confidence

Eb7sus, isn't it?

I think you're basically right. A Dm7b5 chord in C major is just a chromatic alteration of II7. That could be inspired by a voice leading process involving the Ab or an expressive desire for the sound of the chromaticism. Apart from anything else, the Ab doesn't in itself put the mode into C aeolian. It could equally be C harmonic minor, since no B or Bb is present to tell you which. It's not that the modal explanation is wrong as such, just that it's unnecessary and doesn't add anything of value. The point of technical explanations of musical processes should always be to explain as much as possible as succinctly as possible, so your brain isn't crowded with unnecessary technicalities but has a firm grasp of basic structure around which to think about rhythm, expression, improvising etc.

When I read articles like that I always wonder when the writer last set foot in an actual school. They seem to just be lamenting their experience of school music 40 years ago, with no concept of how things have moved on.

This. When I looked at it I immediately thought of bars 5-8 of Gershwin's original harmony in I Got Rhythm: The C#dim7 makes perfect sense harmonically, as an intensifying passing chord between the C and the G/D. It's just that the melody is doing something completely unrelated. The key is that the melody is diatonic (and repeating what happened earlier) so it has its own melodic impulse from which the harmonic impulse momentarily departs. If you transcribed the OP excerpt the same way it would make the same sense, because you'd see that the melody is just five notes straight up the diatonic scale: This kind of thing comes from the fact that the melodic and harmonic impulses in jazz are not always as integrated as they are in classical music. Mozart or Chopin conceived of every moment as a melodic-harmonic whole, so you can always arrive at an analysis that includes the melody within the harmony (notwithstanding the role of passing notes etc.) Jazz isn't really like that. Because its melodic processes are more obviously still rooted in the purely aural traditions of folk music, spirituals etc, and because they require the freedom of improvisation, they have a more partial and qualified relationship with its harmonic processes. You can tie yourself in knots trying to square that circle, but it often makes more sense just to acknowledge the original melodic-harmonic disconnect and then call each what they are. Having said that, C#dim7 is also, in classical terms, just A7b9 with the root omitted, so that could work too.

The relative geographical compactness of the UK is an advantage here. When buying anything expensive like substantial music gear, I would try to find one within driving distance. Even if that means driving 2-3 hours it's worth it for a major new purchase, and I'm within that distance of London so there's usually a fair selection. So I use Ebay for the range and convenience, but then go view and try out the gear "old school" before paying. Not sure about how useful seller feedback ratings on Ebay are. I know the one time as a seller that I was dicked around by a buyer, who "won" the auction and then failed to pay or respond to communication, I tried to leave a negative feedback for him as a warning to other sellers and it was basically impossible to do so. I don't know if the same restrictions apply the other way around, but I did wonder what the point of the feedback system was then.

Ah yes good point. Second hand Nords do seem to retain a remarkable level of value.

50 gigs with a $5K instrument is $100 per gig. Do you get paid that much for local gigs that you can breezily write that off the profit for every gig, as the operating cost for one piece of equipment? Of course if you just like it and want to spend $5K on something to give you pleasure, that's completely different. But since you framed it in working financial terms, I'm curious.

Blimey, do you need planning permission to install a keyboard that size?

Wow, is that all it takes? That's some bad GAS you got there. 😀 Hold on for a minute while I do a quick photoshop mock-up of my latest invention, and get your credit card ready . . .

Thanks Chris it's good to know it's not just my insanity. The UI is so strong on this board but this does seem to be one area they've got it wrong. Hopefully it's the kind of thing that could be sorted with a future firmware revision? As you've obviously had longer with the board than I, have you suffered this problem with other sounds as well? I mean when you edit, copy and change programs based on the EPs, synth sounds etc, are there parameters there too that you have to reset over and over again? I can probably live with it for the basic AP parameters, it'll just become a habit. But I can see it being really annoying if the same "dance" applies to every edit I ever want to make.

OK I'm loving this keyboard. The action is lovely: solid but pliable, responsive, good for AP while not too heavy for EPs. Piano sounds, while not the very best out there, are good. Some excellent EPs, orch sounds, pads and some of the new ones released for download are smashing, which bodes well for the future. As others have described, so I won't repeat, the design and interface are pure genius. All this for £900 for the 73 key version seems like a steal. One major query, if anyone can please help: Most similar keyboards have some kind of distinction between "patch" and "program" modes, although they may go by different names. ie the mode where you're dealing with a single sound, and the mode where you're putting sounds together in combination, and applying key ranges, controller assignments etc. to them. On the Numa X, you're basically in program mode all the time, right? Any time you manipulate or edit a sound you're doing so within its particular zone of a particular program. (Tell me if I've got this wrong). Now, differences of design (and preference) sometimes arise about where editing fits into this. To what extent do you edit the basic sounds themselves, and to what extent the programs. When you save an edit, does it affect every instance of that sound, or only the program you're in? Different boards have different approaches to this. On the Numa, program 0001 has "German Grand" in zone 1 and nothing in the other zones. So to get rid of the ridiculous level of pedal clunk, I go into zoom mode on zone 1 and reduce the pedal resonance by half. I save the edit, and now whenever I come back to that program, the pedal resonance is as I set it. If I scroll through the programs and find others with the German Grand in them, the pedal resonance is still set to the default, so clearly the edits only affect the program, not the patch. OK. But here's the thing: If I then go into program 0001 and replace the German Grand with a different piano model, the pedal resonance edit disappears and we're back to square 1 (ie the new piano in zone 1 has the default level again, not the one I set). So it doesn't seem to save the edit to the program either - it only saves it to the SPECIFIC PROGRAM-PATCH INSTANCE. This seems like editing is going to be a stupid amount of unnecessary work. In this example, every time I load a piano sound into any program, I have to first load the sound AND THEN GO INTO ZOOM EDIT AND SET THE PEDAL RESONANCE. I can't just make the sound carry it's correct resonance level wherever it goes, and NEITHER can I make the program retain the correct resonance level whatever sound I put into it! I'm using this example as the one that's jumped out at me as needing editing, since all the piano sounds have this excessive pedal resonance, with the level set to a default 64 rather than to what sounds good (why?). But as other similar things come up that you want to edit and have them stay that way, it could become a serious PITA. Am I missing something here?

Thanks! I was on Firefox but I just opened it in Chrome and it was as you say. (There's probably something similar in firefox but it doesn't come up automatically).

I followed your link and it's not coming up in English, nor can I see any way of translating it?

Just got mine today. First impressions: great, I like. Need to update firmware, fix that extraordinarily loud pedal clunk (!) and then have a proper go in detail. Just one question: Are the outputs balanced or unbalanced? It doesn't say in the manual or anywhere I can find on their site.

Hmm, similar to my thinking. In principle, it should be in the Osmose's favour, from a simplicity POV, that it has its own in-built synth. But I agree about the sound - it's organic and interesting and all that, but there's a basic sense of bright artificial "synthiness" that runs through everything (well, everything I've heard at least). How does Equator2 work? In what way is it different from the Osmose's engine? How good is the Osmose at controlling other programs? (Kontakt, VSTIs etc.) I also feel like the Seaboard is more DIFFERENT from the piano and keyboard I know - it's really taken on the spongy, organic free flowing idea to come up with something truly new. Osmose looks amazing, and deep and complex, but shows its digital roots ("digital" in the sense of like a piano, not electronic) more.