Red, Red Wine by UB40—I have a question--

[raccoon]

What is it that makes the kind of shimmering sound near the end of the song? Sounds sort of like a windchime?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXt56MB-3vc

[Richardo]

1. As I recall, it's a steel drum

[MilesColtrane]

2. Hard to say precisely.

It's definitely some kind of synthesizer going through an effects processor.

It sounds like the harp patch on an Oberheim OB-8.

Those synths had an onboard arpeggiator.

If you played a triads spread out over a couple of octaves and set the arpeggiator very fast, you'd get that sweeping harp sound.


I'm not entirely familiar with the high end studio gear of that era, but I think the Lexicon 480L could probably also produce that effect.

It was an all around reverb, delay, pitch shifter, and sampling effects processor. In fact, one of the preprogrammed effects was named "swirls".

Or it could be a combination of both.

[astral]

3. Ya'all know that Neil Diamond wrote that song, right?

one of my favorite songs he ever did.