CyberGene

Coincidentally YouTube reminded me today about this old but gold reportage about explosions. I always crack at it 🤣

Take-5 also offers stereo spread although it's slightly twisted and only available through mod matrix and there's no choice over the voice allocation scheme. The Pro-800 is mono only. I don't own a Take-5 but I've been actively researching it for the last few days since I'm interested in it. What bothers me about the Take-5 is what many people complain about: inability to see the saved values of controls when you load a patch, despite it having two screens and the main one is a big OLED screen, so that functionality could have been easily implemented. Maybe a firmware can fix this. Well, when you match the saved value for a knob, there will bi a dot shown on the 3-digit 7-segment display but that's still too awkward (you have to twist the knob slowly and observe whether the dot appears and you don't know in which direction you have to turn). People also complain about various bugs that are still not fixed and quality issues. What I like about the Pro-800 is it has a very good MIDI CC support for all its controls which means I can use my Hydrasynth as a controller and assign various Hydra sources (aftertouch, ribbon, LFO-s, envelopes, etc.) to MIDI CC. Thus it can be almost the same as a Take 5 and even more. For half the price. I'm an almost certain buyer of the Pro-800 as it seems.

The Korg Vox Continental stand allows tilting. Maybe it can be adapted for other keyboards too.

I’ve had a bass player who would often just play anything but the root, so the harmony sounded weird.

Theo, out of curiosity, how would you imagine someone making money out of your video, so that a copyright statement is necessitated? I'm not nagging, I am genuinely interested in how one can make money from videos like that one.

I’d recommend a theory book. My favorite one is The Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine. Once you have at least a basic understanding of the typical harmonic language of jazz and the chord-scale relationship (especially the very well explained melodic minor and others) you will have a lot to work out on your own rather than relying on notated exercises.

This is totally subjective but my own understanding is fusion is predominantly instrumental and is part of the (wider) jazz world, whereas “prog” is closer to rock than jazz and while not strictly requiring vocals is still more often associated with (rock) vocals.

Does the regular pitch bend wheel work? If not, then maybe it’s the plug-in that needs to be programmed to recognize the pitch bend data first? Also, you may try enabling parameter transmit and set it to CC (page 6) but I don’t think that’s needed at all because the setting is for the knobs and not for the ribbon. But who knows.

I wanted to find a place for Lyle too. But he doesn’t fit any of the genres presented. I’m not even sure what genre that is (jazz/new-age/fusion) but I love the way he plays in “Premonition” by Paul McCandless, for instance this:

Rock - “Animals” by Pink Floyd (Richard Wright) Jazz - “Expressions” by Chick Corea Fusion - “In a Silent Way” by Miles Davis (Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul) Country - no, thanks! Classical - I live for classical music, it would be unfair to rank performers. But by a sheer number of plays Glenn Gould might be high with Bach WTC 1 and 2 topping the charts in my youth.

I didn’t know that Vangelis piece. Not typical of him at all but I fail to see what’s wrong with it. There are so many similar bluesy songs. And the sax solo is actually nice 😀

Never thought the Iridium required spark-plugs.

Industrial 🛠

If you're not joking, I'm really interested how come a musician anywhere in the world hasn't at least heard the name Vangelis. I don't expect that everybody knows his music but even if you have listened to radio or watched TV, the name Vangelis should have eventually came up and you'll know that it's a musician's name. Which is why I believe you're pretending 😉

It was a humble BF for me: the Waldorf Streichfett plugin (€33) and the Scarbee Classic EP-88S (€49.50).

