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The Lost Hall & Oates CP-30 Sound for IK SampleTank’s Spaceport ’77
I recently picked up the Spaceport ’77 collection for IK Multimedia’s SampleTank, which is based on two vintage instruments: the Oberheim OB-1 analog synthesizer, and a late 70s/early 80s Yamaha electronic piano, the CP-30. Relatively obscure compared to classic electro-mechanical EPs like the Rhodes or Wurlitzer, the CP-30 was based on analog synthesis.
The CP-30’s unique timbre played an important role in a several classic tracks, including the Cars “Bye-Bye Love”, but perhaps its most famous appearance was on the 1981 Hall & Oates hit “You Make My Dreams.” In fact, Daryl Hall stated in an interview that a sound on the CP-30 was the spark that inspired the whole tune for him.
Spaceport ’77 is one of the only sample collections ever released to cover the Yamaha CP-30. However, as I went through the presets I was disappointed to find no preset representing this classic Hall & Oates CP-30 sound. I therefore immediately set out to remedy this situation and thereby recover access to a lesser-known relic from 80s electronic piano history.
I used SampleTank/Spaceport ’77 to program a preset that emulates the “You Make My Dreams” sound as close as possible and created this little demo video to show it off. The additional synth sounds in the demo are tweaked OB-1 presets from the Spaceport ’77 collection. I decided to try to use only IK products for this project, so the drums are from SampleTank 4, the bass is from IK Modo Bass, and the guitar is tracked using IK Amplitube 4. Additional third party plugins were, however, used for the mix.
Unfortunately, the Spaceport '77 is not available as an IAP for SampleTank for iOS, but you still may enjoy the video anyway.
Comments
Wow, you nailed the sound, great job! I always thought it was an overdriven clavinet, but that’s usually a sharper sound, so this explains it.
Thx! Yes, I'm a pretty serious EP enthusiast (once owned a real Rhodes, Wurly, even a Pianet), but I was entirely unaware of the CP-30 until I saw that Daryl Hall interview.
Unlike Rhodes and Wurly , which you can find everywhere in virtual form, almost nobody has ever presented a virtual CP-30. So, I was delighted to find that IK had taken up the call. But then as I'm going through the presets, there's a range of tones, from acoustic piano-ish to harpsichord, but nothing like the "You Make My Dreams" sound. So it took a fair amount of tweaking and a/bing, and digging around in Sampletank's FX section to hone in on the sound. The actual CP-30 had pretty basic controls -- a few rocker switches and a couple of knobs like "Decay." I don't know exactly how Daryl Hall coaxed that sound out of it, or if he used any external processing.
It's somewhere between the sound of a Clav and a Wurly, but not quite either. Kinda reminds a bit of the old Casio CZ phase distortion synthesis sound too.
I guess the CP-30 was used a lot by Greg Hawkes of the Cars too.. Also on some Fleetwood Mac tunes.
Yeah, it sounds like a mellower clav. It’s possible that they pushed the output of that into the board- did they do that one at electric lady? If so then it was probably a neve board. Or maybe it was recorded through an amp. I know that when I’ve seen him play that song other times the sound wasn’t the same.
By the way, have you seen this? I find this really inspiring, and the song is of course fantastic.
@mrufino1, damn, I hadn’t thought about Electric Lady in almost fifty years. Those were good days for me. Nice to see you strumming @Lady_App_titude!
Yes, I just checked, and it appears that, on top of the necessary ADSR, filter, etc. tweaks, Channel Strips and (and also the "Sat X" drive plugin), were an important part in what I needed to hone in on the sound ). Also looks like it took 16 "Save As" approximations to get to the final patch!
Looks like it was recorded at Electric Lady and the Hit Factory. Ha!, my downstairs neighbor in the lower half of my brownstone where I lived for like 10 years was an engineer at Electric Lady, and I know he worked on some H&O, but I believe this was later, like mid/late 80s. One of about 3 classic studios that still survives in NYC. Electric Lady was featured in the recent AppleTV+ series "Little Voice."
Yeah, he just uses like a whatever clav/wurly preset on like a Kronos or whatever when he performs it nowadays. Nobody has ever bothered to sample something as obscure as the CP-30. The only other version I know of was MOTU/UVI’s Electric Keys. (Which I have, and supposedly it has some CP-30 presets, but I haven’t visited that plugin in ages… Now that this is done, I should go see what’s there..)
Wow! Never seen this. Fantastic video for me on so many levels! Electric Lady! Mixing on Auratones! Baby T-bone! That band was so tight and polished during those years. Just nailing stuff in 1-2 takes! I believe you can even spot the CP-30 around 26:26 in the video. Man, you forget.. Everything feels so much more public and communal compared to the bubbles we inhabit nowadays.
Thanks, @LinearLineman !
