Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

Hello all synth lovers!

I am new to this synthesizer forum and wonder if there are any other NIN fans here who may have an awnser to my delicate questions

I am wondering which synthesizer James Woolley is using in this video! Picture is submitted.

And which synthesizers Trent Reznor used to create those beautiful synth pads/landscapes in the album, The Fragile.

Thanks in advance!

Best Regards, nothingendshere

Looks like an Akai MX-76 to me, but that's just a MIDI controller keyboard and doesn't produce any sounds of its own.

I don't know much about The Fragile, but presumably you've seen this:



and



I'm guessing these postdate The Fragile though.

Ahh thank you Don't know to much about MIDI-keyboards though. Seen NIN use 'em alot though!

Yeah they are post The Fragile era. But thanks anyway, was a while since I looked at those pictures. But I'm so "old fashioned"/"keyboardcrazy" that I only can tell which "synthkeyboards" he has there. My synthrack knowledge is also very bad, hehe! Need to study some xD

For you guys who are interested but don't have the awnser! Here it is(thanks to Xpander on Harmony Central) from Keyboard Magazine, February 2000:

SYNTHS & STUDIO GEAR

A mountain of gear was used in the making of the record, but a few key items made repeat appearances. "The main tool in my studio was a Macintosh computer with [Digidesign] SampleCell and lots of TDM plug-ins," says Charlie. "Instrument-wise, the [Clavia] Nord Lead had just come out as we were beginning this record. Trent has always relied heavily on some of the old favorites like the [Sequential] Prophet-VS and the Oberheim Xpander --two unique-sounding synths. But when the Nord Lead first came out, it kind of cracked open the door for a lot of new synth technology."

Trent used "a Nord Lead on almost every song," says Keith. And not just for leads or synth bass. "He used it for... it was pretty much all over the map. There wasn't any real definitive synth bass. I mean, we used the Minimoog, we used the Nord, we used the [Novation] Bass Station on 'The Wretched.' There wasn't anything that we always went back to for a specific sound, but if he had a melody in his head, the Nord was always the first synth he'd walk over to. He'd basically flip through sounds until he found something in the ballpark, then we'd record in the synth line, and then tweak the sounds as the sequence looped around.

The Access Virus and Waldorf MicroWave also played prominent roles on the record. "In my studio," says Charlie, "I basically rely on three synths - the Nord, the Virus, and the MicroWave - as well as the Nord Modular, which is also a big part of this record. A lot of the processing and drum sounds were actually done on the Nord Modular, which Trent is really good at programming. He's always been really good at using white noise, sweepy drum sounds - not so much synth drum sounds, but synth sounds used in a drum context. And a lot of those kinds of things were done with the Nord Lead and the Nord Modular.

"I'm also a big fan of the Prophet-VS and Xpander," he continues. "I found an Xpander that has extranl audio inputs to the filters, which have a unique musical character and quality, and a bunch of interesting filter types. The Waldorf family of synths are featured heavily on the record. Their Pulse analog synth was used on quite a few songs, and the family of MicroWaves has been a huge success in our building. Trent owned an all original MicroWave module. When the MicroWave II came out, we all got those. Then, of course, the day after we all bought Iis, they came out with the MicroWave XT, which has knobs all over the front."

As the album progressed, Charlie also started getting into boxes "like the Quasimidi Rave-O-Lution, the Jomox Xbase 09 drum machine, and the FutureRetro 777 303-clone, which are all strange and wonderful devices. Many happy accidents occur when I use those types of devices as opposed to something like a [Korg] Trinity. We don't really have many sample-based workstation-type keyboards in the studio, except for the Kurzweil K2500."

The NIN team started out using Opcode Studio Vision, but switched to Emagic Logic halfway into the sessions. "Initially we were working in Studio Vision," Keith confirms, "but that was before we threw our hands in the air and switched over to Logic. It got to the point where Studio Vision just wasn't reliable enough for us to work with consistently." How seamless was the transition? "I had been a studio Vision user for six years," says Keith, "so it took a little bit of time to learn Logic, and to learn to use it in a professional manner according to what Trent and Alan were used to. There was a point where we had a guy from L.A. come out, Paul DeCarli, who's a brilliant programmer. He took the reins for a bit and in the meantime was really helpful on getting me out of the way of thinking of Studio Vision and in the way of thinking of Logic - seeing it as more of a transparent interface than what I was used to in Studio Vision."

Switching platforms is easier said than done, and for many reasons. Trying to convert the band's elaborate demos, for example, was anything but a picnic. When they switched, "Everything was in a demo form, which was over 40 tracks that we had to convert," says Keith. "It took a while,and there were some bugs in trying to get it to sound the same way the demos sounded. For instance, if an audio track didn't have the same plug-in on it, or if the correct sys-ex for a synth didn't get sent along with the sequence. Trent's process for synth sounds is basically to dump a single track into the sequence he's using, not to do big dumps. I mean, there are so many synths in the studio, it kind of makes sense. So for every song we had a single sys-ex dump of each Nord Lead, the Virus, the MicroWave, depending on which synths were used on that song. But things like that did make the transition a bit sketchy, and it also made it a little bit tough to bring up the recalls when Trent wanted to further develop a song."

The magic combination for Keith and company turned out to be Logic with Digidesign hardware. Pro Tools software came into play later in the process. "We weren't using the Pro Tools app that much, until we got to the compilation stage - compiling the sequence of the album. But using Logic as a front end for the Digi hardware, it was pretty much flawless. Logic is a very impressive sequencer. It's a lot different that what Trent and I were used to, since we were both Studio Vision users. Charlie made the transition pretty seamlessly."