Are distorted/overdriven keyboards common?

Submitted by Foxster957 t3_zwrr5h in Music

After getting a keyboard as a christmas gift (Casiotone CT-S1 if anyone was wondering) I have played around with it a bit, but then I got the brilliant idea to plug it into my guitar amp and turn on the overdrive. With the default keyboard sound it sounded okay, but with some of the organ sounds (and a bit of gain tweaking on the amp) it sounded quite awesome. Then I thought "Why don't people do this more often?", cause I couldn't think of any songs that used a distorted keyboard sound. But maybe it is used, I'm just not paying attention to it, or I'm not listening to the right kind of music. How common is this? Are there any examples of famous (or completely unknown for that matter) songs that uses it? If not, I will immediately try to find some people and start a band featuring loads of distorted keyboard sounds in the songs.

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MumboJumboVariations t1_j1wpyn0 wrote

It was very common in the 1970s. Bands like Deep Purple and Uriah Heep did it often and others occasionally did it like Jethro Tull, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Genesis, Yes, Gentle Giant, etc. Probably the most famous song to use distorted electric organ power chords is Deep Purple - Smoke on the Water (1972). It starts with just guitar, but when it gets really crunchy it's the organ joining in.

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PeelThePaint t1_j1wshzi wrote

> cause I couldn't think of any songs that used a distorted keyboard sound.

You've probably heard a lot, but you might have mistaken it for a guitar or synth. And the Cradle Will Rock by Van Halen has a distorted electric piano as the main chordal rhythm instrument (on the left channel, just after the flanged pick scrapes), Deep Purple was mentioned before, but the main riff at the start of Space Truckin' is keys and bass, with no guitar. Billy Joel gets a ton of flack for his early band Attila, but it was based around him playing distorted organ and a bass line on another keyboard to replace guitar and bass guitar.

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ToneDeafComposer t1_j1xha18 wrote

Replying to PeelThePaint (#1,103,177)

I was just going to mention Attila. Though it's frequently written of as one of the worst albums ever released, I suspect most people who say that have never really listened to it and are just judging it by how radically different it is from his later work. Holy Moses is an excellent example of the distorted organ sound OP may be looking for, while Tear This Castle Down should really be regarded as a prog rock classic.

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IamMothManAMA t1_j1xklbv wrote

Ty Segall & Freedom Band have used a distorted Fender Rhodes pretty frequently. If you don't mind throwing in organs as keyboards, the whole genre of garage rock uses lots of distorted organs: Farfisas, Voxes, Acetones...

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Metal_Monkey42 t1_j1zf4fc wrote

Keyboards have distortion, it's called sawtooth and square on any synthesizer since the 70s or 80s!

Granted, the guitar amp won't sound the same as it will clip the sine wave rather than generate the wave and mess with it, so there might be some potential for fun times here and I might experiment when I get a chance. See what a Roland sounds like through a Marshal stack when cranked. Interesting!

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Boxofbikeparts t1_j1zxpt4 wrote

Listen to the album "Remission" by the band "Skinny Puppy". They used a lot of distorted keyboard on that record.

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