 1981) I hate to rain on your arpeggio but it is a repeated note (repeat function) and the rotary footage selector cranked in time to the music (well I'm sure everything was played around this) 3 minutes of trying to not fudge the timing is a living hell trust me, as the footage dial is clunky. Absolutely nothing sounds like this korg, and they used it on almost everything including the woosh on Electricity and one layer of the Enola Gay riff. If I could I'd send you a sample set

[@EldarBaruch]

Lovely! Thank you. Curious how would you compare Repro to Diva regarding their analogue spirit. Which one would you choose? Thanks! ✨

[@WoodyPianoShack]

i bet there's some shared code in both those instruments, i think diva came first though? i got a hunch that diva has more controls for dialing in a real wonky analogue sound, osc drift etc, and more versatile. i'd probably get diva if i could only get one!

[@johannborchersfriends]

Would love to see a review of NI's Electric Vintage and Lores. I think you would have great fun with Lores.

[@WoodyPianoShack]

good call johann, i've been intending to investigate lores, the other one i haven't heard of!

[@decreasingmass4577]

brilliant!!

[@AndrewAHayes]

An excellent rendition Woody, I thing the Saturation of the tape that these old songs were recorded on really makes the synth sounds fat, a lot of the bass synth sounds OMD used were mixed with Andy playing the part on a bass guitar also.

[@WoodyPianoShack]

hi, good point, actually on this track the drums and bass were acoustic :)

[@nickwallette6201]

Yeah - that's one of the things missing with just an analog synth in a DAW. There was a synth going into a mixing board, probably through transformers, onto tape, then back into the board (trafos again), then through an EQ, and perhaps a tube compressor (with more trafos), and then back into the board..... There was so much analog distortion (not necessarily clipping, but various signal mutilations) going on that you aren't going to get just by emulating an oscillator and some resonant filters. :-) The synth is only one part of the signal chain.

[@MrGorpm]

The drum track was completely wrong, but the rest wasn't bad. It evoked the memory of the track, and that's no bad thing. Keep 'em comin' 😎

[@WoodyPianoShack]

thanks! both the drums and bass were played on real instruments in the track, not on synth! that might explain it :)

[@jimlemons9231]

Nice take on that classic OMD song. I had a pro-one way back, the Uhe is a good sounding version. Haha never had the cash back then to do a prophet 5. OMD were all about the sound environment they created, very in tune with the way things moved and sounded. Their early stuff was the best first 5 albums or so. but they always made cool sounds even on song that were too pop for me. again nice take on that, thanks for a cool vid.

[@WoodyPianoShack]

yea, their later stuff in the 90s was catchy and ok at the time, but hasn't aged as well as the earlier tracks.

[@jimlemons9231]

@@WoodyPianoShack Agreed

[@excitingvalence]

Super❤

[@peterj.9713]

A nice recreation Woody well done .But OMD used a Korg Micro Preset for that ,not a SH101 as I remember right .If someone ist interested about it watch "souvenir, the OMD story pt-2" on youtube.

[@philmarsh5593]

Nice vid once again. Repro 1 IS the Pro One of course. Nice they give us 2 synths for the price of 1. The repeating arp was actually a Korg Micropreset synth (Paul's first synth), not a Roland. Auto triggering the repeating root note and flipping the octave switch up and down as required, so it was 1 note played at the root, then 1 octave up and 2 octaves up, then down.

[@nickwallette6201]

Isn't that a root, and a *7th,* and an octave?

[@philmarsh5593]

@@nickwallette6201 on this vid yes. Not on the original song though

[@markstevens5442]

Agreed, it was a Korg Micropreset, I watched a video recently (probably here on KZbin) filmed in Paul Humphrey's old house in Liverpool where OMD wrote most of their early stuff. Andy mentioned the Korg as the first Synth he got, "The cheapest one available from his Mum's catalogue at the time" That was also used on Enola Gay as well as a few other tracks :)

[@philmarsh5593]

@@markstevens5442 yep its all over the first album. Double tracked, fx added, but it's all over it. Had one for a while, they're nice little synths.

[@stephengriffiths3302]

It was a Korg MS10 they used to toggle the sequence. I still have one, I also went the same art college as Andy and Paul and we would cross paths in the music room known as the Annexe, we rarely spoke, as I thought he was a pretentious Pratt at the time. But they are one of my fave bands and still going strong.

[@lancegfoin9117]

I think it was actually a Korg Mini700 🙂

[@stephengriffiths3302]

@@lancegfoin9117 Yes I stand corrected. It was a korg micro preset he bought from a catalogue,

[@LFOVCF]

KORG M-500 micro preset

[@lancegfoin9117]

@@stephengriffiths3302 Indeed it was - I was close! 🤣

[@paulhedley2864]

Great reconstruction. Maybe the anologue technology and fact that tape was used quite alot adds to the overall processing to sound to with all the artifacts it would pick up along the way. Great early OMD track.

[@WoodyPianoShack]

maybe, dare I say it, it's the hardware vs software synth difference!?

