Dan South

Lamborghini cruising NYC to a U2 soundtrack:

Wow! This thread's almost five years old! And some of the rascals who contributed are STILL HERE! KEWL!!

Thinking back on it, there were some women who said some pretty amazing things to me, but they did it in the language of glances and dance moves. The most outrageous things that I ever heard on stage came out of the mouths of my bandmates. Those are stories for another thread.

Whoa! Your left hand looks like a spider up there! You play bass like John Entwistle! --- Me: Who's that brunette that you came in with? Blonde girl: Oh, she has a boyfriend. Sorry! Me: Okay. (Two minutes later) Blonde girl (runs up to the stage): She wants to go out with you! Me: Okay. --- There was this senile old guy who would always hang out at this one bar on Friday nights - somebody seemed to know that his name was George. He couldn't really speak (it was just mumbled gibberish) but he was really enthusiastic and always had a big smile on his face. He'd come up to me, stand right beside me and say in a loud, beer-breath voice: Muwuwururuwuwurumuruwururuwuruh! And then he'd say: G chord! G chord! Sometimes he'd reach out and grab the neck of my bass between songs and make this loud, hideous noise. After a while, I figured out that George was asking us to play a song that he liked, but we could never understand what he was saying well enough to guess the title. No matter what we'd play next, he'd get all excited, beam ear to ear, and play air guitar along with the band. Those were the good old days!

December 7th, a thread that will live in infamy!

I was never real keen on his original idea. It sounds like a bad Kevin Costner movie.

Vlad, I'm flattered that you would want my opinion. Intersections is an amazing composition. I liked the way that it moves from section to section smoothly and the counterpoint between the bass and violins in some sections. The rhythmic pizzicatto section has an Asian feel to it; very interesting. Compositionally this is WAY more involved and complex than anything that I've written, so I can't offer any more than a big thumbs up, there. I have a couple of small suggestions. You said that you plan to have this played with real string players. If so, these comments really have no merit. But if you'd like to make your synth version sound just a little more realistic, these ideas may help. Comment 1: The only sound that I found distracting was the solo viola. A nicer sample would help. All of the other instruments and sections sounded fine in terms of timbre. Comment 2: In the very beginning, the chords could be made to lead more smoothly from one to the other. This may be a result of the attack characteristics of the string program that you used. You may have to vary that in real time. A simpler solution might be to edit the velocity values of each note and perhaps stretch the lengths of the individual notes out so that they don't all end together. It sounds a bit too much like someone played those chords on a keyboard. Use dynamics, too. Make one chord softer or louder than the previous one to add a bit of "human factor." Interestingly, the chords at the end of the piece don't exhibit this problem. They sound very natural and smoothly played. Excellent piece! When you have it played by the live players, please share a copy with us. I'll be looking forward to it!!!

Thanks, Vlad. Just me and my trusty Ti G4. I have to do SOMETHING to pass the time on my morning commute.

Anybody have a chance to listen to this yet? I'd like comments on the mix if you can spare five minutes. Thanks in advance!!!

Why don't you just put some MP3's on artistlaunch, broadjam, javamusic, or one of the other free sites? My email is limited to file sizes of a meg or smaller. A typical MP3 song is three to five megs.

I just posted a new piece that may be of interest to synth fans. Fugue in D (Moog Fugue) As always, your comments and suggestions would be sincerely appreciated. Thanks, Dan www.mp3.com/DanSouth

Are you related to Floyd? Sorry, couldn't think of a good question.

Casey - thanks much for the excellent Yamaha synth primer. Bob - good luck! Casey's instructions should have you sequencing like a maniac in no time. I have an idea. Let's all buy a beer and pretend that it's from each other! Effectively, it works out the same, right?

Bob, I think you're knocking yourself out with extra work if you go the splits/zones route. That's only for live playing when you need to control multiple sounds simultaneously from the keyboard. I'm sure that the CS6x has a "multi" or "performance" mode where multiple MIDI channels are active at the same time. THIS is the mode you want for sequencing. - I'll bet you a Heineken that the CS works this way. Can any Yamaha guys out there confirm this? - This is definitely the way to go for sequencing. Your CS6x manual should have a diagram of an example multitimbral setup.

Bob, I'm not sure I understand what's giving you difficulty. First, set up your sequencer with different "instruments" that correspond to midi channels on your CS6x, for example Piano, USB1, Ch 1 Bass, USB1, Ch 2 Guitar, USB1, Ch 3 Drums, USB1, Ch 10 Next, on the CS6x, assign a piano patch to channel 1, a bass to channel 2, etc. Now, in Logic's Arrange window, select the track that say Piano ( or create a track and assign it to the Piano object ). Now when you play the keyboard, you'll hear the piano sound. You can record piano parts, too. Similarly, when you select each successive instrument in the Arrange window, you'll hear it play back and you can record it's parts. The beauty is that all of the parts will play back together. One of the example files that I sent you is set up this way. It should give you some ideas as to what is possible with this kind of setup.