niacin

1. yes 2. don't know

Yeh Philip Glass' early scores, Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, Mishima. [video:youtube] Also love Michael Nyman's work for Peter Greenaway, but he came to worldwide attention for his score for The Piano. The grind he gets going towards the end of this makes me smile. [video:youtube] You can hear Glass' influence all over TV and contemporary movie scores, though few of them have the edginess of Glass' early theatre works. [video:youtube]

I didn't care for the YC EPs or clavs until i played with the amp sims, they make a huge difference.

Roland's VR730 is also in that ballpark. The YC also has pitch and mod wheels where the Vox just has a pitch lever. But the YC reminds me most of the more expensive Nord Stage Compact, both great all-rounders, drawbars, proper MIDI and split functions, etc. While the Vox is a bit of a unicorn and no doubt has narrower appeal, but unlike any of the competition it's the only one that's garnered comments from folks here suggesting that it plays more like a musical instrument and less like a digital compromise.

The key actions are very different. I much prefer the Vox for piano playing.

Standards jazz gig, There Will Never be Another You, friend of mine who is also a great piano player has me playing keys so he can play his newly acquired bass, we get to the end of the first verse "... but there will never be another you," my friend goes "Baaaa" just loud enough for the singer to hear, she loses her s^*t and he launches into a bass solo for a few verses more than most bass players would take, I figure he's earned it so just let him go. Bar gig, Call Me Al (Paul Simon), bass player is a less-is-more in-the-pocket player, which is why we like him, there's no way he can play that solo so he skulls a beer in the allotted time, smiles all round.

I wasn't enamoured with the original selection, but I love the new 'small grand piano' (Upright#8) that came with the OS2.0 update

Yeh hunming, Keith minus the piano, so you just hear his humming, it's an ad for a xmas album, too funny.

Where's Keith Jarrett humming Christmas tunes when I need it. Stupid search engine.

An SK1-73 taught me that for Hammond playing a board with anything other than C at the top messes with my head.

I already owned the HX3 and had had it recently updated. It sounds like the fire breathing electro-mechanical monster that a real Hammond is. Next level. The overdrive and Leslie are as good as the Vent, imho. The Yamaha will only send regular CC#s on the knobs. So for percussion or vibrato/chorus you have to pick a knob (anything you're not likely to be using for the internal sound/s) to assign it to. Perhaps Carsten will create a MIDI template for the YC61 so that you can use the buttons as he did for the SK1, but until then I'd just assign a knob/wheel to percussion 2 volume, another to percussion 3 volume, and another to percussion 2/3 decay. I assigned organ reverb to control the overall reverb in the HX3. The HX3 drawbar settings are reflected by the LEDs: set up a preset on the YC61 with the organ section turned on and the organ section volume set to zero so the internal organ sounds aren't heard. When you switch to that preset the YC61 sends the saved drawbar setting over MIDI, indicated by the LEDs, to the HX3. Voila. What you said.

dubble post, stupid interwebs

So I had time this afternoon to re-programme MIDI CC#s to run my HX3 (latest version) from the YC61. The Yamaha+Vent2 was good, but this is a whole other level. The HX3 is about the same size as the Vent (I've packed it into the same small carry case), I mix it's outputs back in to the line inputs on the Yamaha for a single send to the desk, and I don't have to remember to switch the bypass button on the Vent when I pull up other sounds on the YC61. Very much looking forward to gigging with it next month.

Synth solo from 3:24, absolutely killer, one of George Duke's finest imho [video:youtube]

Yeh, now I have two stands, lol. They're well made but a pita to set up and pack down, and you can't get the boards real close, so I'll be using my modded K&M 18880 and possibly make my own stand down the track so the front of the top board sits directly on the lower one. I grew up playing organ so I'm most comfortable with the manuals close together.

Following in Fleer's footsteps I bought a second Vox 73 to put on top of the first. The more time I spend with the synths the more excited I get about the sounds I can pull, and the LED strips, although as Scott said not great for live tweaking, are perfect for exploring the synth patches at home. I play a lot of LH bass and now have some insanely fat and sloppy bass synth sounds to alternate with Hammond bass (usually split with a wurli, I rarely use the CX3 except for bass for reasons already mentioned). Took it to a jam last weekend having set up a synth bass/rhodes split and it got a big thumbs up. Bottom end for days.

