CyberGene

Yep, here are some pictures I just did. Playing C-E or C-G-E from above is impossible without pressing neighboring keys: However using the lips and moving my wrist in front and it’s an easy task:

Not sure how big your hands are but I often find myself not being able to cleanly play 10ths from above the keys which is why I often play them with my fingers in front (and slightly below) the key surface with my pinky or thumb barely hanging on the key lip. If it was a waterfall action, I wouldn’t be able to press such a wide interval (for my hands).

Hmm, you may be right, I searched for accordion pictures online and I see a lot of them with lips. I haven't seen many accordions, only my mom's accordion (which she never played and despised because she wanted a piano as a kid but they purchased her an accordion instead) and that one had waterfall keys. I will have to ask her if she remembers the brand. But even with that biased upbringing I had based on a single non-standard accordion, I still find waterfall keys ugly, cheap and non-inviting 😀

Waterfall keys look ugly to me. They remind me of an accordion and scream “cheap” 😀

I’ve seen some classical orchestras (admittedly some less famous, low income ones) use electronic keyboards for harpsichord and celesta parts.

Will you void the Nord warranty if you swap the springs?

To add to JamPro, I also use other tones when I play blues, I counted them in total as 12. My theory is not very strong but some people call it a C chromatic scale although a smarty pants once told me it was a Db chromatic scale instead. In any case I think we should provide for more diversity, equity and inclusion in this challenge 😉

That’s not available on the CP instruments, only on the YC.

How about you keep being with the band but only playing parts that you can play? If they could live so long without a keyboard player, apparently they are not so desperate to have one that is experienced, so you can just play "warm pads" where you just blend in without being "heard" 😉 I'm (almost) not a gigging musician but reading this forum on a regular basis I'm under the impressions most keyboardists here tend to (humorously) use that catch line about how nobody notices them and there was even a story recently about one who didn't even play due to a faulty keyboard and only pressed keys and nobody noticed 🤣 I'm not saying you should act, I'm rather saying people may not expect from you to be a virtuoso and would be good with an occasional riff or something and unless your ego is not hurt by that, why not just go there and have a band life fun and that in itself will improve your playing even if it takes more time than you personally expect.

Thanks, I've been looking at the Fantom-06 this morning and it's an ideal solution indeed. Slightly above the budget though. Frankly, I should've kept the YC73 or even YC61 which both would serve me equally well as the CP88 that is currently heavily underutilized until some of my old mates call me for funk/jazz gigs and I doubt that would happen... With that in mind, I think I may entirely downgrade to a YC or even a VOX which on paper seems like exactly what I need, save for the lack of audio inputs but where I play we have a huge mixer, so I can just bring more cables after all.

Hmm, just discovered the MX doesn’t have an instrument input, so I can’t use it as my main and only audio output for the mixer.

I’ve been jamming occasionally with a few friends and my current setup is a CP88, a Sequential Take 5 on top with its audio going into the CP88, a MacBook Air with Logic using the CP88’s USB audio interface. We don’t have a drummer, so I play some Logic Drummer loops. We do stuff like “Streets of Philadelphia” where I play pads on the Take 5 and a single string line on the CP88 😀 Or, say, Raiders on the Storm where I have some simple Rhodes comping in the middle octaves. Or our own arrangements of famous electro pop stuff like Enjoy the Silence where again the Take 5 is my preferred keyboard while the CP is used for some piano octaves and a choir sound. But man, that CP tears my arms, so heavy to move and large to fit in my car… I can replace it with a Roland VR, or VOX Continental. But they don’t have audio interface. So: MX61 V2. Very cheap and very light. But are the sounds worth it? Is it easy to use on the spot without programming it at home? I like it has audio interface, so I can still use Logic, or my iPhone to play music while we learn it. It seems to also have some rhythms which can save me from having to bring my Mac at all. But are they any good? It’s all for fun, nothing serious, so I prefer a cheap solution. Suggestions?

I owned the SL73 and I play mostly piano, I compared it side by side to my Yamaha AvantGrand N1X with real acoustic grand piano action. The SL73 is not just overly heavy, it's also very sluggish. I'm sure many people won't have problems with it but to me it's one of the worst digital piano actions I've owned.

This is when I realize (as a non-native English speaker) that my English really sucks... 😕

I also love that but even more when you add the maj7 on top.

