CyberGene

Yeah, on a second thought I really shouldn't have used EDM at all. While I'm also interested collaterally in EDM too, because some of the bands I mean also make EDM (for instance Underworld), it's mostly dark-wave, trip-hop, synth-wave, synth-pop, industrial that I'm interested in.

Haha, well, you're right 😀 BTW, I used EDM in the title but I'm really asking more about wave, dark wave, trip-hop, industrial, etc. Some patterns there are very creative IMO, not just four on the floor.

@timwatthank you for the reply. Well, maybe I didn't ask it right, I'm pretty familiar with that music as a listener. I may have listened to Depeche Mode, Massive Attack, Underworld equally as much as I listen to classical music and jazz. It's in my head and I can even imagine my own similar music to a certain degree but don't know how to actually create it and approach it. I've been too much into playing mostly classical music, or jazzy/funky stuff in a band and my mind is too stiffened thinking in chords and scales, as well as in mastering particular instrument technique, licks, etc.. I'm wondering if someone with a more traditional background has attempted approaching modern styles and what has worked for them. For instance, do you just try what's in your head, like sequence it in tracks, or do you just start messing around with drum machines, sequences, synths and leave it to chance to find something that inspires you to move it forward. And if so, what kind of software. Also, rhythms really baffle me, I'm wondering if producers really sequence them from scratch or are based on ready made ones or generative sequencers, etc. But you may be right that I am thinking it wrong that it depends on equipment and software, when it's actually more just a state of mentality?

I have a side little "project" with two friends of mine. We're good at drinking beer together, never failed at that since college, on a weekly basis... 🤣 Anyway, we've had this bright idea (maybe we were too drunk) to also try making some music together. Now, I'm an (intermediate amateur) classical pianist with a certain jazz/funk background, the second guy is not a musician but can sing pretty well some Depeche Mode stuff and the third guy plays bass in an amateur church band 😀 So, nothing in common after all. Besides we all love Depeche Mode. And want to make similar music: dark wave, electronica, EDM, etc. Now, the expectations are mostly towards me since I'm most experienced with keys, especially synths (I can program my own analog-style patches, etc.), I know how to record some tracks in Logic Pro X. But that's about it. I tried to create some modern music but simply don't know where to start from. Tried to sequence some drum patterns in Logic but they are rather pathetic, sequenced some tracks but my mind is always working more in the traditional bass-harmony-melody way. Is there any chance a (way too) traditional guy like me to learn making more modern music? What is needed as skills? Which programs to use? Or hardware? What would be the easiest way to make this paradigm shift from traditional harmonic/melodic type of music to more pattern/rhythm/sound/FX oriented one? I'm not even sure I may need my keyboard, I see some videos where some youngsters are using pads to enter notes/scales and the rest is done by the machine 🤪 Maybe I'm just too old for this sh*t after all... I found some interesting suite of generative sequencer/drum/riff apps: https://audiomodern.com Any experience with it? Any other suggestion for generative apps that can help more easily produce modern music?

I had to sell my MODX6 for 1/2 the original price in order to get rid of it here in Bulgaria, less than a year after I bought it, never gigged with it (only a few rehearsals, pristine condition). Not sure why these are so hard to sell.

I had my YC73 for only a while and thought it could record a lot but looking at the manual it's indeed limited to only 1.5 seconds. So, yes, kind of useless.

Do Yamaha tend to announce new products at NAMM or slightly before NAMM, what's the statistics?

When headphones are connected, the piano automatically switches to a binaural sample-set of CFX optimized for headphones. However these samples may sound really off when played on speakers. Make sure you don’t have any headphones plugged in when playing through speakers. Or, there’s a configuration setting that will make the piano always use the regular stereo samples even when headphones are plugged in.

So, what’s the new CK? A YC with an added AN-X engine? Or a MIDI controller?

