Jump to content


NewImprov

Member
  • Posts

    2,424
  • Joined

  • Last visited

About NewImprov

  • Birthday 06/30/1962

Converted

  • homepage
    www.newandimprov.com
  • Location
    Corvallis, OR

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

  1. Great topic! I generally avoid one-off gigs, but every now and then I'll do one, generally based on my relationship with the band, I have a hard time saying no to friends. This can lead to great gigs, and sometimes, not-so-great. A great gig: There was a great Led Zeppelin tribute band that played around my area for about 10 years. I caught a bunch of their shows, and loved their approach. They broke up, and, after about a year, decided to do one last show. Their bassist, who had handled the keyboard parts ala JPJ, hadn't been playing keys, and didn't feel comfortable, so they enlisted me to play on about half their set. Got to play, among others, Misty Mountain Hop, Trampled Under Foot, Thank You, and, my personal favorite, Kashmir, where I got to cop all the mellotron/string parts. One of the running gags with this band was that they never played Stairway, so, for the last encore of the night, they played it for the first time, and I got to play on it. Amazing gig! A not-so-great gig: THis was while I was still mostly playing bass. There was a long-time band in the area that had a huge book of eclectic material, everything from the Dead to the Allmans to Talking Heads to Little Feat, to classic jazz and blues. They never did set lists, and they'd call tunes as they played, and sometimes tried to playfully mess each other up. Fun band, and the guys were all long-time friends of mine. They had a biggish show coming up, and their bass player had a medical emergency, so they asked me to fill in. We would have one 90-minute rehearsal, but the show was only 2 hours, so I figured I could make it happen. I tried to get the members to give me lists of the tunes they'd likely cover, each band member I asked gave me a different list. At the rehearsal (these guys never rehearsed), one of the guitar players started playing a jazz tune, I think it was "Well You Needn't", the band falls in, everybody takes extended solo choruses (all 3 guitarists(!)), we probably spend 30-40 minutes jamming that tune. When it finally ended, the band leader says, "Well, we're definitely not playing that at the show." I'm like, WTF dudes, I have a limited rehearsal time with you, and this is how you spend it? The show was kind of a trainwreck. It turned out they did a lot of the tunes in different keys than the records, and, of course, nobody told me. Felt like the whole time I was barely hanging on. A bit later, they asked me to join the band, but, since I was friends with most of the members and wanted to remain so, I politely declined.
  2. Love the Touché! This is my current setup and one of my favorites I have played: Sorry for the kind of dim photo, it's all I had on my phone ATM. Basically, the Touché sits on the Rhodes right next to the wheels of the Arturia Keylab 61. I can use my thumb on the wheels, and then use my fingers to, er, touch the Touché. My standard lately for pitch bends is to have the upward bend limited to a whole step, but have the downward be either a 5th or an octave. The Touché gives 4 extra controllers that can be mapped to any parameters. It can do pitchbend with side-to-side movement, but I've found it hard to accurately control pitch that way while also using the forward/back motion. But I love the Touché, I have a second attached to my modular just doing CV.
  3. That is so awesome, you guys killed it! And clearly had fun in the process. And it sounds like a really cool scene you have going on. Looking forward to the Pocket Bandits recordings!
  4. I am not an "only owning one synth" kinda guy by any means, but, at this moment, my Sequential Take 5 is really ticking a lot of boxes for me. I wanted an analog polysynth, everything else I currently own is mono, modular or semi-modular. I wanted a live solo synth to replace my Minimoog Model D for live playing. And, since most of what I first learned about programming synths many years ago was on a Prophet 5 owned by the University electronic music studio I worked at as a student in the '80's, I've always wanted a Prophet. The T5 does all that, sounds incredible, and is unbelievably cheap for how great it is. So if I had to just chose one, I'd probably go with one of the T5's modern big siblings like the Pro5 Rev 4 or Pro 10.