My left hand can do limited tenths. My right hand lucks out at a ninth. I did hand stretching exercises when I was in high school and trying to learn stride piano, but still only front of the white keys or roll them.

Yeh quick web search for the first page as a head start and then ears. An accurate transcription would be faster obviously, but most of them aren't a home run on the accuracy front, and if I can borrow the Professor Longhair example, a transcription will only get you some of the way there anyway.

No, Paul, I most certainly will not cut you any slack. You're supposed to always anticipate all of our whims and whinges. BTW, my two favorites are Kurzweil and Ensoniq. Yes Ensoniq, their boards were what I cut my gigging teeth on. Currently most of my gear is 'other' but Korg's Vox Continental and SV1/2 are just a joy to play so I voted Korg.

. You probably haven't come across these guys then: [video:youtube]

I might be the only "criticizer" in the thread, I'm not sure. I am in no way against these kinds of covers. I completely agree, covers are where the clicks are. For me, what makes covers like this work is when they draw something new of out a tune we all thought we knew. This sample did a lot of ornamenting, but for me it didn't bring anything new to the tune. IMO, that's what made the vox less compelling; I just heard a sort of over-singing version of the original melody. If she'd brought something new to it, I'd have been more compelled. Nothing against any of the players, or the OP for sharing, or anyone who likes this. It's purely personal. For me, killer as the band is, it just lacked the "Wow!" I get when I hear the best of these funk-covers-of-pop-tunes, of which there are now quite a few. I have to admit I didn't make it past the minute and half mark. I recognise the talent on display but it's just not doing it for me. Definitely Dirty Loops territory and yeh this horn section with them might be something else. I'm guilty of following Richard Cheese, Post Modern Jukebox and others down the pop as old-fashioned jazz path, and on Saturday just gone had a rehearsal for a gig on Wednesday playing mostly pop tunes, including Shake it Off, in the style of 1930s jazz, so a lot of stride, Shake it Off works nicely over Ain't Misbehavin' changes including the bridge and all. It's a trio with vox and tenor sax. So we're running through Firework (Katy Perry), and I've rewritten the changes with Gershwin in mind and am rather pleased with how it sounds, and then the vocal starts: "Do you ever feel like a plastic bag? ...". Yeh right. Like something Ira would have penned. Not. It's not just that the melody has no shape, but the lyrics are so WTF.

The Korg Vox Continental does have a pitchbend lever, the LED strips aren't great for accurately changing drawbar settings, I like mine but use it mostly for synth and electric pianos, and second hand it's probably beyond your budget. Suggest you look out for a used Hammond XK-1 or Roland VR-09. Regarding gigs, I'm in Canberra and I reckon for every 2 venues that used to have live music pre-covid there's now 3, with bars trying to get punters to choose them over the competition, and ticketed shows, often with 2 sittings, allowing venues to better estimate staff etc. Still no dancing, but that gives live music and certain genres like blues or soul an advantage over DJs and top 40 dance bands which works for me.

So my part of the world (a few hours south west of Sydney) has reached a sort of Covid normal and suddenly live music is back with a vengeance (no dancing though atm). So I"ve had four gigs with an electric blues band in the past two weeks and took my YC61 ... ⦠and a Vent (Vent II). The internal Leslie sim is pleasantly musical but when I hold a note in the top octave and kick the Leslie to tremolo there"s just none of the impact I"m looking for. It"s almost like there"s a dry drawbar sound in the middle of the Leslie effect, if that makes any sense. I like the dirt and grit in the Yamaha so I use it"s cabinet model and turn off the Vent"s, and just leave the Yamaha Leslie sim on stop. The other sounds I used were clav, wurli and a synth pad, all sounded good, the clav and wurli benefitting from tweaked amp models and drive in the Yamaha. For this band I like the YC61 better than my SK1 because of the dirt and grit and in the clonewheel modelling, but it definitely needs a Vent, and I"m still learning to remember to switch it to bypass when I pull up a non-organ sound. atm though, yes I'd buy it again.

I suspect Josh is too humble to post this, it's a solo piano version of Prince's Kiss, I found it marvelous inspiration for a Postmodern Jukebox style duo I have with a singer and stole from it heavily especially for Pull Up to My Bumper (Grace Jones). [video:youtube]

Thanks for sharing, as well as the vocal he's totally got the Richard Tee thing down nailed.