What you forget about these old romplers with 2MB memory when compared to modern instruments is the sound designers went our of their way to program a nice sound through combining a short sampled attack with multiple layers of filtered/enveloped transients, like e.g. the D50 or JD-800, etc. They had to be very creative and while ultimate realism was not achievable due to the memory constraint, they nevertheless created great sounding synth or semi-acoustic patches. Nowadays they just sample the real instruments and rely on having unlimited memory. And if they are constrained by memory, would just sample one key per octave, or loop it badly and call it a day. And you end up with 256 MB full of cr*p.

On the Yamaha YC61/73/88 there’s a looper although a rather rudimentary one compared to what are probably better implementations on arranger/workstations. However it fulfills some of your other needs for being very intuitive to use (compared to these other keyboards) and having great pianos, e-pianos, organs and other sounds. But it has no drums and no mic in, nor a vocoder.

Modulation is through one of the touch LED strips, as far as I understand. Which isn't so bad if you think about it.

I'm currently trying to sell my CP88 (which might not even be possible where I live, so it may take a lot of time) mainly due to travel weight and looking at either lightweight hammer action keyboards such as YC73, CP73, Numa X 73, or even semiweighted ones such as the YC61 and VC. If only the VC had audio interface... If only the YC61 was 73-key with that action...

I've been pretty happy with my Take 5. It can certainly go in the territory of Prophet 6 sound-wise (of course it can't sound so rich and fat, a Prophet is a Prophet) but then it can go much beyond due to the extended mod-matrix. It's also lightweight and relatively cheap. On our latest rehearsal we did Streets of Philadelphia where there's a rather basic soft analog pad throughout the song. I first tried to find something suitable on my CP88 which has a very small but usable selection of pads but none came close. Out of desperation I started with an init patch on the Take 5 which is basically a single saw. I added another oscillator, slightly detuned it, closed the filter slightly, switched on the chorus effect and increased the release. All that within something like 5-10 seconds and the other guys were really impressed and said "wow, you must be very experienced with that synth" 🤣

@AnotherScott, here's a screenshot from the manual: In the list of parameters for a MIDI zone there is also the name, although it's not shown in the actual screen example. Maybe it's possible to rename the zone from the "MIDI USB [ch]" to something custom? Someone with a Numa on this thread should be able to confirm.

I see that on some of the synth patches, one of the assignable controls (the last two LED touch strips) can be used for portamento on/off. But is it only on/off or can the timing be changed in more degrees? I read that the Hammond emulation is not really top-notch (and as @AnotherScott explained it's because they didn't emulate a real Hammond but instead emulated their own CX-3 clone from the past which in itself was not a perfect Hammond clone) but how bad/good is it? Is it closer to the better clonewheels or rather closer to the rompler organs? Finally, what's the included expression pedal used for? Can it be assigned to desired parameters, e.g. filter cut-off on synth voices?

Indeed, it sounds like a very clever setup. It kind of makes me want to replace my CP88 with a Numa. On the CP there’s excellent USB audio/MIDI support as well as 4-zone external MIDI functionality but it requires menu diving. The Numa is on another level treating the MIDI part as an internal zone by reusing split point for example, easy muting of the zone by pressing the zone knob, etc. But what you describe about the four knobs in zoom mode is even more interesting. I’ve basically suggested shortcuts for a similar workflow to Yamaha on the IdeaScale but they didn’t seem interested. My suggestion was to provide shortcuts that would reuse internal part switches for external zones, e.g. EXIT+number+control, where the number is the external zone number and the control is L/R split point, octave, on/off, program +/-, etc. All these can be set by going into the corresponding menus but it requires a lot of browsing. And you have to set lower and upper ranges to effectively set a split but if you change the global split point for internal zones, you will have to go back set ranges whereas it could follow the global split point if just set as L/R.

That sounds pretty nice, can you elaborate more? My memory is fading already about the interface. I remember these knobs were used to balance the level of each part when turned, or mute/unmute the parts when pushed. How have you reassigned them to the single MIDI part? Or is that only when you’re zoomed into the MIDI part?