I went to test some keyboards today. Unfortunately none was displayed for demo, only closed boxes. There was however a Roland Go:Piano which I tested and the keyboard was awful, very springy, 90% of the notes I played were silent... But seeing it in front of me I decided that 5 octaves is just too much, the keyboard is too big and heavy for a kid to haul it around the house. Which is why I started looking at very simple and cheap kid keyboards and I almost purchased a very basic Casiotone SA-50 for €68 (no touch sensitive keyboard) but then I noticed there was a similar Yamaha PSS-A50 that has 3 octaves with touch sensitive keys and discounted at €75, a quick search on the Internet assured it has the same keyboard as the reface (I owned a CP and a CS and the keys were pretty nice) but also on the box there is "USB MIDI" advertised which sealed the deal. Haven't opened it yet, but how bad can a €75 keyboard with touch sensitive keys and USB MIDI be? 😀 P.S. The Yamaha is great for a kid IMO. The touch response of the mini keys is excellent, the piano sound is OK, other sounds are passable too, there are arpeggios (including drum ones, hence rhythms), there’s a simple recorder. It’s very lightweight, compact and stylish. I know I’m digressing from my original question but I think this A50 is a pretty good starter keyboard for a small kid. Hopefully my daughter would agree 😀 BTW, it is USB powered and it supports MIDI, so it can be used as a mobile MIDI controller. It even sends control changes from its buttons as well as program changes. No sustain pedal input though. And no pitch bend or modulation. (Actually there’s a button called “motion effect” that can trigger various selectable things such as pitch bend slides, filter cutoff movements, modulations, etc. It’s an on/off switch and so the movement length and depth are preprogrammed but nevertheless it sends the corresponding CC through MIDI).

At €235 for the CT-S1 at a local music store versus €400 for the CT-S500 I'm more inclined toward the CT-S1 taking in mind it would also be easier to use both by my kid and myself 😀 I might go and test them today or tomorrow.

Well, that S500 actually looks pretty good for the price. Might even be usable for (semi) serious occasions.

Thanks, that's very helpful. Actually I miss Solina strings on my CP88, so even for that patch alone it may be useful to have a CT-S1 as an (occasionally used) second keyboard.

I am considering one of these two for my 5 year old daughter who doesn't play any instrument (nor has a desire to do so) but loves singing and is very musical. The boomer in me (well, I'm not a boomer, I'm an X-er on the border with millennials) says that having rhythms in a keyboard is the root of all evil and kids should practice their scales! 😠 But who am I kidding, she has a mind of her own and she used to love playing my MODX6 for the sequenced techno patches only. Hence, the S400. But then, I doubt she will want to play keyboards at all, it's just not her thing IMO, she's more interested in singing. With that in mind, I think the decision should be to choose a keyboard that can (eventually) serve me, hence the CT-S1. But then again, I have some serious stuff like an AvantGrand N1X, CP88, Hydrasynth... so why on earth would I need some toyish Casio? 🧐 Maybe I should really get the S400 for the kid and hope she will spend 1-2 minutes a week with its rhythms rather than totally reject the S1. Choices... Any opinions?

I’m guilty of doing that myself too. I have a friend who posts boring music. There’s no point in criticizing him since he apparently likes what he does and I’m frankly not convinced he has the potential of improvement. But he’s a friend and I feel he needs encouragement, so I just press like without listening to his music. My like means “I don’t necessarily like your music but I like that you keep making music” 😉 Wondering if that makes me a hypocrite or something.

How is B-3X compared to VB3m? I purchased the latter recently and to my ears it sounds very good but I’m not a Hammond expert in any way.

From the point of view of recognizing a CS80 in a recording, Vangelis is the most well known, since the poly-aftertouch driven brass swell he used is the most recognizable CS80 sound. Stevie Wonder didn’t use it in such a way. I didn’t even know he had one until today although I’ve listened to him much more than Vangelis. And I bet more people purchase the CS80 emulations to play Blade Runner rather than to play Wonder 😉

@Reezekeysthanks for the heads-up. I purchased the Scarbee branded one, the "EP88S", just tested it, sounds perfect ❤️ They offer the following comparison table: On the NI website they say they are based on Mark I, and not on EP-88S, so despite being the cheapest option, the NI one is older and I'm glad I didn't purchase it by mistake. As a positive note to installing Kontakt Player 7, I managed to import my Vintage D library that is a nice Steinway sound I used to love in the past. My main piano is now the Garritan CFX though but more variety won't hurt.

OK, I purchased the Scarbee one since I read it's the latest and greatest (5+ GB) whereas the NI is based on an older version of Scarbee. Now downloading it and it asked me to install a special downloader... Nowadays everyone requires additional software but hopefully I can remove all that cr*p once I have the samples running in the Kontakt Player. Can I delete the Native Access once I have installed Kontakt Player? P.S. Geeez! Native Access is now installing a process calle NTKDAemon.app and macOS shows this: I knew it I shouldn't install that cr*p, that's what I'm talking about. Why do I have to install a background process?!