Greg Mein

I've had to replace the SD card in ours since this thread started also. I wonder if AKAI is aware of this fairly serious issue??

For years I've used DP on MBP's with MOTU interfaces and external keyboards. It's always been a solid setup and I'd always created my own tracks. I was originally inspired by articles in Keyboard magazine where Mike McKnight and others used that same basic setup on large world tours with world renown artists and groups. The last band I was in was undoubtedly the most popular in the area and certainly the most lucrative with sound company on hire and a minimum $2000 fee. Pretty good for a regional act. My primary function was keyboards along with some vocal and guitar. I even introduced some sequencing into the group which wasn't much of a problem, they were top notch musicians who quickly adjusted to a click and we already used in-ear monitors. I'd used the same basic system live before joining that group and after I left I continued to use it as my wife and I put together a duo act. Your idea sounds like a great big load of fun, I'd love to be a part of it!

I've used MBP's on gigs with bands and later, with my duo, for many years. I started with Powerbooks and have upgraded many times over the years with my current gig MBP being a 2017 model. I've nearly always used Digital Performer with MOTU 828 interfaces, keyboards, external midi devices, etc.. I actually haven't used this system for a couple years after forming my latest live band but I'm revisiting it now because my wife and I will be doing a couple duo gigs this Summer when we travel back to the midwest. It's a fairly complex setup that I won't waste time explaining unless someone is interested in discussing such things.

I've also done this song for years, what is the procedure for viewing these image files??

Great thread! I'll be looking at this soon as I go back to revisiting our duo backing track system. For the last couple of years we've been doing a full band but we'll be staying out of state in Jun-Jul and will need our backing track system up and running again. My wife bought the RD88 last year and I'll want to control patch changes and so forth with a USB cable from my MBP/828x/Digital Performer setup.

I've actually enjoyed doing fill in and one off gigs but only if I'm given enough time to prepare. I've developed a really good process for nailing down parts and learning songs that includes a couple of computers, at least one interface, YouTube, Digital Performer (because I know it best) and Ableton Live for its ability to retune audio source files.

I'm rewiring my studio room. I've finally decided to be honest with myself and admit that the day of the MOTU MIDI TimePiece AV USB is over. I hadn't actually used it in quite a while even before I wired up this room a year or so ago but there I was filling my cable ducts with MIDI cables. I've realized for a while now that my "infrastructure" just wasn't up to par with how I'm actually doing things. I'd installed the cable ducts to keep from having cables all over the floor and now.....I've got cables all over the floor. So I've removed the MTP, and a couple of other place holders, from my big rack and am placing the cables I actually need in my cable ducts. I won't sell these units though, I've learned from past experience I may regret that.

After a lot of pondering I decided to just buy a patchbay. The Neutrik NYS-SPP-L1 48-point 1/4" TRS Balanced Patchbay seemed like the most economical option. It'll fit nicely in the back of the 4 space rack case we'll be using again this Summer for backing tracks (MOTU 828x, MBP, DP, etc.). I won't need to do any soldering or buy additional parts and it's a device that could be handy in the home studio perhaps later. Appreciate the responses, always great to read your thoughts and suggestions!

It sure would be nice to find a 1U/2U panel with holes predrilled for 1/4" TRS type female jacks. I'm finding a few panels but they all appear to be for XLR jacks, AKA D-Series. According to my brief internet search the hole for a 1/4" female jack needs to be approximately 3/8" while these D-Series holes are roughly 15/16". The goal is to be able to plug standard audio cables into jacks on this panel installed on the back of the rack while the backside of the jacks are patch cables plugged into the actual gear installed in the rack. I've done this before but it's a pain to have to drill my own holes in these things. Seems odd I can't find something. Can anyone relate? Thanks in advance for any knowledge or leads.

I'm a bit concerned, our last two big equipment purchases have been at the Sam Ash in Las Vegas. I can't find a complete list of the stores they will shut down, anybody?

