Name that tone . . .
 

I realize this is probably an extremely naive question, and if it belongs in another forum then please let me know. :)

I'm a keyboardist, and have recently begun working on lead playing. As such, I'm searching for a good lead tone. Unfortunately, while my Yamaha Motif has a fairly vast array of decent sounds, it doesn't really seem to have the exact tone I'm looking for.

What I'm looking for is the pseudo-guitar lead tone which Jordan, and many other prog bands, employ heavily. It's often the one used to fake trem-bombs with ribbon controllers, played with lots of trills/bends, etc. Unfortunately, while I can get something fairly close to this, I can't seem to kill off a few undesirable traits (my sound seems to have a slight trem, for instance, and I can't seem to remove it.) I'm thinking that the best move would be to simply find a few vanilla samples and make a patch, but I simply don't know where to begin. Is this a specific pad, or just a basic wave with excess processing added?

Hopefully I've given out enough information to be of help, but I'm awful at describing tones. :) I'm a member of the online conservatory, and thought of posting a brief snippet of a sample containing the pad in question (Kindred Spirits' outro) but I wasn't sure if that would be a good idea.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? Are there any samples I might want to have a look at?

ANOTHER MOTIF USER?!?! No way!! I thought Frank and I were the only ones that posted regularly...

Check out my latest post in the Gear Talk section, "Post mp3s of your leads" or something like that. I've got examples of my two leads I use a lot... if you want copies or need some help with any, drop me a line. :)

Take a few Saw wave elements and turn the resonance all the way down. Set Insert Effect 1 to Amp Sim, stack, drive/edge/output level maxed, filter all the way open. Set Insert Effect 2 to V. Distortion, set type to dist2, set amp to stack, max out overdrive. Run Effect 1 into Effect 2. Put some light chorus and plate reverb on it. Set it to mono, 0 portamento, pitch wheel +2/-12, and mod wheel either to vibrato or +1 octave.

This is one of the most basic lead tones. It really starts getting fun when you change Effect 1 to a phaser, or you start using strange filters like bandpass, double highpass, etc., changing the amp sim, raising the resonance, etc.

Nifty! Your first lead sounds very close to what I've achieved. I started with SmoothSaw, made it a bit harder, but I seem to get this annoying wha/trem sound in the background, even when bipassing effects. Is there any way to lessen this? Also, how are you doing the dives?

Any chance I could get copies of those leads? Thought I'd have to buy the analogue board to achieve decent rock tones. :)

Is Smooth Saw the one that sounds like a few detuned saw waves? If so don't use that one. The chorusing on it is what causes the tremmy effect. If not, are you detuning any oscillators? Darn it, I have to go already, but I'll try to work in some time here. I forgot how much the holidays eat up my free time!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!