CyberGene

It’s really hard to find CD players nowadays. And they stopped putting CD drives in laptops at least 10 years ago. I personally remember how happy I was when I replaced my portable CD-player with one of the first MP3 players in the early 2000s. I could bring my entire music in my pocket. And it didn’t skip 😉 Oddly enough I felt sad when I replaced my cassette Walkman with a CD player because I gained in audio quality but lost on the ability to create my own mixtapes (do you remember that word? 😉). Yes, there were CD-R-s later but do you remember how unreliable they were… they all stopped working in a year.

I don't see how CD-s are better than digital formats. Besides opening a case and reading the leaflet eventually. I fell for the vinyl craze and bought a turntable two years ago, borrowed my mom's huge collection of classical music vinyl from the past, also ordered new one. It was fun for a while but I haven't turned it on for a year now. It's so much easier to listen to Apple Music on the HomePod-s at home or my Mac at the office or iPhone through the AirPod-s on the go (and then continue from where I was when I step in my car through CarPlay). I guess in 30 years we may see some CD-revival where young hipsters would be interested in it and we will try to convince them the death of CD-s was for good but they won't listen to us 😀

That's currently one of the main tempting points for me. We rehearse in a studio in an area where parking spots are sparse and sometimes I have to walk with my equipment for 5 minutes and is when I envy the guitar player.

Regarding busking, as a passer-by I often find myself rather annoyed by most of the buskers. For many reasons: - It adds to the noise and I think many people underestimate the effect of noise in our everyday life - Many of these musicians overestimate their abilities. Well, yeah, there are some brilliant ones that made me stop and listen and wowed me, and consequently earned a reward. But most of the time it’s just people that are not good enough - We have different tastes for music - Where there’s one busker, there’s another and it quickly creates a cacophony (and noise, see first bullet) - Basically it’s an uncalled “concert”. I may be having a phone call or listening to some music on headphones and the loud music messes up with it I know it sounds negative and nagging but that’s who I am and since you asked about opinions 😀 I just very rarely appreciate buskers…

Well, that's what I said. You can map the MIDI CC sent by a knob but those are different depending on the context, i.e. one and same knob will send different MIDI CC depending on which Numa screen/menu you have opened. I've personally mapped the "zone volume" functionality of the knobs when the Numa is showing its home screen to control Logic track volumes. However if I open the zoom settings for a zone those knobs stop sending the "zone volume" MIDI CC and instead send different MIDI CC. Which may be desirable or not. Just for example, if you have a MIDI zone and you are not in the home screen but in the so called "zoom" mode for that zone, those knobs become custom MIDI CC controls where you assign whatever MIDI CC you would like to each knob. But if you change to another zone, those may change. And if you're on the main screen, those knobs only send a fixed MIDI CC (the one that is standard for MIDI volume).

A distinction should be made between “knob/button” and “function”. Those knobs have different functions depending on which screen you are on, for instance on the Home Screen they change the zone volume whereas on a zoom screen they affect e.g. piano parameters, etc. So, you can map functions (because they are transmitted as MIDI CC). But you can’t map the knob universally regardless of which screen you’re in and regardless of which function it affects.

There is also scat singing in that video around the 1 minute mark.

Even when I used to be obsessed by jazz, I couldn't stand scat singing.

I rarely see Montages (or even MODX-es), Fantoms, etc. on stages nowadays. Almost all live musicians seem to prefer performance keyboards such as Nord-s, Yamaha CP/YC, a secondary keyboard that is most often a modern analog synth and/or possibly a controller with MainStage. I'm wondering who still uses these workstations? Mind you, I'm not interested in cover/tribute bands maybe that's where they are popular? I'm really happy that I sold my MODX. It was my fault, in the first place, to think it would serve me as a performance keyboard but doing a simple split was PITA. I had to read the reference manual to be able to make a split that supports multi-octave arpeggio that goes outside the split range (yep, there's a separate setting for arpeggios because the regular split settings cuts off these notes 🤦🏻‍♂️). I couldn't believe someone would release something as outrageously awkward in the 21st century but I was clueless because I later learned some people started with AWM many centuries ago and they needed compatibility or something and that's where all that BS is rooted, the AWM 😀

As an owner of the following keyboards with AT (ordered from best to worst): Hydrasynth KB 49 with poly AT xKey Air 37 with poly AT Nektar Impact GXP 49 with channel AT Numa X Piano 73 with hammer action and channel AT I can say a good AT is actually a very useful and expressive control for synth leads and pads. And I've discovered that even the ones that have a rather erratic behavior (the Nektar and the Numa) can be made to work smoothly by using the so called Lag functionality in the U-He Diva plugin. Basically it is modulator that doesn't allow instantaneous changes of a control and instead applies smoothing curves to steep changes. Think about it for a minute: you never want aftertouch to jump immediately to the extreme values. I'm wondering why the manufacturers of "bad" aftertouch don't offer similar software smoothing to their AT implementation.

^ Well, since I’m in a more challenging load in situation in a pretty busy downtown rehearsal room, having to park at lest in a 5 minutes walking distance, I got the Numa X Piano 73. All things taken into account: action that is more than nice, good acoustic pianos, excellent Rhodes and killer controller functionality with USB audio interface, most lightweight and compact 73-key piano still with hammer action, all for less than €1000, and it’s easily an unbeatable board. But I can imagine how the GT is even better with its premium action if one can live with the added weight.

