CyberGene

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/05/apple-brings-final-cut-pro-and-logic-pro-to-ipad/

While we’re at it, outside of classical music, jazz (and other similar genres where music is the only important ingredient), for any other (commercial) genre of music I go to see a complete show and I expect proper attire, choreography, interaction between musicians, even theatricality. And then also a certain limit of BMI 😉

Bach - hearing my mom play Bach on the piano just smashed my head instantly one day when I was a kid. I was immediately determined to become a pianist and to start learning the piano and play only Bach forever and ever 😀 Chick Corea - “Expressions”, that’s what hooked me into jazz a few years later and influenced a lot of my further (poor) improvisational approaches. Dave Grusin - anything. But initially it was “The Firm”, I just went mad about it! And I almost completely borrowed his harmonic language and voicings. ——— When I abandoned jazz and went back to classical music it was Evgeni Bozhanov who convinced me classical music interpretation can be very individual and creative by applying spontaneous decisions (different interpretation every time) with utmost lyricism, hand independence, inner voice accentuation, rhythmic fluidity. That’s similar to how Horowitz plays.

There’s some truth to that. I believe those who are professional classical pianists, playing predominantly on acoustic pianos, seem to prefer sampled pianos, for instance David Lai, Philip Johnston, Gamma1734.

I was playing through all 100 factory performances the other day and noticed some distortions on some performances. I used my Sennheiser HD650s and I have never used them before with the Numa (I have many headphones at home). I will certainly retest with other (lower impedance headphones) to see whether I can hear distortions with other headphones too.

Yeah, like you were gonna tell the difference if you didn’t know it was a plug-in 😉

Yes, I also wondered whether he might be an insider perhaps. Or a former employee?

The Numa X also has a USB audio interface, audio mixer, top notch MIDI functionality and external zone control, 4 internal zones, uploadable sounds, two joysticks and three pedal input with support for various sustain and expression pedal brands/models, intuitive interface, etc… It’s just in a different league than the ES920. Maybe the MP7SE is the proper competition but it’s heavy and huge. If you need a compact and lightweight 73-key piano, it’s the cheapest option and is IMO the best bang for the buck.

I can confirm that the Numa X Piano supports half-pedaling with the Roland DP-10 pedal 🥳 That’s my favorite sustain due to the anti-slip mat you step on. It has a switch for choosing between binary (on/off) mode and half-pedal mode. And in the Numa system settings you have to select the “Continuous B” mode. P.S. I corrected my advise above from Continuous A to B. While both seem to work for acoustic pianos, the A mode doesn’t work well with the modeled electric pianos and would not immediately cut off the sound on pedal up.

I formatted and sold my MacBook without first deactivating licenses. Was a bit PITA since I had to contact a few of the manufacturers and explain to them and expect them to believe me but they did and restored my license count. But yeah, it’s a concern.

Wow, very nice! The Moogish lead at 2:31 is wonderful. Has anyone tested how loud the speakers are? Are they enough for playing with non-amplified instruments such as an acoustic guitar and bass? Or are they just for convenience?

I'm an U-He fanboy but I must admit this new Softube synth is really great: Don't we live in great times? 🙂 Apparently the bar is getting set higher and higher with software. To me personally paying thousands for hardware synths makes less and less sense, at least for how I make my music.

Ahh, maybe I got Karen wrong. What you describe here is different and indeed the world has become a big pile of people who are not just offended by anything but would aggressively try to punish anybody for everything, many people walking on egg shells for fear of being cancelled. I thought Karen was about complaining to the manager if you’re not happy with the service which frankly sometimes is OK to me, I mean sometimes you may want to complain about the service. I have never spoken to the manager though but when I don’t like something I would politely point it out, even in humorous way. The most recent case is an otherwise nice diner where they cleaned the tables with a rag that was apparently not cleaned well and there was this smell in the entire place and I overheard other people mentioning it too. But I didn’t act angry or sarcastic. I just told one of the waitresses that maybe they are very busy, etc, etc and that’s probably the reason why they may have not paid attention… I also understand Karens are moms who were not happy to have their child locked down during Covid. Well, my daughter was 3 when the lock downs were enforced and she couldn’t socialize with other kids and we now have some issues but I don’t want to go into details… In retrospective the lock downs were really detrimental to kids and students IMO.

