[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A KORG R3 SYNTHESIZER WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX HOLY GRAIL PLUS BYPASSED]

BILL HOLLAND: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. I'm Bill Holland, and what you'r looking at here is a Korg R3 connected to an Electro-Harmonix Q-Tron also connected to the Holy Grail Plus reverb pedal from Electro-Harmonix.

What you're hearing right now is the dry signal from the keyboard. It's a wind sound effect that I programmed from an SFX bank in the actually R3. Now I'm going to hit the vacuum switch to on so I actually hear the wet signal coming through from the R3, and I'll use the blend mode to adjust how much of the dry and wet signal is being let through.

Now what I have running here is a SFX bank patch labeled "Wind Noise". Now what I'm trying to do here is emulate some of the space rock sounds of the '70s, also some of the sound effects found on Dr. Who. Now, what I've done to achieve this is take in the blend on the Holy Grail Plus all the way up and I have set the Reverb to wherever I want it. In this case, the reverb is set to room for the moment, and I can play with the amount or blend to achieve different results.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A KORG R3 SYNTHESIZER WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX HOLY GRAIL PLUS ENGAGED]

If I take the amount all the way back and slowly bring it up, I can almost tune the noise coming out of it.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A KORG R3 SYNTHESIZER WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX HOLY GRAIL PLUS ENGAGED]

I'm going over to my Q-Tron and setting the controls to normal instead of boost, and now I'm bringing my blend back up again, and I'm getting more of a filtered sound. It's very similar to a Klaus Schulze sound from the early to mid-'70s...,

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A KORG R3 SYNTHESIZER WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX HOLY GRAIL PLUS ENGAGED]

...and now taking it all the way over to Flerb and I can bring the tune back in and adjust the rate. I can change up the different types of reverb. Now I'm on hall again...

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A KORG R3 SYNTHESIZER WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX HOLY GRAIL PLUS ENGAGED]

...and if you're taking the amount all the way up, I get a very, very dynamic wind noise. Now I'm taking the peak up as well as the gain on the Q-Tron. I'm also changing up the filter mode and the range.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A KORG R3 SYNTHESIZER WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX HOLY GRAIL PLUS ENGAGED]

So you see my peak is up and my gain is down a little bit.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A KORG R3 SYNTHESIZER WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX HOLY GRAIL PLUS ENGAGED]

You can also get interesting effects by taking the tempo up on the Korg R3 while doing this.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A KORG R3 SYNTHESIZER WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX HOLY GRAIL PLUS ENGAGED]

Of course, sweeping the filter gives a nice, wind-sweeping-type effect which you're hearing right now and also bring the amount of control up and down. Different chords produce different types of wind noise, which will create different levels and layers within the sound.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A KORG R3 SYNTHESIZER WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX HOLY GRAIL PLUS ENGAGED]

Here you'll notice I've switched over to high pass, and now I'm going through my frequency and resonance controls on the actual keyboard. By taking the resonance up and the frequency cutoff down, I'm actually creating the tone that I can now control using the blend knob.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING A KORG R3 SYNTHESIZER WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX HOLY GRAIL PLUS ENGAGED]

For more information on the Korg R3 or the Q-Tron, take a look at Gearwire.Com for our previous videos. The Holy Grail and the Q-Tron are both designed by Electro-Harmonix and more information can be found on their site. For now, this is Gearwire.Com, and I'm Bill Holland.