GAS is never gone. 6 months is an awful short time. Come again later 😉

I’ll be damned if I understand what the OP is about 🧐

Thanks, I didn’t know that. They’ve listed MONA on top and from the description of one of the skins for Hive by the same developer “Plugmon” it seems they used his skin as the official alternative for Hive, so apparently his skins are well received by U-He themselves due to offering not just a different color scheme but also a different layout/workflow.

I just installed it. Seems like U-He provided a native support for skins, so there's a folder named "Themes" (by default empty) where you drop the new files and then you choose which skin to use from the Diva settings. With that in mind it's pretty painless and you can always switch between the default one and the new one. I'm a die-hard Diva fan and although I hate the tabbed interface I'm very used to the stock one and after switching to the new one I feel like I don't know where is what at first 🤣 I may have to give it some time though. Other than that it looks pretty nice and I'm sure I will get used to it quickly. BTW, the new skin is too large at 100% to fit on my MacBook Air M2 screen and I had to set it at 80% but then it becomes a bit tiny to read. I use Logic with an external display usually but sometimes I also use the MacBook on the sofa or when on the road. Not an ideal solution but still the size can be changed each time, not the end of the world. I also noticed some issues with the embedded keyboard with the new skin, it won't react to quick trackpad touches and would hang. Also, playing on the white keys between the black keys would actually trigger the nearest black key but it may be some setting which I couldn't find. Not that I use on-screen keyboards but since it's an advertised new feature with the skin, I had to test it... 😉

I also watched that video some time ago with an automatic translation from Italian and that was my understanding too. Also, as far as I know, they acquired some of the GEM assets/patents and/or engineers. Giani Giudici himself was a product manager for GEM and was presenting the ProMega if I remember correctly. With all that in mind, it's kind of safe to assume the sound engine in the Numa X is indeed similar to the GEM which in turn has been described in a similar way: it's a clever way to compress piano samples, so that they take less wave space by somehow analyzing the spectral content and detecting the differences between the different velocity layers which would allow to combine everything in a single "super" sample layer (that's my own term) that contains enough data to be used for both soft and loud timbres through various spectral manipulations like e.g. adding/removing/enveloping harmonics?

Might’ve been discussed already in another thread. Anyway, just discovered it. Basically a skin that improves some stuff on the U-He Diva I don’t like, e.g. removing the tabbed interface, representing mods like colored rings around a destination knob, etc. Seems a no-brainer for the current price and I purchased it. But I’m not sure if I will have time to test it in the next days. https://plugmon.jp/product/mona

I bet a beer it won’t.

Excellent playing, Woody! I personally am not really sure about rags played with a swing feel because it turns them into stride, it’s not ragtime anymore. Other than that your playing is inspiring 👏🏻

How does that work? Not nagging, genuinely interested. Since I have a masters degree in Physics and I understand how FM-synthesis works both from math and physics standpoint, I'm also very well versed with analog synths and recreating patches that I imagine, yet I struggle making any meaningful FM-patches. It just doesn't follow any logic... 😕

I understand the analog craze and how even the best VA-s and plugins can’t quite make it. And how real physical controls are a big deal. But this is digital synthesis and plugins are there. And FM-synthesis is not about real-time physical controls.

Doesn’t look like there’s space for electromagnets (solenoids), so in the best case there are just static magnets that can’t do anything special. To me it looks like a pretty simple action and not any different than any other digital action. Wood doesn’t mean anything besides looking fancy. A real piano action feels like how it feels because of the complex mechanism and multiple leverage stages, including real escapement that detaches the jack from the high leverage ratio whippen-knuckle and holds the hammer through the low leverage backcheck-to-hammerhead ratio instead. In contrast, digital actions have a constant leverage that contributes to permanent pushback against your fingers which is tiring. Look at Kawai wooden digital piano actions for instance, they don’t feel like a real grand, although they are good actions. That’s why there are hybrid pianos such as NV10 and AvantGrand. There’s no replacement for displacement, so to speak 😉 Unless they managed to put solenoids beneath the keys somehow, it’s just a fancy looking action that is no different than any other digital action. We also discussed it over at PianoClack.

And here two melancholy ones: G | Gaug | Em/G then backwards and forward. Or basically playing a simple G major chord whose fifth moves up from D to D# to E and then back. Usually implies longing. Used in the beginning of the third part from Scheherezade by Rimsky-Korsakov and considered a typical part of the Russian sound of the group of composers called “The Five” which also includes Mussorgsky. Another similar but in the opposite direction and rather pessimistic due to the inevitable falling down. And a staple of trip-hop and similar somber genres: Em | D#aug | G/D | C#m7b5 | (sometimes ending in Cmaj7) :|| Basically it’s the opposite of the first one, you start with Em and move the lowest note down a semitone on each step: E D# D C# C Michelle by The Beatles 😉

Ab | Bb | C :||, an unexpected detour/surprise but nevertheless we’re heading back home 😀

Thanks, that's interesting, I've intuitively used that but never knew it had a name either. Wondering if the actual explanation can be that it's some variation of modal interchange but with a temporary modulation into that parallel borrowed key. For instance, if you're in C major key, borrow the same tonic minor, i.e. C minor, then use the enharmonic major: Eb major. C major -> C minor -> Eb major.