CyberGene

I had the pleasure of watching Joe Zawinul live in Sofia in 1998 with his syndicate. I remember at the time the promoters decided to advertise him by a quote from him saying how Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock didn’t play synths properly. That was a very poor taste to market a concert but since it is a genuine quote I was naturally triggered because Chick and Herbie are my heroes, not Zawinul. Needless to point out that he didn’t play synths better than any of them IMO 😛 And he doesn’t have any memorable synth patch. Chick is very famous for the FM-lead and Herbie for the ARP bass on Chameleon. But admittedly I’m much more after Lyle’s soundscapes ❤️

Not sure how relevant this analogy is but I’m wondering if people thought the world was going to die with the decline of opera. It is a concrete mix of different arts and requires specialized set of performers’ skills and training. But the world is still spinning, even though opera has not been the leading entertainment for more than a century I think. Can this be extrapolated to music, the way you think of it: specific set of instruments, played in specific genres, with particular (live) skills, using particular music elements in place of others. What I’m trying to say is, the world may still keep existing even without people playing guitars and keyboards? I may not like it but why would one ask me 🧐

Have you tried that Yamaha setting to see if it makes any difference? Or does the problem happen even if you change sounds directly in Korg Module?

You’re absolutely right. The arrangements were made by Bulgarian classical/academic composers who kept the original folklore melodies and ornamentation and added Western European harmonies. These arrangements were predominantly written in the second half of the 20th century during the communist period (pre 1989) and were virtually unknown outside Bulgaria. However some French producer popularized them in the West later. BTW, because they are not entirely authentic folklore, some purists over here dismiss it as inauthentic and non-folklore at all. I don’t know, I was born in 1979 and was too young to follow their development and communist context and only remember hating our pure folklore but being fascinated with these modern harmonies that reminded me jazz which I was obsessed about at the time, so East marries West 😉

How about some odd-meter weird harmonic cluster Bulgarian female choirs? 😉

Sure, I expected Solina sound but hear something pretty different but I’ve only heard the video linked in the first post. I should find more demos. The most typical sound of Solina as heard on the 70s recordings is mostly because of the onboard “ensemble” effect (which I believe is a triple chorus or something similar) and/or a vintage phaser effect.

Hmm, have you deleted a post? I thought I was responding to a question about what the fourth chord in your notation is but I can’t see that being asked. I had just woken when I posted, who knows what I read and thought but in any case my comment was about the fourth chord in your post above and not to your original question 😀

I’m interested in this for exactly the same reason (well, not in a tribute band exactly, we’re all just enormous fans of PF). But the string demos are awful. As are the synths, I hear no Prophet character (since it’s a poly), nor Minimoog and that’s a pity.

It’s a variant of the alt chord in jazz. The “alt” moniker implies b9, #9, #11, b13 and you have them all except for the #11. You can play a Cb melodic minor on top of this but it would better be spelled as B melodic minor: B C# D E F# G# A# P.S. there’s no major third though, so it’s a bit vague in your case and can also be thought of Bbm7b9b13 😀

I’ve never been interested in Hammond instruments but this seems fine. Where are they manufactured? I read they are owned by a Japanese company, so I’d assume they are manufactured in Japan.

@AROIOS just a remark. When spelling notes with letters, as is the case here, the sharps and flats are written after the note letter and not in front of it, it’s easier to read.

I also own the CME XKey Air 37 and it’s actually one of my favorite keyboards because of its ultra smooth poly AT which is even better than the Hydrasynth (that I also love). Admittedly I’m only after my own music joy and rarely gig, so that explains why I find poly AT super fun. Here’s one short demo I made with the XKey controlling my Novation Peak where I selectively modulate separate notes, either solo notes on top of chords or the other way around: https://on.soundcloud.com/UHAGgR4wSuvnbDPH8 Not a meaningful music or something serious, so I kind of agree a gigging musician might not benefit from poly AT at all. But again, to me it’s such a pleasure!

BTW, to name another example of a band that’s terrific and gets into my head for a whole day, to the point of making me go mad about them and then completely forgetting about them on the next day, and then repeat after 6 months, Porcupine Tree 🧐 Such an awesome band! But I’m not sure why I overdose so quickly on them… Might be the voice of Steven Wilson.