I remember I once built one using my little battery powered micro Marshall amp, you know the ones. Certainly simple enough; drilled a couple holes in the back of it, one for a little DPDT switch and the other for a 1/4" jack so I could run the speaker output to an external driver with a plastic hose attached. I can't remember where I got the idea but it worked great. It was fun for a while but I eventually removed the mods. A few years ago I bought a Rocktron Banshee 2. I just now dug it out of the closet, it may have been out of the box once but I've still got good intentions of using it on a track someday! RIP Bob!

I was three years old but somehow I remember it, one of my earliest memories absolutely; my family in the front room in North Hollywood watching on the little B&W. It's almost certainly because of all the hype, hysteria, anticipation, discussion and coverage that it stands out in my mind more than the actual performance itself. I was an instant fan, my parents fell hard into the "Paul Jones camp".

Welcome back to vaudeville, you play instruments because that's what you do.

I gotta say I miss the old Roland keyboards logical layout with Performances and Patches. The one I had that I liked best was an XP-30; when I bought it new it even came with an OEM version of Sound Diver which made creating and organizing patches and performances so freaking easy. If only they'd had more memory! I bought the FA-08 and it was quite different but it had enough display to where I learned to navigate it reasonably well but the RD-88 my wife bought last year is a bear to navigate and work with.

I imagine a lot of us are doing one. We're always trying to up our game and play to our audience. Typically we're a classic pop/rock kind of act with a slight leaning towards country rock which mostly works for us in the area we're at now although it's a smaller area than I'm used to and thusly the gigs are less frequent. We'll be doing our gig at the Elks Lodge. I was primarily keyboards in the last serious band I was in but with my own group my wife is doing most of the keys while I play guitar. Our drummer suggested Stevie Wonder - You Are the Sunshine of My Life. This was the biggest challenge, wow, with the jazzy chords and key changes. It took her a while to get it under her fingers and I spent a lot of time with the sheet music coming up with some comp chords I could actually make my fingers switch between! It popped into my head to do Elvis - I Can't Help Falling In Love With You, it fits my voice well, easy chords/accompaniment and I expect this one will work well. We resurrected EC - Wonderful Tonight, that used to be in regular rotation with bands years ago and falls together fast. I'll switch to keys for Chicago - Color My World so my wife can play the flute solo. Country is a huge thing around here and in order to survive we've needed to incorporate a little. Johnny and June - Jackson has already been in rotation for a while and goes over great as a duet with my wife and, new for us, we're adding Johnny Cash - Ring of Fire which I plan to roll into a medley going forward. At a Valentine show a couple years back when my wife and I were just playing as a duo we did G n' R - Used To Love Her as a bit of a lark and it was fun but I'm leaving that out, I don't think it will work with this audience and even our drummer and bass player weren't familiar with it. Otherwise I cherry picked through our normal sets and tried to find the stuff I think will work best for this gig. How about you, doing anything special or different?

I've used Superior Drummer for years in the backing tracks I created.

I know about a couple of other spreadsheet programs but Excel is the only one I've ever really done anything with simply because it's been so ubiquitous in my life for so long. The MS Office suite were the only approved such programs going back as far as I can remember where I worked and the MS home use program meant you could buy the package dirt cheap for home computers. When Quicken decided to go to the subscription model I jumped ship and spent many hours creating a spreadsheet for my personal finances. As things have changed I've modified and continue to tweak that same basic layout I'd created. When my wife and I started our duo I used Digital Performer to create midi backing tracks for external keyboards/processors. I used Excel to organize and document those efforts. I remember actually using Excel once at work to troubleshoot a digital circuit board. Putting in what I was seeing compared to what I should have been getting allowed me to narrow my troubleshooting down to a specific chip on the board and discovered some unsoldered leads on that part. Something that would have been much more difficult and time consuming using the normal oscilloscope probe to board method. I wouldn't call myself an Excel expert but I've learned my way around it over the years and have found it to be very helpful for a number of things.