Maybe it's not such a lucrative market after all? If a small manufacturer can make enough Stages to satisfy the world demand (because I haven't heard of any outstanding shortages for Stages), then any competing product might not be profitable, especially if all the potential customers already own a Nord Stage. Besides, there's a certain confirmation bias here (as a keyboard forum), because as much as it seems that combining a piano, an electric pianos and analog-style synth in a keyboard is everything you need in a keyboard instrument, the reality is this is mostly relevant for music that was popular half a century ago 😀 No, really, let's face it seriously. Even when those retro styles of funk, fusion, progressive rock, etc. that required a keyboardist with at least three keyboards on stage, were at their peak, it was already a rather niche type of music with guitar-only driven rock being the norm, later replaced with pop music sequenced in the studios. And now, in 2023, you expect for millions of keyboardists to buy on what is realistically a retro concept? I'm not even sure how many real keyboardists there are nowadays, being able to play relatively demanding piano/keyboard/synth parts. Most modern music is sequenced and if there are keyboards, they were just for entering the notes while sequencing it with no instrument-specific solos or parts the way most keyboard players here are used to.

Sure, I know how to do that but I have to switch between audio apps, open each app MIDI settings, etc. set MIDI channels on the Numa parts, etc. My idea about using the Numa is to recreate a Nord Stage 😀 Use three internal zones for a piano, e-piano, pad/strings and the fourth zone controlling a single synth app on the iPhone. Thus the iPhone becomes like an additional internal zone, the app is always on-screen, ready for params to be tweaked or patches to be selected. Anything more than that goes already into the territory of a workstation and that's what I would like to avoid. Otherwise I would get a MODX/Fantom/PC4. I mostly play in a jam session band where I select sounds and do splits and layers on the fly and I've already been in that awkward situation where the other guys are playing and waiting for me to scratch my head and look pretty dumb and embarrassed while attempting to create a split on my MODX, which took me 5 minutes the first time, and then "only" a minute once I was experienced enough 🤦🏻‍♂️

Fantastic! Sounds a bit dry though, this music is meant to be played in a huge concert hall with long reverberation 😀 (on a positive side note, less than 1/3 of the orchestra wears masks)

I already have it and it’s indeed excellent. But I thought of using the iPhone for a synth app (Minimoog, etc). If I have to run both an organ and a synth app I will have to host them in AUM and do some programming and I wanted to avoid a more complicated setup.

@b3plyr since you have B3 in your name, how do you find the organs? I am not an organ player and I don’t play solos, only background pad-type of organ sound such as in Pink Floyd, do the organs in the Numa work for that? How’s the rotary speed controlled, is it mapped to one of the sticks? Does it gradually accelerate/decelerate as on a real Lesley or is an instantaneous switch?

Oh, that's a big no-no for me then. Thanks for that info.

BTW, my question to @JazzPiano88 whether he seeks ii-V-I was serious. (Yes, I was annoyed that he looked for a tonal centre and I explained why but my second part of the question was genuine). How do you seek a tonal centre? To me the piece is apparently in A since the E sounds very dominant-ey, and the many D chords are the subdominant. Maybe it's because in my native Bulgarian folklore music (and to an extent Spanish Flamenco and other European Folk traditions, also Middle Eastern music) this is a very common thing to use the dominant as a hook (sometimes without playing the implied tonic even once), but it's not ambiguous to my ears, it's just a plain vanilla thing. And going back to my other question. And this time I'm not nagging, just genuinely interested. If you just try to listen to the song without analyzing or trying to figure out chords (and scales), isn't that just an almost straight forward and highly energetic rock song? I am not expecting that everybody likes it, but among those who like rock (and to an extent progressive rock), does that really sound ambiguous or lacking tonal centre? It's really hard for me to look at it from that angle. Which is why I decided it was probably a question of jazz-elitism, for which I apologized since it was an unnecessary reach on my side. And I apologize again.