niacin

I use a Quiklok mixer stand, it's the WS 640 or 650. https://www.quiklok.com/instrument-series/dj-mixer-stands-workstations/

I want my left foot hanging over pedal A, so yeh a set-up such as in your picture doesn't work, I went to a large mixer stand cause I need the left edge of the pedal board to be quite a bit further left than the left edge of the manuals.

i recently had much the same dilemma but just needed mono, got a Radial SB-2, has parallel out, very happy, you’d need two of them for stereo but their not so expensive.

the will need to properly update the CX3, it’s not very competitive anymore.

I don't think there'll be a second version, but if all they do is allow separate octave shifts for each side of a split I'll buy one, hell I might even buy two.

Do you want a category selector button with that?

the wording suggests there are new sounds other than the celeste - which is actually useful to me for Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, Destination Anywhere & Comfortably Numb, obviously ymmv but i don’t see the need to diss it - but without doing the update i don’t know what else is there.

latest OS update December 2023 https://hammondorganco.com/system-updates

I've learnt to take my own monitor. Generally I set up and the conversation with the sound guy goes something like "yeh just a mono send, you can take a line out the back of my amp, it's an xlr, keeps it simple" and they smile and agree and life is good. But I did have one guy at a festival ask why I had a powered speaker on stage. I told him "It's my insurance," and smiled 😎🤣

A few years back I played a huge festival here that happens every year, centre of town is closed off, we’re on at sunset on a Friday, just before the headliner (name band you would recognise). We get there for sound check as requested a couple of hours before start time. Stage crew are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Turns out they’ve sound-checked the main act and then been told by the drummer that the kit is not to be touched. Someone didn’t read the contract 🤣🤦🏻. So they’re trying to locate another kit and get it in in time, which they did almost, we went on 10 mins late. Nice sound crew. Shit happens, you deal with it. Festivals, no matter the size, expect the worst and minimize your risk. They tell you you’ll get soundcheck at a particular time, assume it may be reduced to a line level check a minute before you start playing. Get your gear down to one trip. Buy a keyboard case with back straps, you may have a long walk in to the stage. Buy the smallest lightest x-stand you can. And in your circumstances, unless you’re ok to chill and enjoy the festival and the other bands, tell the BL you can’t be there until an hour before play time (anyone who has ever played festivals with a horn section will know one or more of them will always run this line) and expect a quick line check and to have to ask the sound guy for more you in your monitor after the first song. Expect the latter even if you do arrive early for soundcheck cause what you get at downbeat may not bear much resemblance to what you sorted at soundcheck. And don’t expect the money to cover more than petrol, food and a couple of drinks. Once you accept this is how things are you’ll be in a much better frame of mind to just chill out and enjoy the festival.

Favourite name goes to a local Toto tribute band. They’re called Dorothy 🤣

👍 velcro-ed to the carpet, including the power strip and psu and midi splitter box

Carpet, glued to a ply base, colour coded with rubber bands, the right cc pedal is used for wah. Makes set up and pack down real fast.

You might assume the guitarist was hearing too much keys - remember you’re both occupying the same bandwidth - accept it as a valid concern, ignore the speaker size comment (which is just ignorant), and apologise and tell him next time if he can let you know that you’re too loud in his ears you’d be happy to angle your amp more away from him, noting the mix out front as evidenced by audience comments and the recordings was really good. You really don’t want to get into a volume war cause he turns up cause he can’t hear himself over your keys. That he didn't just turn his amp up is a pretty big plus imo. Or buy the most powerful 8-inch powered speaker you can find, make a song and dance about agreeing with him and taking on his advice, put it on an pole, roll off the bottom end, aim it at his head, and fire. And invest in some ear protection cause you'll need it for the ensuing war.

Carlo de Wijs 'modular' Hammond:

If you're ever in Melbourne, Jake Mason is the man:

2. No - the drummer doesn't use a click live. 1. No - the stems, pulled from something like Jamzone, are usually the original arrangement, and the MD sometimes changes things up - often the endings - so the stems are useful to a large degree but don't quite replace in-person rehearsal.

Exhibit A, Your Honour, a song titled On the Run, played live (starts at 3:13):

I've recently been subbing in an 11-piece band. The MD has multitrack stems for rehearsals cause with 11 people there's always someone away. Instead of the usual Youtube or Spotify song list link, he sent me all the tracks with keys panned to one side and the rest of the band to the other. Not sure if they're Jamzone - seems to be popular around here - or what, but some of them are laughable. One soul tune from the late 60s he's sent me two tracks, one with a 'string synth' part panned to one side. Learn that. Yeh right. Whoever recorded it either couldn't be bothered transcribing the string orchestra and recording it with a sample library and/or couldn't justify doing so given the time:money equation. I told him he needs to stop smoking these stems, they're not good for him, listen to the original ffs. Some of the synth sounds have obviously been found/programmed in a hurry, they're just not even close.

If I can't do it live, well I've used bass & drum loops - often mixing obviously electronic drums with samples of a real drummer typically for hats or ride - cause that's the sound of trip-hop or electro-jazz. As noted above Peter Gabriel uses tracks for textures and sometimes that's an obviously electronic drum loop. No different from Eurhythmics using arpeggiators on stage in the 80s. OTOH, about 4 years ago I met a drummer interested in putting together a Pink Floyd Tribute. He showed me a ton of samples he'd pulled off the net that he'd run from a drum pad. Including a stem for the sax solo in Money. I said no. We got a sax player in for the few songs that required it, and now she's doing b.vox and some keys parts to help me out as well. If we can do it live, we're gonna do it live. Have had more than few arguments with the bass player who took on running samples when the drummer left. He can't tell the difference between a sample and a synthesized sound. So he rocks up to rehearsal with a sample somewhere in the ballpark, and I rock up having programmed the sound to within an inch of the original and explain that its a keyboard part, thanks but no thanks. If I can't find some joy in nailing the sounds and playing the parts what's the f^*king point ? I'd rather stay home and work on Bach. Full time musicians trying to make a living, well that's a financial choice not a musical one, and if I don't like karaoke, well it's just not for me and I can go elsewhere.

I've done something similar, the mini tributes included Cindy Lauper, Roxette, MJ, Whitesnake, Eurhymics ... thankfully the drummer explained to the band that the latter was machines and he couldn't quite get that sound so I didn't have to go the sequencing track. Some fun synth work, enjoy.

Keep going along and one day probably sooner than you think there’ll be another musician of your calibre show up looking to scratch the same itch, until you reach the point of being that guy who gets the call for the gig by established players you just gotta put yourself out there and be patient. I moved away for ten years and when i came back i was nobody. Answered an ad to join a band, won the audition, put together a duo with one of the singers, got fill-in gigs with her partner’s band … more duo gigs with another singer who did some fill-in gigs with a band put together by some of the players in the first band … 10 years after answering that first ad I’m doing festival gigs with her partner. There are other local keyboard players who can run rings around me on jazz gigs. I have more gigs than most of them but it’s taken time and patience and playing with some less-than-stellar musicians along the way to get there.

You can find Hal on the FB SKpro users group.