I've been playing piano since I was a kid but I recently joined a band and need some help with keyboard sounds. I have a Roland Juno and I'm trying to replicate some of Brent's sounds. Are there certain preset sounds that come close? If this question is too broad then maybe someone could tell me what sort of sounds he uses on Women are Smarter, Fire on the Mountain, and Mississippi half-step. Thanks any help would be much appreciated.
I'm not familiar with the Juno's presets, but as a basic proposition, you'd want to start with any sounds that are modeled after a Hammond B-3, and avoid organ sounds that are modeled after a Vox Continental (think " very early pigpen" or "the doors") or a Farfisa.
The thing about the Hammond is that it has so many real-time controls that you can adjust - drawbars, percussion, chorus/vibrato. It also had presets and further allowed you to alternate between two different sounds for both tiers of keys, independent of one another. And then you need to factor in the Leslie. I find that the most interesting organ players will tweak these settings throughout a song/solo, creating drama/build-up by adjusting their drawbar settings and alternating the speed of the leslie to differentiate between chorus/verse, etc.
Here's Brent wailing on the B3 in "Women Are Smarter" - see 4:02, and at the 4:42 mark, you can see his left hand toggle the Leslie's speed control switch back and forth a couple of times - the leslie basically had two speeds - slow and fast (I think you could also apply a brake to stop it completely, but I don't know if that was an aftermarket addition). I have a hard time hearing the impact of Brent's toggling of that switch at that part of the solo, but I wanted to point it out to demonstrate the point. If the presets for the juno's organ sounds allow you to adjust the rotary effect, keep that in mind. I'm not hearing much percussion in that solo (a bell-like sound at the very beginning of a note), so that may be another thing to consider. Often, presets will have names that make reference to whether they incorporate a rotary or percussive sound.
Personally, I have never been a fan of the synth piano sounds of the 1980's and 1990's. Wish I could give you pointers on getting that sound, but I haven't made much of an effort to replicate it. I tend to stick to a more natural-sounding piano as frequently as I can. However, if necessary, I'll pull up a present that makes some reference to the 90s or that is modeled after a Yamaha CP-80 (which was an electric grand piano).
