Africa (Instructional keyboard cover)
This is my instructional keyboard cover of Toto's "Africa", which I am publishing under the "fair use" doctrine. This cover is just me playing keyboard along to a MIDI drum track. It is meant to show how the song might be played in a live environment with a band.
I love the fat-sounding synth sound in this song (the original, that is). I have tried to approximate it in the left-most zone of the Fantom X7. I decided to play these chords with my left hand, so that I can play the kalimba patch with the right hand. You will notice that the first phrase of the first verse uses different inversions of the main chords. I'm pretty sure it's like that on the original track. I really enjoy focusing on little details like that. :-)
The kalimba "patch" is a multisampled patch, containing sampled harmonies, along with the main ditty. Obviously, I only have two hands, so it would have been impossible for me to have played the harmonized kalimba part, ALONG with the synth chords. So, I just sampled each note (with accompanying harmony) of the kalimba part.
The right zone is a "flutey" synth patch, which is used in the synth solo. Unfortunately, I muffed the solo, but you can get an idea of how it sounds. Actually, the synth solo is a two-handed solo, but I don't have the skills to pull it off (yet!). I hope to be able to play it with both hands, someday.
