U.Honey

My problem is that I’m a Yes-man. I’m getting asked to sub for gigs and I can’t say no. So, again I said yes to sub for a band that I’ve subbed before, and I thought that It will be an easy one since I played with them before. Then I got the setlist and yes, they have completely rebuilt the setlist. There are about 20 songs I’ve never heard before. I swear next time I’ll say no, but since it’s too late to refuse, and I couldn’t do it anyways because I’m a Yes-man, I’ll have to start working on it, like this: 1. Search the net to find a sheet or chord chart. I have iReal - iPad app which has pretty large catalog of tunes. If that doesn't work then, 2. Write a chord chart, or if there are signature keyboard lines I might notate then. By making a chart/sheet I’m 50% done learning and memorizing it too. 3. If it’s particularly important gig, or I want to make an impression like I actually knew how to play the keyboards, I’ll make a Spotify playlist and then play that in the car etc. so I get the songs memorized. Then I’ll just promise myself to never say yes again, until the phone rings…

The Keystage looks like a quality controller, and it looks good too. It's a little pricey though which I'm guessing has to do with MIDI 2.0. I'd be curious to know what "real life" features you can get with Midi 2.0 that you couldn't otherwise get? Not in the future but today? I'm thinking about playing live in particular. In other words, what ways could I take advantage of MIDI 2.0 in live gig situation?

If you have XLR output in your keyboard you can plug that to the mixer/FOH. But, what are you going to do if you get a buzz & hum from ground loop and you don't have a DI box?

That's nothing. When I was born, the doctor slapped the wrong end.

Where did you find that out? Just curious because I thought USB is by design downwards compatible. I've been using my M2 Mac with Keylargo with no issues. I'm using the Apple USB3->USB2 adapter.

Sure, I guess it boils down to what is "Our Generation". Almost all the songs/bands in your list are from the 1960's. Greg Phillinganes was born too late to record on the 60's. He did play on Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life" at the age of 20, but that was 1976. Maybe he qualifies as Great Rock Keyboardist of the youngster generation 🙂

If you judge by the length of the discography the winner might be Greg Phillinganes. His rock contributions include Guns'n Roses, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, David Gilmour, John Mayer etc. Here is a snippet of his discography. The URL to his full discography would be about 6 kilometers long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Phillinganes#Selected_discography

I have to admit that it looks good. Can't think of any other stage piano that would look that hip.

I thought Nord Piano uses Fatar keybed. Nord Grand uses Kawai's keybed. Not the same thing.

Also, the pitch/mod wheels are in steep angle. I would think that it's difficult to use them. The curved top makes it difficult to put another board on top of it . 10 lb more than the original Grandstage. I don't get it.

I just played a gig using Nord Stage 3 and B3X. The B3X does sound really good and I'd say better than Nord. The chorus/vibrato is more usable and to me and the Leslie sounded better too. I had mapped all the Nord's organ controls to B3X and mostly they worked fine but not without mishaps. The organ sound kept changing mystically and it took me a while to figure out that when I did a palm sweep I actually ended up sweeping the black preset keys of the B3X which resulted with "interesting" sounds. I hope there's a way to disable the black preset keys in the B3X. I will definitely use it again but really the sound is just one aspect of things when using a software Hammond, the other aspect is the controls. I would recommend setting things up carefully before the gig to avoid comical palm sweeps and other surprises.

I played with a ELO tribute act that used vocal backing tracks because the agency that was promoting us insisted on using them. Once after a gig a woman came to compliment my fake singing :-)) An excuse I’ve heard most often is that keyboard players are so hard to find. For example, one Abba tribute band guitar player told me that. That makes sense. Benny Andersson is pretty hard to cover!

K&M 18950 is great in many ways, one of them being the price in the U.S: $310. For Europeans it's about $180 including sales tax and shipping.

You're right, the price at Thomann is good, but they don't ship to the U.S. Were you able to get around that somehow?

To get phase cancellation you'd have to start with stereo and then merge to mono. Where in the signal chain do you merge the stereo signal to mono?

Wow, is that a whammy bar in the second link?

Genesis: Duke This album has some great sounding synth bass sounds used in a pedal point type arrangements. EDIT: oops, realized the topic was soul/funk context and Genesis isn’t really in that category.

Sorry I don't have experience on either one, but you can simulate "real world" experience of gigging with Roland KC-990 like this: Find something that weights 93 pounds (42 kg). Lift it up and carry around the house a few times.Then lift it to the car and back a few times. Finally, there’s the broken elevator simulaton: Grab the Roland and carry it up and down the stairs. Do that quickly and remember not to take any breaks because in real world you’d be late for the sound check 🤪 That’s how you can simulate real world experience of gigging with the Roland.

I've noticed that the Leslie simulator affects chorus too. I'm using Nord Stage 3 as clonewheel, and when I play it using the internal Leslie simulator it feels like the chorus is way too intense. C1 is ok, but C2 or C3 are too much. However, if I hook the Stage to my Leslie 145 and bypass the internal Leslie simulator C3 feels just right. So, it must be that the Nord's Leslie simulator somehow affects the Chorus.

It sounds like #2 has a little more reverb. But, if the reverbs are the same with both of them then I guess what I'm hearing is the modeled string resonance on #2. That makes me guess that #2 is then Pianoteq. They both sound pretty good to me. What is the sample based piano? Very nice playing!

How about a power supply? The black box is a transformer, the aluminum cans are filter capacitors, and in the bottom there are the rectifier diodes.

19 minute overview, and he doesn't play a single note! I guess that's fine. Some make reviews that say "No talking, just playing". Maybe he should add to the title "No playing, just talking" 😀

I transport the NS3C to gigs in a hard case but for rehearsals I typically use the red gig bag with back straps. So, there are uses for both the gig back and the ATA case and therefore the combination of the gig back inside a hard case makes sense. It's really convenient to carry the board in back bag, but to check in to flight you definitely need more protection.

I think the model is SKB-4214. Looks like that case is discontinued, though, and the new SKB models look a little different.

FWIW, I'm using this SKB 61 key case with my NS3C. The Nord fits in like a glove. The total length with the case is about 46", and the weight Nord+case is 40.4 lb ( or 18.2 kg). Now all I need is fly-in gigs 😜