Food for thought.

[GovernorSilver]

I have yet to try a King Korg myself but I don't recall a single kind comment being made about its action/keybed. So "awesome piece of kit"... probably not.

 

Then again I get on w/ my humble Korg Monologue just fine, though I ain't no Corey Henry.

 

CH can play his King Korg, B3, a nice piano, a crappy one with several literal "avoid" notes, etc. and still play great, because as stated in the OP article, he "is his own instrument".

[Ken Beaumont]

Yes, I always thought the King Korg sounded really good in Demos, but was scared away by the reviews about the action. I don't like my VR-09 action, and have been told its worse than that.

After the VR-09 I decided I would not buy any Roland product that uses that action. If I had the money right now I would dump it for the VR-730 or something else.

A good action doesn't make me a better player. But a bad one makes me a worse me.

[Joe Muscara]

Get the most out of the gear you have today. You'll know when you're ready for something better. If you think, "I suck until I can get X," you're wrong.

A more succinct version of the above, but it doesn't have any Charlie Parker in it.

Charlie Parker says, "If you think, 'I suck until I can get the new YamaKorCasNorLand,' you're wrong."

[RandyFF]

Yes, I always thought the King Korg sounded really good in Demos, but was scared away by the reviews about the action. I don't like my VR-09 action, and have been told its worse than that.

After the VR-09 I decided I would not buy any Roland product that uses that action. If I had the money right now I would dump it for the VR-730 or something else.

A good action doesn't make me a better player. But a bad one makes me a worse me.

I've had and played a number of keyboards with really shitty action. Over time my cheapie Casio WK-7600 got looser and sloppier, it was hard to play without being sloppy myself. I also experienced this with one of the Yamaha 88 note home keyboards, probably made early 2000s, and I could barely play it without making all kinds of mistakes. My IKM iRig Keys I/O is horrible for how hard it is to play near the fall board. I am not a great keyboard player, so having the instrument make it an uphill struggle is not something I'm willing to put up with.

 

For me this discussion is about getting distracted. Are you giving yourself excuses about your playing because of your equipment, or spending too much time focused on that? It's the same with spending a ridiculous amount of time auditioning patches, setting up your keyboard, trying to learn it- there's infinite numbers of ways to distract yourself, these are just a few, whereas there's a very finite number of hours you have to actually practice.

 

There is a distinct difference also between players that are exclusively or mostly piano, and those of us that are drawn to explore the many many sounds and technology assisted possibilities that are on offer, like the new Fantom. The piano guy doesn't buy the Fantom, and once they've done the initial setup, the CP4 or whatever stage piano they chose, mostly dissapears. Very different experience than the new Fantom owner who may have months of setup/configuration to do depending on how much time they have after working, and how ambitious they are.

[SamuelBLupowitz]

Get the most out of the gear you have today. You'll know when you're ready for something better. If you think, "I suck until I can get X," you're wrong.

A more succinct version of the above, but it doesn't have any Charlie Parker in it.

Charlie Parker says, "If you think, 'I suck until I can get the new YamaKorCasNorLand,' you're wrong."

I want that on a t-shirt!

 

[Docbop]

I used to hang around the great bassist/producer Marcus Miller. People would ask him about his bass a Fender he got in the 70's I believe. People would say it must be a incredible bass. Marcus said it's all about taking the time to get to know your instrument. This bass does have some real nice sounds but it has dead spots and other issues too. Marcus said I worked on how to use BOTH the good aspects and the bad aspect to my advantage they are all sounds I can use. I think all instruments are like that they have their good and bad aspects and we have to learn to use all of the instrument to our advantage.

[Joe Muscara]

Get the most out of the gear you have today. You'll know when you're ready for something better. If you think, "I suck until I can get X," you're wrong.

A more succinct version of the above, but it doesn't have any Charlie Parker in it.

Charlie Parker says, "If you think, 'I suck until I can get the new YamaKorCasNorLand,' you're wrong."

I want that on a t-shirt!

via Imgflip Meme Generator

[jimkost2002]

lolol

 

perfect, Joe!

[Dr Mike Metlay]

This is the single biggest excuse that electronic musicians of all kinds -- Berlin school, Dusseldorf school, New Age, avant-garde, EDM of all kinds -- rely on, to explain why they're not accomplishing anything of value.

 

I've been watching it happen for 40 years, and I was a victim of it myself for at least half that time. It was such a common thing that there were jokes about it (text jokes in USENET groups and mailing lists -- proto-memes, I guess?). "If your MIDI interface has an open port, your music could be better."