Exactly. It’s not random, because there is often some logic in connecting these chords to make it sound “jazz” but it’s often based mostly on the individual chord color or a desired sudden change of tone content, so that it doesn’t sound diatonic or too logical (in the ii-V-I sense), so it’s almost like striving to be random while it’s not. Hence, quasi-random. See, I’m not criticizing it from a general point of view, only from my own personal point of view: it bores me. And I used to love it. So, I perfectly understand why people love chords and jazz, etc. I just moved on. To me these types of jazz that are too “chordy” are like cooking with spices only. Add to that the improvisational element which necessitates certain routines and templatization and it becomes all too same for me. I’m not opposing genres but I went back to classical music where they sparingly use these complex chords and ambiguous changes only when needed, to spice up at the right moment and spend much more time on form, development, careful architecture and planning on huge scale between multiple instruments (which simply can’t happen with improvisation). Again, I’m not opposing genres, not rejecting jazz. I just had been eating too much of it for quite a long time and reached a point where I can’t stand it anymore… Rather my own issue, nothing wrong with jazz 😕

The obsession about chords in themselves is a typical jazz pathology and is the reason why I distanced myself from jazz, I felt too much is spent on coming up with weird chords and chord voicing, consequently scales/modes/outlines for the sake of the momentary sound of it, but the whole just sounds like stitching some quasi-random chords next to each other (besides the obvious ii-V-I cadences) for the sake of creating ambiguity and "complication", kind of "look how unpredictable and complicated it sounds and how well I can apply all these pre-cooked scales and licks on top of it". All that being said, I used to love all that 😀 Not anymore though. My favorite chord (with the corresponding voicing) still is the Am7/9/11 in the following low-to-high voicing: A - E - B - C - G - D I believe some books attribute that voicing to Herbie Hancock as his first popularizer, not sure about that but I wouldn't be surprised.

Aren’t modular guys mainly into making pictures of their modules and using software to design future setups? 😀

I received my Take 5 today but will test it in the following days. I can confirm the “Thomann Bag Behringer Poly D” is a good fit for the Take 5, has a very thick padding and looks pretty nice. For €49 it’s a great gigging bag IMO.

It’s an (in)famous table that is measuring the weight needed for the key to start moving and produce sound. That’s a rather unreliable measurement which won’t give you a really good idea about the action. Static downweight is also not representative of how heavy an action feels. You can balance 100kg on each side of a lever and that would be 0g of downweight since any weight will cause the lever to move but it would be awfully sluggish due to the inertia of the high mass. And dynamic weight (inertia) is not easily measurable. Digital pianos tend to have high static weight because a very few of them have counterweights in front of the keys. However the lack of counterweights means there’s less mass in the system, hence low inertia and a general feel of light action. And conversely, acoustic pianos have counter weights to balance the heavy hammers and action weight. This facilitates pianissimos but adds mass, hence inertia to the entire system and thus it feels heavier. It’s a bit counterintuitive after all.

+1

For two years I’ve made around 50 patches on my Hydrasynth. I’ll be OK with 128 slots. But let’s say 128 for factory presets. So, 256 in total are all that I need 😀

Behringer Model D is to me better than the original because it has CV inputs for many synth elements and I could thus make an aftertouch-driven filter from my Hydrasynth into the Model D.

Well, that's me with the Hydrasynth. I have brought it with me on a few jam sessions, but other than that I use it mainly to learn synthesis and create new sounds, which is in fact a very satisfying experience. However I find it easier to create/compose music in a DAW with virtual synths, rather than bother recording the audio from the Hydrasynth back.

Sure, there’s certainly some over-generalization. Yet, generally speaking all Kawai plastic actions and the newer wooden GF actions by Kawai seem too light to me. I’m not speaking about static weight that you measure with weights on the front of the key. I mean the dynamic weight, i.e. inertia. The only exception is the older RM3 actions by Kawai, such as in the Kawai VPC1. Conversely, Yamaha also makes a huge variety of actions that feel lighter or heavier but since we’re speaking about the P515 and their mid and upper tier Clavinovas, they all feel a bit heavy in static weight but their inertial weight is just right and allows for a wider range of forces you can put into the keys to achieve higher velocities. I’ve learned there’s no consensus about digital piano actions though 😀 Which is why it’s just my personal opinion and taste. I prefer the Yamaha approach.