  5. Great thread! I love reading stuff like this. My longest running continuous music relationship has been with a bassist and a drummer, the three of us have played together for 25 years as of this summer. What's cool is that we actually have a recording of the first time we played together as a trio. You can find it here: https://stocksyndrome.bandcamp.com/track/whos-making-that-sound The long version: A local drummer/teacher ran an ongoing weekly improvised music series at a variety of coffeeshops here in town. I'd played on some of his sessions, and through these had met Page, the bass player. When the drummer who ran the series was unavailable one week, he offered the night to Page and I. There was a younger local drummer I'd known since he was a kid, and in 1999, he was playing with a killer local funk band. He'd also recently gotten into turntables, inspired by DJ Shadow and DJ Spooky, etc. He and I worked together at a record store, so I invited him to play with Page and I at this coffee house gig. A few days before the gig, we got together at my place and listened to records together, I remember I played Squarepusher's Music is Rotten One Note, which I was really digging at the time, and some electric Miles, Weather Report, Aphex Twin, etc. This was all the preparation we did for the show. I took my Rhodes, which I'd only had for a year or so at the time (I still have it), Nord Lead, and a bunch of stomp boxes. I also thought to bring my DAT deck and a couple mics. The link above is literally the first thing the three of us ever played together. We are still playing as the rhythm section of a funk/afro-beat band, and we still do the improv trio stuff, we actually have a trio gig this weekend opening for a prog-metal band. They are some of my best friends in the world, and some of the coolest people I know.
  6. I work exclusively in Logic, and I can really see this box improving my workflow.
  7. I've played keys in a Marley/Wailers tribute band for the last 12 years or so, and I've learned at least 100 of his tunes. IMHO, Marley wasn't just a great reggae artist, he was a major voice of his time, and a songwriter on par with Dylan and Joni. And The Wailers were among the best live bands of the 70's, regardless of genre. I've read most of the books and seen all the documentaries, but I haven't seen the new feature yet, but based on what I've seen and read about it, it looks really good.
  8. Nice! Investing in the UAD platform, back in the UAD-1 days, is the thing that gave me mixes that finally sounded "professional" in the box. I still use them all the time. Great thing about the PCIe cards, you can put them in a Thunderbolt PCIe enclosure and they will work great! I have an Octo Thunderbolt Satellite, and a PCIe box containing my 2 older Quad cards, and they all nwork together flawlessly! I was amazed when I first plugged these all in and they just worked with no tweaking.
  9. Always loved that tune, the piano voicings are just so cool! And I love the bit of stage shtick he does about the drum machine.
  10. Congrats on the purchase! I'm interested in your views about the Continuum and the Osmose, I am very interested in getting one of them, but have played neither. I do have an Expressive E Touché, which has been a kind of game changer for me as a synth expression device. I've played a Roli Seaboard in stores several times, and just didn't connect with it. Having watched many videos of performances on both the Continuum and Osmose, I've felt more intrigued by the Contimuum. What made you decide on the Osmose instead?
  11. Thanks for posting this! I was a huge fan of Wall of Voodoo and his solo work back in the '80's, and haven't listened for far too long. Great stuff.
  12. Just finished the 3rd season of Apple TV's Slow Horses, and will probably binge re-watch it over the next few days. It's about MI-5 as a toxic workplace, imagine a cross between John LeCarre's novels and the Office. And Gary Oldman is freaking brilliant in it. The books, by British author Mick Herron, are great as well.
  13. This year was the third NYE in a row I've played at my favorite local venue, the owner is a friend of mine and a former pro-level soundguy, so the place has a terrific stage and sound system. Also, the drummer in my band is the chef there, and his food is awesome, he's a damn good drummer as well. Had a great show, capacity crowd all night, sound on stage was great, band played well, it was a good night all around. We will probably play here next year as well, as well as throughout the year. Before this run, it'd been probably 10 years since my last NYE gig.
  14. A friend of mine has a ‘57 B3 and Leslie 122 in his rehearsal space studio that is the sweetest organ I’ve played. I even joined his band just to play it regularly. When we gig, I’ll use my Mojo most likely, and be disappointed.
  15. The trombonist in my band just played a show in New Orleans where George Clinton was a guest onstage. I'm simultaneously proud as hell, and envious. He said it was a great experience.
×
×
  • Create New...