 

I spent nearly all of the 1980s and the first part of the 1990s buying gear, selling gear, rearranging gear, modding gear, reconfiguring gear... it was a miracle that I got any music done, and I only fell into the technique that got me recording albums on a regular basis by accident. One more box, one more tool, one more thing, and all the music would just flow out of me like piss from a drunk. I've almost got it, I've almost got it... It was an insidious trap, and it took me a while to claw my way out of it.

 

Eventually I realized that I had a 1000 square foot room full to the rafters with keyboards, effects, sequencers, and other junk, that I didn't have command of at all. I had a grand total of, uh... [counts on fingers] seven pieces of gear that I could really fly with, and three of those were effects boxes. Everything else was like, "yeah, the presets sound good, but...." A good friend of mine said that I couldn't fit my entire studio in my head, and he was right.

 

And so I started selling stuff off, making the rig smaller and smaller, and the smaller it got, the more creative I got, because the more I could focus on solid command of my tools, and (far more importantly than that!) the stuff that went beyond the tools. Polish, technique, a library of musical tropes that were recognizably mine. It got to the point where I could pick up nearly any piece of gear and figure out in under ten minutes if it had anything to say to me, and if I had anything to say through it... and like some guitarists can make any guitar sound like them, I could make any synthesizer sound like me. That was an incredibly liberating thing to discover, and pretty much damped down my GAS forever.

 

The current era has its own distractions for me in particular, and I have to watch carefully to make sure bad old habits don't creep in.

 

Because of my personal tastes in electronic music research, leading to my work on PUSH TURN MOVE, I have a fascination with controllers, and recent advances in small-batch manufacturing and materials science mean that little companies with nothing more than a good idea can ship controllers that would have been impossible ten years ago. I support a lot of them on Kickstarter because I believe in what they're doing, but I do end up with controllers I decide won't work for me (a whole pile of them... time to get over into the for sale forum!).

 

Also, I love working in iOS, but the fact that apps are cheaper than cheeseburgers means I collect a lot of them and have to winnow through them to decide what works and what doesn't.

 

But that's all manageable, and it really doesn't slow down my creativity that much. I'm still playing live at least once a week, and releasing music on a regular basis, even as my studio continues to shrink.

 

There, I managed to get through a whole post without telling one of my hundreds of pathetic-gear-geek stories, either about me OR about someone else! Yay me!

 

mike

[HSS]

Here's a fun video of 'Fess talking and playing an out-of-tune upright but he's still doing his thing:

 

[video:youtube]

 

[Devnor]

Space limits my keyboard GAS. If there were more rack modules, I might be in trouble. Now I'm just looking for things to make life easier and thus more creative. Fantom 7 kinda checked that box, so I got one. Last thing a die hard Logic user needs is another workstation. So in a way I fell into that trap, this new shiny object is gonna make me better so let's get it! Manufactures are definitely counting on it.

[CowboyNQ]

I have yet to try a King Korg myself but I don't recall a single kind comment being made about its action/keybed. So "awesome piece of kit"... probably not.

I"ve been using one pretty much since they first became available here.

 

I think it"s wonderful. The sounds it can make - oh my! I remember when I first took it to rehearsal, the guys were gobsmacked by it.

 

The action is the same as on the smaller Kromes. It"s challenging to play for reasons well documented in these pages, however I don"t find this troublesome because I only use it as a VA synth not a piano.

 

It"s also one of the ugliest looking keyboards that Korg, Japanese God of Noise, has ever breathed life into. But like a newly-hatched chick, it"s so ugly it"s kinda cute.

 

I"m not fit to tie Cory Henry"s bootlace, but thought I"d come to the defence of my much-maligned travelling companion.

 

[El Lobo]

Here's a fun video of 'Fess talking and playing an out-of-tune upright but he's still doing his thing:

Thanks for that. Inspiring.

 

[Markyboard]

I have yet to try a King Korg myself but I don't recall a single kind comment being made about its action/keybed. So "awesome piece of kit"... probably not.

I"ve been using one pretty much since they first became available here.

 

I think it"s wonderful. The sounds it can make - oh my! I remember when I first took it to rehearsal, the guys were gobsmacked by it.

 

The action is the same as on the smaller Kromes. It"s challenging to play for reasons well documented in these pages, however I don"t find this troublesome because I only use it as a VA synth not a piano.

 

It"s also one of the ugliest looking keyboards that Korg, Japanese God of Noise, has ever breathed life into. But like a newly-hatched chick, it"s so ugly it"s kinda cute.

 

I"m not fit to tie Cory Henry"s bootlace, but thought I"d come to the defence of my much-maligned travelling companion.

 

Way to go. That just made my day.

[TommyRude]

I've said it many times in this forum...

 

"It's the artist, not the brush."

 

I could not disagree more. If it wasn't for my Nord, my career would have never gotten off the ground, and I'd be back home working some day job, like an accountant or something.

- Signed, Jimi Hendrix