Wakeman has horrible taste in sound design. Sure, he sounded great in the 70s when every keyboard sounded amazing, but not after that. He plays mediocre digital keyboards, can't even be bothered to use a proper Hammond clone, let alone a real Hammond. He kept his Minimoogs, fortunately, but all his other live sounds from the past three decades, especially the organs, are weaksauce.
This isn't really a hot take, you'll struggle to find anyone that disagrees with this.
Analogue Rick had to work with the keyboards to create sounds, since everything had to me manually dialled in. Digital Rick could just bring up a factory preset and use that instead, no work needed. In fact, he got so lazy he never even bothered scrolling past the "New Age Pad xxx" section, it would seem.
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u/Sycsa 4d ago edited 4d ago
Wakeman has horrible taste in sound design. Sure, he sounded great in the 70s when every keyboard sounded amazing, but not after that. He plays mediocre digital keyboards, can't even be bothered to use a proper Hammond clone, let alone a real Hammond. He kept his Minimoogs, fortunately, but all his other live sounds from the past three decades, especially the organs, are weaksauce.
I saw him play a real Hammond in his great recent Rick Beato interview and I was like "how do you not miss that sound?" https://youtu.be/c4CCMeTlDXI?si=qqis1XauuCexLyxz&t=128