A completely novel way to screw up a song!

[drawback]

Personally I love the drunk, acid-trippy sound of a pitch-bent piano.

 

First song of a show, upper keyboard resting on a pitch wheel...

[Chris Link]

Keyboards that have a dedicated Demo button are crimes.

 

Back in the 90s I found one good use for the demo button. I played in a duo at the time and we ran our own sound. So I would start the demo and go out front to check the sound system. The guitar player would jam along with the demos and we checked our mics.

 

Okay, so there IS a use for this feature!

[analogika]

Keyboards that have a dedicated Demo button are crimes.

 

Back in the 90s I found one good use for the demo button. I played in a duo at the time and we ran our own sound. So I would start the demo and go out front to check the sound system. The guitar player would jam along with the demos and we checked our mics.

 

Okay, so there IS a use for this feature!

 

It never occurred to me that someone might come up with a practical use.

 

My hat's off to you, J. Dan!

[Mr. Nightime]

Keyboards that have a dedicated Demo button are crimes.

 

Back in the 90s I found one good use for the demo button. I played in a duo at the time and we ran our own sound. So I would start the demo and go out front to check the sound system. The guitar player would jam along with the demos and we checked our mics.

 

Okay, so there IS a use for this feature!

 

It never occurred to me that someone might come up with a practical use.

 

My hat's off to you, J. Dan!

I used to use a Korg SP200. I would use the demo to check the tone and volume of my rig. It enabled me to go out front and hear it.

[SamuelBLupowitz]

Bummer background for fun gear error stories: putting on a tribute concert today for a good friend of mine, a guitarist, who passed away last month (cancer). Over the course of putting the show together, I wound up playing keys with pretty much every band on the bill.

 

My late friend, Dan, always had his laptop running Ableton onstage; he doubled on synth a bit, but also triggered a lot of samples, mostly dialogue from TV, movies, poetry readings... fun trippy stuff. So in addition to my expanding use of Mainstage for keyboard sounds, Ive worked in a *lot* of samples over the course of the show, many of which need to be triggered at specific points in songs. And Im playing a lot of songs that are new to me, with a rig setup containing some fairly new gear... and theres a lot of gear (drummer to me: dude, Ill help you carry stuff, but Dan would have loved it if you brought ALL the keyboards...).

 

So in the rehearsal process, Ive had plenty of errors as far as patch selection, poor volume balance, mistriggered samples, and mistimed patch changes. Trying to hunt for the tune or segment were circling back to in rehearsal has regularly made everyone in the room jump at the sudden sound of Dans booming voice talking about the writing of a song, because its set to play automatically on patch change.

 

My late friends oldest musical collaborator has been getting a kick out of this. You know, Sam, Dan could never control that stuff either. One time at a show he somehow played all his samples at once. It was terrifying.

 

Hopefully all the time spent setting up the patches and rehearsing with them will keep the spoiled moments to a minimum today, but I can take comfort in knowing that my friend would get a real kick out of anything that goes horribly awry, as long as we roll with it.

[CowboyNQ]

Samuel, your friend would get a real kick out of what you're doing for him, mistakes/no mistakes thrown into the bargain.

[analogika]

Agreed. Sounds like an awesome and perfect tribute. Including the potential fuck-ups.

[Losendoskeys]

Started "Firth of Fifth" with the "Watcher of the Skies" patch - that frightened the crap out of everyone (especially me)

Didnt Genesis used to start Firth with the Watcher intro anyway after Tony bunged it one too many times? Its become such a big thing that Ive heard other people cover it that way (Transatlantic, at least).

 

Lame cuz Firth of Fifth is a much better intro than Watcher, yet Im a huge fan of Watcher as a song. So its kind of a boner killer in both directions.

The intro to Firth is an urban myth.

Tony did norse it up (haven't we all) but the real issue he had was it was played on a grand piano in the studio.

On stage he only had his RMI which is not touch sensitive - he felt it wasn't expressive enough so he never played it again.