Yeah, this whole thing just kinda snowballed. Originally, it was just about trying to recreate the sound, tweaking ADSRs, filters, FX, etc. Then in the process of doing that and a/b-ing with the original H&O track, I had to actually learn to play the keyboard part to the tune (which is tricker than it seems). So then, since I'd invested time in that, I thought maybe I should make a little demo of the sound using that tune, which was just supposed to be audio and just the CP-30 part, at first. Then I thought, you know it really needs the guitar part, and.. ... Next thing you know bass, and drums, and.. And then you have to learn all those parts and try to match the sound of the original using only IK products.
Then I thought.. Hmm.. Video. Which at first was just going to be a screen record of the DAW project.. Well, how do you do that? So I googled and learned you could do it with Quicktime. Then it was about synchronizing the audio. Then I decided to film some performance — and I’m totally not set up for that… Just working with a 2014 iPad Air 1 and no way to mount it other than balancing it on a table. Then that brings in all sorts of issues of camera placement, lighting hair, makeup... Really? In for a penny..
Then, how do you bring all this together.. Split screen. But then you want to animate the split screen, so how do you do that? So now it’s all about key framing and color grading and…
Long story short, weeks of work for a 60 second video which has gotten like 11 plays so far on YouTube. :-)
But more and more it’s about video, right? Which is a heck of a lot of extra work! But I learned a lot on this project. Time-sucking, blackhole to nowhere-land, but I’m learning skills that will make things go faster in the future, right?
Whoa! Thank you for this!
Fantastic cover! Great ear!
Whoah, that’s awesome! Are you still in the NYC area? We need to work together on something if you are. I’m in NJ just outside the city.
And I watch that video whenever I need a little inspiration, and it provides a whole lot. It’s too bad it was an MTV special, I would have loved more detail but I’ll take what I can get.
And I haven’t seen that movie, I’ll have to check it out.
Thx so much, @Intrepolicious ! I kinda OCD-ed out. Spent way too much time on this, but it was a fun challenge.
I'm happy to share my preset with fellow SampleTank/Spaceport 77 users, if I can find a suitable hosting site for sharing presets. @IK_Multimedia used to have a Preset Exchange for Amplitube, but later dropped support for that feature.
The CP-30 was also used extensively by Greg Hawkes of the Cars, an important component in their late 70s/early 80s power pop sound. It can be seen all over this video. A much more conventional electric piano-ish sound here. And yet still quite unique compared to your garden variety Rhodes or Wurly:
It's an Apple TV+ series, actually. Can't really give it a big recommendation. Overall a B- at best. But excellent for just general NYC vibe, including several scenes of recording at Electric Lady. Not a super fan of the Sara Bareilles music, but Brittany O'Grady, who stars as the lead singer-songwriter character is awesome. It's one of those things where the city itself is kind as much a star as the plot and characters.
Oh cool, I’ll still check it out. Somehow I wound up with Apple TV+ free for a year, but I’ve never even watched anything on it. I don’t know much of Sara Bareilles’ music, just the hit she had, but I have a few friends who played for Waitress who said the music was cool. I never got a chance to see it before it closed.
WOW! The sound you came up with is spot on! You did a really amazing sound design job!! I've never owned Sampletank but I think I'm about to buy it for the CP30 sound alone... i wonder if you'd be willing to share the preset you made?! (Sorry I'm so late to the part on this post) Awesome, awesome job.
I always like it when anyone does a "teardown" of a mix, composition or instrument analysis like this.
Yes, you can download the preset here. But you need to own Sampletank (desktop only) + the Spaceport 77 expansion.
https://www.producerpresets.com/u/babz/ik-multimedia-sampletank-4/d3e152ac-5e30-4dd4-9d40-a9f37a97a360
If you could, it would help if people could subscribe to my YouTube channel. I know a lot of people always say this, but in my case, I need to get to 1000 subscribers before I can stop Google from running their ads on my original content. I still have a long way to go. Every sub can help get closer to that goal. Thanks.
I like that sound. And it shouldn't be too difficult to re-build it on iOS.
Anyone here got a CP-30 at home? Or does the Spaceport expansion contain all basic CP-30 sounds?
No but I have a Roland EP-30 which sounds similar.
However the CP-30 is pretty unique.
Subscribed!!! Had to watch it again too
But what do you mean by “desktop only”? I thought Sampletank was a VST and Spaceport ‘’77 was the expansion pack? Can I run it in Logic ProX? Thx!
I'm about to make a patch for Drambo soon if anyone's interested...
I mean that the Spaceport 77 expansion, which contains the CP30 samples, is only available for the desktop version of SampleTank, not the iOS version of SampleTank. Which is to say, my preset should work on any major desktop DAW — including Logic! — but it won’t work in SampleTank on an iPad.
Thanks for the sub! (You might want to double check. According to my Youtube dashboard, my most recent subscriber was on Dec. 13.
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Anybody else: Please help me stop YouTube from running ads on my original content by helping me reach 1000 subscribers! Thanks!
I can make you some samples of notes across the keyboard, if that helps..
Definitely, thanks! 😃
OK.. I just learned that there is an Auto Sampler built into MPC Beats. I've never tried it, but I'll see if I can figure it out.
Ditto!!!
By the way, just checked... definitely subscribed
Thanks so much! Ha! Only 908 more to go!
906 😊