Many of us with electronics and computer experience can probably appreciate the level of tedious detail it required to do this, incredible! At this point in my life it's a bit of a distant memory but watching this brings back some of those tech school memories; flipping switches on the emulator boxes, creating little assembly language programs, I still have those Intel 8088 books out in the garage somewhere. And wow, he created this within Excel using formulas! Inkbox creates 16 bit CPU within Excel

This has long been my preferred method when working with these types of units and, I think, makes the most sense. It can be very tempting to get carried away with all the options and possibilities. For recording at home I have numerous discreet pedals and devices, a wealth of software and also still have a Digitech GSP1101 with the Control 2 board. I didn't want to drag around a rack case for the GSP1101 and didn't want to build another pedal board so this unit is just what I needed. Our drummer was a long time employee of Digitech up in the SLC area and gave me this pedal so I'd certainly never find a better deal on one!

That was interesting to watch, a couple of significant changes in the models. This newer one has a looper and also the ability to switch between patch mode and effects mode. With only the three switches and the foot pedal it would require some practice to develop a tap dancing technique to take advantage of all that though! The amp A/B switch is a great feature they both have. Fortunately for me the editing software runs on my old Win10 PC so I've been able to do my editing on the monitor where settings are very visible and without having to manipulate knobs on the unit.

I don't really prefer using multi-effect pedals over discrete pedals but there are some distinct advantages to being able to create individual patches for songs when doing gigs. Recently our drummer gave me a Digitech RP350. It's just what I needed for our gigs; simplifies my setup and has all the effects and options I'm likely to ever need. So I got to creating some patches but there's a little issue I've ran into before; getting levels consistent between various patches, for example, when you kick in an overdrive it often seems louder because of the added compression and harmonics but it might actually be quieter overall. So I set up my amp, put a Rode NT1-A on the speaker and plugged it into my Presonus SL1642 mixer to view levels as I created and adjusted patches. I think that worked pretty well. Today I was at it again and for convenience sake just plugged directly into the mixer, I think that probably worked ok also but I'm thinking I might get better accuracy by plugging the pedal into my 828x interface and then viewing levels in one of my DAW programs like Digital Performer or Logic. Is this anything others here have wrestled with and if so have you come up with any kind of go to method for getting levels tweaked in?

I had an email about it today, been wondering when that would happen. I have some history with the 828 series having used them for live backing tracks going back a number of years. An mk3 was the first one I had and then later sold it when I switched up to the 828x. I liked them and they've worked well for me overall but I did have one situation that still lingers with me. My original 828x suffered sudden death one day where the screen would come on but was blank. At MOTU the deal was you pay to ship your out of warranty unit in and get a factory refurb for around $100. When the refurb arrived I discovered quickly that output channel 3 had excessive noise. I messaged right away and they responded that this replacement had a 90 day warrantee which is, you know, ok, but how is it you sent me a faulty one? In my world I needed this thing like now so I worked around the CH3 noise issue and soon actually bought a new 828x for subsequent gigs and so I'd always have a backup. That new one continues to work fine although I haven't needed it for the last year or so. I have never sent to defective refurb back. I sure do like the looks of this new one and it would be great to eliminate the TB2/TB3 adapters. I need to revisit my backing track system, update it and have it at the ready but for now I'll have to continue with my 828x. I can't justify shelling out the $995 at this time.

I've been messaged already by several people about getting those EWI 5000 files so I'm going to eliminate the need for going through me and just post the link to get those files here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/o4bvc6l7f22t5ruem1cio/h?rlkey=llcia9me1eixm3cxypnh03xv0&dl=0 Leave a message on this thread if there's any problem. I wasn't really using that Dropbox account for anything else so I'll just leave those files up there and anyone who needs them should be able to download.

This is something that has bothered me a bit with the typical modern performance boards from Roland & Korg. Instead of the sequencer I'd much prefer multi-sampling.

I can't imagine using an ipad on stage although I know it's become pretty common. Even though my vocal range is somewhat limited there seems to be a never ending list of popular tunes that fall into it. I listen, practice and try to capture the nuances and inflections. For me that would all be lost if I were trying to read from an ipad. I do have a pretty good knack for being able to memorize lyrics. The times I've felt I actually needed to have a lyric cheat sheet I found that if I just have the first line of a verse, the rest falls into place.