[@Magnus_Loov]

@@WoodyPianoShack But they weren't using Prophet 5 and Prophet 1:s. It's hard enough to recreate the sound on the same Synths. Using both different synths and a different studio setup surely makes it impossible to match.

[@paulhedley2864]

Alsorts of factors synths used, fx used etc, etc just depends on how exact you want to get the original sound 👍

[@annother3350]

a good desk too

[@LoudnessWarsSurvivor]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's the mixing. Something to do with the console and the rest of the signal chains.

[@realastrology3976]

Great

[@r.b.1247]

Nice one ! BTW, what sound library are you using for the drums programming?

[@WoodyPianoShack]

i'm using battery, one of the very first kits.

[@ChrisP3000x]

Nice.

[@wasiuuu1]

bravo 🙂

[@andreasnilsson4300]

Nice...

[@wadfmradio]

Also there was a live bass guitar :)

[@WoodyPianoShack]

yeah, huge part of the omd sound! if my bass was available i would have used it! :)

[@dr.greggeddins1723]

Zero Sykess uses a ton of synthesizers and drum machines. Good music.

[@bongle2481]

No way was that arp done on a SH-101. Messages was recorded before it existed.

[@winstonhulley626]

Very Nice Woody!! Where can we get the drums and the presets? OMD was all the rage envogue in my School back in the days and I love them!! Greetings from South Africa and Happy New Year!

[@WoodyPianoShack]

hi winston, love your country! these are just factory presets, maybe tweaked a bit. drums nothing special, any old 80s samples will do!

[@winstonhulley626]

@@WoodyPianoShack Thank you Woody, love your Channel!

[@dishadidi3000]

Nice

[@kevrenshaw6177]

LOL.. I remember one of the first bands I played with doing this song. We had a Juno 6, A moog Rogue, Jen SX1000 and old Korg drum machine and bass guitar. Way back early eighties.. THen I worked at the only decent music shop in Manchester England and Andy McCluskey came in looking for a keyboard and we did a little duet.. Nicest guy I met in ages working in the music shop.

[@WoodyPianoShack]

that's a fun story!

[@humanchannel7825]

What keyboard was he looking for?

[@kevrenshaw6177]

I had set up a super JX10 along with a Roland RD250 piano. Yes, old tech by today's standards but it was the best setup A1 music had at the time.

[@TheLordcasio]

Try some spring reverb and less quantizing. Nice try though.

[@chaddonal4331]

And it's 1981 again!

[@anzatzi]

Human League!

[@leslie1526]

How about U-He Hive 2..?

[@WoodyPianoShack]

i just published a demo!

[@Materialgirllive]

Honestly the keys are really close. I think since OMD uses a bass guitar and the drums sound real but heavily processed in the real song I think thats what is missing here?

[@forexsquirrel431]

OMD used a KORG MS500

[@Mrkevc44d]

AKA the Korg micro preset I remember buying one from Kay’s catalog back in 79 😊

[@rapmaster]

It worries me, this kind of thing... (Not really. Nice breakdown and re-creation!)

[@davidmarshall5665]

It’s the same but it doesn’t sound like the original instruments, the synths in the original are tight, attacky and punchy.

[@rcrix8379]

Much too much talking

[@FranciszekGrzegoszczyk]

Hello. I will say yes. They do not bring anything new. They are based on what has already been done. They are not able to match the analogues from the 80s. This is not the direction.

[@jamescuttsmusicjcm5013]

what?

[@nickwallette6201]

Mmm... we're not quite there _yet,_ but modeling is definitely the direction. Digital synths started from a mathematically perfect model of the _theoretical_ model of an analog synth. What sounds good to us (or at least right to us) is a very imperfect model, and we're still adding all of that entropy back in piece by piece. And, as others (and I) said elsewhere in this discussion, the sound of the "analogues from the 80s" were only a part of the signal chain. Without all the other imperfect analog bits around it, it's still a bit naked. I think if you ran everything through tracks with a few analog-modeled tube and solid-state components (Urei, SSL, dbx, Neve, etc...) then it would be closer.

[@jamescuttsmusicjcm5013]

@@nickwallette6201 Exactly. We are close enough tbh Nick. If you know what you are doing you can get pretty much any sound already. Including the analogue synth sounds. I mean you can even take the crappiest synth and make it sound analogue with good analogue modelled stuff. Would crappy synths sound like a piece of old analogue gear specifically? No, but we are splitting hairs. Get some good synths (EDIT: Which do modelling well), and process them properly in accordance, and you'll not have anyone say "I can tell you are not using a , it is just so obvious". lmao. It always makes me laugh when I see comments like the OP's. They seem to forget you are never just hearing a raw synth on a track from the time. It is ALWAYS processed further.

[@macdaddybender]

That sounded great Woody. Just in general, I've don't recall anyone attempting an OMD track recreation before? That's shocking, they're such a good band.

[@gribbler1695]

Enola Gay kzbin.info/www/bejne/j3e6ZoajesZqeNU