I see, thanks. I will have to check him since I only know him as a name, never listened to any of his music. But I’m also not that interested in developing myself in jazz anymore. I realized I was not destined to be a good jazz improviser anyway, so I switched styles, but in jazz my experience is mostly around the more standard stuff like applying melodic minor, diminished scale, etc, all that virtually coming from Mark Levine’s method. My question regarding the Barry Harris secret scale was rather out of curiosity rather than any real need since nowadays I find myself playing either classical music at home, or pop/rock/experimental with other people 😀 10 years ago I would give a kidney to learn playing post-bop, say Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea but who wouldn’t 😀

As a non-American I wasn't familiar with that Karen term until recently. Maybe it's a regional/political/sociological thing but I don't find that character only negative 😀

I was gonna ask what that secret scale is but then I realized it’s a gotcha trap and a running gag around the forum where anybody asking that question would be answered: it’s secret, didn’t you read! 😀

Yes, that's true. Mine has really small lips:

I regretted selling my Yamaha P90 at the time. I had to live abroad and so I sold it. Then I purchased a Roland FP5 and hated it. What followed were many stage and cabinet pianos but I couldn’t love any of them. Only recently when I purchased my AvantGrand N1X I finally found my spiritual mate, errr piano.

That’s somehow true but in jazz it’s more often played over a b9 dominant chords. It won’t fit well, say a #11 chord (because those are usually having non-altered 9th) or a sus4 chord which will have even more clashes. In fact even an alt chord may have clashes because while it has the b9, it also has a b13 and b5 whereas the diminished would have these non-altered. But sometimes “clashes” are intentional and make it sound “outside”, it’s ultimately about what you find sounds good to you 👍🏻

Yes, I agree. The additional (downloadable) pianos are my favorite and IMO better than the original onboard ones. Both the Steinway B and the Yamaha (forgot the actual name, maybe a 183 cm Japanese or something, not at the piano right now).

I just listened to it. Very nice tune, has 90-s vibe. Reminds me of a rather obscure keyboardist I used to listen to, Fred Simon (Check his album Usually/Always from 1988) and other artists recording for the now defunct Windham Hill label. Great work @justin_havu!

Reading the last posts it seems Behringer might have sold tons of these 1-2 years ago but in an oversaturated market with so many great synths now, and with people already owning something similar, it may not sell so well. We will see. I personally don’t think it will give me anything on top of my Take 5, besides the 3 more voices. But the Take 5 can make circles around it with its mod matrix, flexibility and FX.

Yeah, I saw that yesterday and I am really tempted to get one for that price. Analog 8-voice poly for that price is just ridiculous. On the other hand, I started feeling that this entire renewed synth mania is just not worth it. Yeah, we can finally buy some dream stuff from the past for cheap but once you get past the initial excitement, is it really worth it? For me, not really sure. I am somehow spoiled by great virtual synths such as those from U-He and am not really convinced the real analog gives me anything more. Yeah, there are some differences in isolated laboratory comparisons but who cares, I don't make solo synth music...

As an ex-owner of a CP88 that got replaced by a Numa X Piano 73 (same sounds and feature as the GT, just a lower tier keyboard action) I can say with a certainty that the CP88 beats the Numa in regards to sounds. Not by much but still, the acoustic pianos are more engaging to play and more natural, the electric pianos are perfect, whereas on the Numa you have to tweak them... That being said, the Numa won me with some of its features such as better external MIDI zone control (good luck turning on/off external zones on the CP unless you start diving into the menus), seamless zone switching on/off where the sound doesn't get cut immediately as on the Yamaha, being able to apply effects to the audio input, compact size and lowest weight in class. So, yeah, the CP88 has some edge but then it's also 1.5x the price and has some things that are worse than the Numa. Taking in mind the size of the companies and the difference in experience creating music instruments (because Studiologic were only making controllers until relatively recently), I would say kudos to Studiologic 👏🏻

Yeah. When I’m notating 7alt chords I always have a little crisis of whether I should strictly follow the jazz prescription of denoting b9, #9, #11 and b13 or just use the enharmonic tritone 7#11 chord to spell it out cleanly and much more readable. For instance, I had to recently notate an Ab7alt and there’s a pure A there that’s actually the b9 and thus should be notated as bbB 😀 (double-flat B) But if you just look at it as the D7#11, then it’s just an A. But then it’s not harmonically correct…