Sure! I’d go to any of their concerts, if they came around here, without having to choose between them and any other band. They’re worth it even in themselves. Hopefully my criticism was not perceived as bashing. It’s rather an under the microscope dissection of why what appeared to be one of my new favorite bands turned out to be a slightly different experience but in no way they are bad. They are great!

I may be in the minority here but I find their music pretty “made up” if I can call it that way. On a first glance everything is of natural and soulful quality, it’s like a bunch of great musicians are making some great down to earth music and it’s very appealing. But it’s that same quality that also creates the feeling of artificiality to me. Kind of like they didn’t play what they actually feel but rather crafted it in a particular likable manner. I might be wrong though. I loved them for a day and thought I found a great project only to find myself hardly needing it on the very next day. And I tried to understand why that was, so that’s my theory.

Well, it’s right about time. Poly AT is mostly usable on sounds that respond well to various controls and modulations. Hence, analog. But in those times it was prohibitively expensive to implement. And then came romplers where sounds are static or programmed to evolve but there’s not much you can do to the sounds dynamically, at least in a polyphonic sense. Pitch and mod sufficed. And now that the analog revival is in its peak, combined with modern technology, we will have more and more poly AT implementations.

Why poly AT is not a mainstream thing on many boards and controllers is actually easy to explain. Measuring velocity has been streamlined long ago and is trivial: you only use simple switches, two under each key, pressed in succession. You can easily group and multiplex them through diodes and a cheap multiplexer chip, and that’s it. You scan the entire keyboard in groups (wire-OR through the diodes) and measure time between activations of switches. Voila. However with poly AT you need continuous values measured from each key. That means either multiplexing ADC-s (and diodes can’t be used anymore) which is a non-trivial task. Or design a complex and specialized controller logic around each key group which is expensive.

Polyphonic aftertouch can be sent either classically or through MPE. The lattet supports multiple per note expressions, think Roli. As to support, the Novation Peak supports it right out the box. I had one and can confirm.

On the pictures I see knobs with a marked line (not sure how you call it in English) which is usually used on pots.

Now, I am one who loves reharms and complicated harmonies, chord extensions, etc. and of course I prefer the second progression more, it’s my boat. However, I can still realize (sadly) and understand pretty well that the obsession with harmony is a single-sided way of approaching music. Because music has many elements too, there’s also melody, rhythm, form, timbre, modal vs tonal approach, tonal vs atonal, various degrees of polyphony or the lack of it, etc., etc. It’s just too narrow-sided to obsess with harmony as the sole element of music quality and again, I’m one who suffers from that harmonic obsession, so please don’t get insulted 😀 Remember how the Rite of Spring by Stravinsky was heavily criticized for focusing too much on the rhythms. But nobody talks about that anymore, it’s one of the cornerstones of all modern music.

Very nice! But why use potentiometers and not encoders above the OLED-s? Whenever you switch to another instrument/track/module those potentiometers will be out of place and you will have value jumps. That’s the huge NO for me.

No, no, no! 😀 I meant, compared to classical music, both boomer genres and modern genres are equally light, so to speak.

If you compare a classical music work, especially a large one such as a symphony, and even a little piano piece, to any pop/rock/jazz/… piece, the difference is so huge, it becomes silly and even offensive to try to make it appear as though boomer genres are somehow better than modern ones. No, they’re all the same. We should stop trying to educate kids “right”. We’re not right. They’re not wrong. Nobody is right or wrong. Let’s just move on. Or as they say, hey, teacher, leave them kids alone 😉 For the record, I’m an X-er.

This may have been discussed already (even me asking it in the past but I don’t remember). What’s the battery life with and without speakers? Particularly with rechargeable NiMh batteries can it last for a few hours rehearsal without speakers? So I can skip on bringing the flimsy adapter.

Well that’s both impressive and a bit worrying. Just opening their website one can see so many products, hardware and software… I can’t imagine all of them being engineers too, you need some sales, support, finance, marketing. If I was a potential customer I would be worried if they can support their products. But maybe they are very efficient and lean, who knows. Japanese people are known for that although I’ve had some doubts about all that recently.