dglcomp

Those damn Scandinavians, (English version, Innocence of sound) (English version, Summer never ended the damage was all mine) (despite the unpronounceable name it is in English, so good at speaking English that for the last item on the last episode of a programme they have a song in English!)

In some ways going bigger might be the way to make the chains survive, make the music stores a destination/somewhere to visit making sure it is well stocked with plenty of demo instruments, maybe even add somewhere to eat or simply get a drink. Thomann's only store is basically out in the sticks and whilst it might not be the sales leader it would have been back in the day it's not been sidelined and is actually being regularly expanded (I think there are plans to near double it's size) and it's seen as a place musicians should visit at least once, plus it's size means there are experts in each type of instrument (both playing and servicing) which can also provide assistance for online orders (so the shop helps the online side and vice-versa). Think about it a small shop may only have experts on the most popular instrument(s). It probably helps that they are a business without money worries (they are debt free, and only profits are used for expansion, plus no venture capitalists or share holders (well I guess it's for technical reasons but they do actually have a share holder called Johann!) ) and that with everything being on the same site there's no issue with only having stock online, if they haven't got it in stock there they haven't got it in stock anywhere (you actually pick up most purchases from the warehouse). Of course a chain of stores is not going to be able to put the money in that Thomann with it's one store can but it's something that could work, and as for stealing PSU's you could screw them down with a metal bracket or have them in a locked cupboard/container near/underneath the synths and just have a hole for the cable to come through. Or use a distributed power system, though I can see voltage/polarity issues coming into play.

Also the song he did with Chicane, Stoned In Love, listen to the verses and you'd not realise it's him, then the chorus comes in and it's him alright.

Mellotron?, Pah! Or not!,

Well here is a Spirio owner/user that is a piano player,

One ear will love it,

Of course Rick Wakeman is also a great keytar player, uses it on merlin the magician.

Filmed at her wedding of all places, still waiting on a live version. A song to her Daughter who is in the video (interestingly Sven and Torbjorn fro Royksopp also make cameos)

I know my Aunties square piano was anything but loud and if you did play it in order to get a decent amount of sound out of it you risked it going out of tune!, certainly quite the volume difference between the square piano an her baby grand (which was also fairly old).

Arguably it was eclipsed by it's predecessor rack units that had the monitor output, love using my S330 with a monitor and mouse, plus as they'll output a SCART compatible output with a passive adaptor lead the colour output can easily be fed into a modern screen/TV. I use a cheap 22" LED LCD TV I got ages ago from the local supermarket or an RGB SCART to HDMI adaptor. The GEM S2 is my secret sauce instrument, the amazing keybed and good sound engine plus it's an excellent MIDI controller.

Something a bit interesting as they had their own custom instrument that became a big part of their live set, made so that the four of them could tour without extra musicians. Made by their lead singer/founder and supposedly consisted of back to back pianos, a glockenspiel type device played with doorbell mechanisms, organ and synth (there's a chopped Odyssey and 2600 in the videos) all controlled by the piano keyboard plus an extra keyboard on the "bass" side.

I believe the piece of music used for the Grammy's event was recorded in Stevie Wonder's studio and Howard got to have a jam with Stevie. Also Howard supposedly had quite a few KX5's over the years and only stopped using them when failures became an issue and he switched to the new Korg one, he liked the smaller keys as he felt they worked better for a keytar.

From someone who still has his GX-1 he had from new.

Susanne Sundfør - Mountaineers, What's up with Scandinavians and talent just not fair!

The atrophy modes sure look interesting and appear to be customisable unlike the Sequential vintage knob.