Played my first gig in 18 months last night

[HammondDave]

So last Wednesday I got a call from a band needing a fill in for their keyboard player for a gig in three days. I asked for their set list and it was mostly classic rock from the 60"s, 70"s, and 80"s. But really good classic rock! Steely Dan, Beatles, Billy Idol, Tom Petty, Traffic, Badfinger, and many others.

 

So I agreed and went off on my journey of learning 35 songs in three days. Well, I had played about 20 of them before so that would be no problem. I had some pleasant surprises. Even some 80"s stuff that surprised me, like Wang Chung"s 'Dance Hall Days'. What a great song! Amazing rhythms and subtle synth touches. Played the sax solo and a bunch of synth sounds. Also enjoyed playing Frampton"s 'Do You feel' with the Rhodes solo⦠also learned Loverboy"s 'Working for the Weekend'. Fun and somewhat complex synth playing in that one.

 

Last night was the first time I met the band and they were all 10-15 years younger than me. The guitar player called me 'sir' twice. Lol. I asked him to call me 'David'. Anyway, I took my Mojo 61 with the dual keyboard and controlled my Korg Module from the bottom manual. I got the advanced package that allows me to split voices (Which was necessary on most of the songs). I still had to cover some synth parts with organ.

 

Anyway, the show went very well! It felt so good playing in front of an audience again. I was beaming all night, and the guys kept looking at me and smiling, so I guess I did well. They were all great, as well as their wives and girlfriends. Real pros and nice people at that. They also had three singers and the harmonies were off the charts. We did Carry On / Questions, a lot of Journey, and some Steely Dan songs, so the vocals had to be there. The lead singer hit all the Steve Perry high notes without having to change from the original keys. The guitar player was great, and a nice guy⦠and the drummer and bass player were also fantastic.

 

I hope they call me again when they need a fill-in.

[drawback]

Way to go, 'Sir!'

 

Sounds like you"re their first call sub-in from now on, and who knows, you may have yourself a future steady gig.

 

[HammondDave]

Man.. I would LOVE that!

[Mike Warren]

Anyway, the show went very well! It felt so good playing in front of an audience again.

 

That would have been wonderful. I haven't even seen any live music since this pandemic started. The couple of concerts I did buy tickets for were both cancelled at the last minute.

[eric]

Awesome! I"ve been doing some new gigs myself and it"s really fun.

[ElmerJFudd]

Very nice to hear.

[stoken6]

You played your first gig in 18 months with a Mojo and an iPad rig? That's enough for anyone to call you "Sir".

 

Cheers Mike.

[The Real MC]

Awesome way to polish the rough edges.

 

I just moved to Orlando FL and am in the process of buying a house. Until then all of my gear is in storage, except for my guitars. I've been sitting in for a few songs with my buddy's band on bass and on keyboard using the host keyboard player's rig and now word of the new kid in town is getting around. The first five weeks I was down here I got three offers to join a band.

[bennyray]

Great to hear you playing gigs again.

[HammondDave]

[You played your first gig in 18 months with a Mojo and an iPad rig? That's enough for anyone to call you "Sir".]

 

 

Yeah... The rig was great, but if I do another gig with them I may decide to bring my Motif XS. The synth sounds on the Korg Module are limited. I had to layer two synth sounds together to get close to the original sound. If I did that, I could not split the keyboard, as on the Module you can either split the sounds, or layer them... not both. This also forced me to play some synth lines on the Mojo...

 

Substituting the Motif for the Module would make the sounds a lot better... But at 60yo+, its much easier to transport an iPad than my heavy Motif XS.... Ahhh... compromises. They cats loved the sounds of what I brought... maybe I will stay lightweight (age over beauty?)...

[MotiDave]

Right on, Dave! Awesome story, so glad to hear you"re hitting it again!

[Stokely]

There are some really good synths available for ipad, not very expensive (at times, free due to promotions).

 

I have a Summit that I bring, so I only use my ipad for organ, but I do have:

 

Zeeon (good all-rounder synth)

Synthmaster (I haven't used this yet!)

Model 15 (sounds amazing, the patch cables are my hangup)

Model D (also amazing, a polyphonic minimoog!)

 

 

Probably a couple others too when they went on sale for a couple bucks

 

I owned a Motif classic, and to my ears the Model 15/Model D and Zeeon sound a fair bit better as far as "analog" synths go. Not sure how easy they are to fold into a hardware rig. B-3X is proving very easy for me to use in that way.

[HammondDave]

Cool. I also have Model D⦠but how do you mix that with the Korg Module so that the synths are not firing at the same time?

[Stokely]

Ah, I have only done a "caveman approach" so far and only in testing.

 

Because my MODX can have zones that transmit on specified midi channels (and not one global one like some keyboards), I simply have each receiving synth set on a different midi channel.

 

I've played around with a program called "Midiflow" that can do all sorts of routing and transforms, including changing midi channels of messages in a flow. So if you had your master keyboard routed to say Model D, you could set the messages to whatever channel you liked. If instead you had it routed to say Zeeon, then it could use a different channel. I'm thinking I may use this program to allow either of my hardware keyboards (one of which only has global settings) to play B-3X on a patch-by-patch basis...or each other. In fact, I had to disable local control on the Summit during testing, so for it to play itself I have to route it to itself in Midiflow!

 

My thought is to have Midiflow presets be my song setup (which I don't have now, I change patches manually)--both routing, and bank/patch changes. One thing I don't care for much is the preset list in Midiflow isn't as easy to navigate as I'd like.

 

So that may be an option if your keyboard doesn't have flexibility as a master controller. I think there are other program such as midifire too.

 

There may be more options in IOS, for instance perhaps Aum functionality; I haven't played with that to know what it can do. Having each synth sitting there waiting on a channel reminds me of the old days with racks of modules doing that very thing

[stoken6]

Dave - can your Model D run in Local Off mode? The simplest might be to have your iPad act as a (silent) Thru box when the Model D is "playing itself" and disable the thru/loopback traffic when playing sounds from iPad apps.

 

I don't know if that requires additional apps like Midiflow, and whether the complexity is too much to bear...

 

I must admit, I read your post, and thought "Dave wants a lightweight synthy board to bring instead of his XS". Yamaha MX49 perhaps?

 

Cheers, Mike.

[HammondDave]

So I just got a call from them for another gig! I am elated!

[TommyS]

Hey Dave,, who"s the band and where is the gig? Sounds way cool,, would like to hear you guys,,

[yannis D]

[You played your first gig in 18 months with a Mojo and an iPad rig? That's enough for anyone to call you "Sir".]

 

 

Yeah... The rig was great, but if I do another gig with them I may decide to bring my Motif XS. The synth sounds on the Korg Module are limited. I had to layer two synth sounds together to get close to the original sound. If I did that, I could not split the keyboard, as on the Module you can either split the sounds, or layer them... not both. This also forced me to play some synth lines on the Mojo...

 

Substituting the Motif for the Module would make the sounds a lot better... But at 60yo+, its much easier to transport an iPad than my heavy Motif XS.... Ahhh... compromises. They cats loved the sounds of what I brought... maybe I will stay lightweight (age over beauty?)...

 

Congrats for the second gig. In your shoes i would do the gig with the exact same instruments. After all, these instruments were good enough to get the job done with good results. Make things easier

[HammondDave]

[Congrats for the second gig. In your shoes i would do the gig with the exact same instruments. After all, these instruments were good enough to get the job done with good results. Make things easier]

 

Yes, I have come to that same conclusion. Thanks!