NewImprov

The Allen & Heath SQ-6 is the heart of my studio, acting as preamps, a 32-channel, 96k interface to the computer, handles all the routing for monitor mixes and acts as a DAW controller for Logic. I mixed lice shows on the Qu and SQ series for years, and the company I worked for has now gone to their D-Live boards. I love their stuff.

This actually looks really interesting! I have a “vintage” MalletKat MIDI controller that lives at my studio, I recently got it working and set up again, and have been making a MainStage set of sounds that work with it. This looks perfect.

KrelL (patch generator)

I'm starting to budget for a new Laptop to host my Mainstage setup, and, to be honest, I could make the Astrolab work by subbing some sounds, as it is, I use Arturia, Komplete, and stock Mainstage sounds in about equal measure, and there's not many sounds I use that I couldn't get strictly from Arturia. It would streamline my setup considerably.

Are the tones you are looking to replicate synth sounds or more standard piano/electric piano/organ sounds? The 2700 should be able to cover any of the sounds you need, at least to start with, and it’s very deeply programmable. IMHO, It’s not the easiest synth to start with, I personally never really gelled with the Kurzweil programming process, but it’s a great-sounding synth with a lot of possibilities. Can you identify the different types of keyboard sounds, like acoustic piano vs Yamaha CP 70, or Fender RHodes vs Wurlitzer electric pianos, or Hammond vs transistor organs? The 2700 should have a good selection of emulative patches for any of these sounds, at least to use as a starting point. If you are looking for synth sounds, do you understand the basics of analog subtractive synthesis? If not, there’s a bunch of tutorials out there, I remember Sound on Sound magazine ran a great series on synthesizer basics years ago, written by Gordon Reid that is an excellent course of study. https://www.soundonsound.com/series/synth-secrets-sound-sound Good luck and have fun!

I went through a similar process recently when my OG Ventilator died, I ran my Mojo side-by-side with my A100/Leslie 21h, and tweaked the internal sim until it was as close as I could get, to my ears at least. The Mojo sounded great on its own, but when I used it in rehearsal with the band later, I noticed a pulsing/motor-boating quality that I didn’t like, that I fixed by changing the mic proximity setting in the Mojo. I think it sounds pretty good now, but I still can’t get quite the same drive quality from the Mojo that I could from the Vent. Think I’ll be saving my $$ for a bit to pick up a new Vent.

New video from Citizens of the Universe, covering Silk Sonic's 777 last April at the Old World Center in Corvallis, OR: I take a Rhodes solo here that I'm pretty happy with. It's a fun tune, and, imho, a pretty killer band. We'll have some more videos from the same gig going online over the next few weeks/months. If you feel like it, hit the subscribe button on YT.

I started on keys, and played in bands in high school. In my 2nd year of college, this was 1981, I decided to try to get into a band, and found that none wanted a keys player, but EVERYBODY was looking for a bass player. A roommate of mine did a year studying abroad, he was a bass player, and he left his bass at the house we shared, and I started to mess around on it. mostly learning the bass lines to the first 3 Police albums. After I'd been playing for about a month, I jammed with a drummer friend, and he asked me to play a pick up gig, doing mostly Beatles, Stones and CCR covers. So, after 6 weeks of playing bass I had my first gig! I mainly gigged on bass for the next 3 decades. There was a period in there where I was studying jazz piano in college, but gigging on bass all the time. My jazz prof warned me that I'd have to choose one instrument if I wanted to become really great, but I chose to ignore him. Played thousands of gigs, was in a band that toured pretty extensively from 2008-2010. I was buying keys and synths for my home studio, but almost never played them out. Around 2005, I got deeply into Hammond organ, particularly Larry Young and Dr. Lonnie Smith, and started teaching myself LH bass. I started a side project to my main band that was originally a Sax/Keys/Drums trio, we soon added a rapper, and a guitarist after a few years. It would be years before I got an actual Hammond console and started learning pedals. When I left my main band 2010, the side project became my primary band. I really worked to make my LH bass work groove with the drummer and drive the band. After the guitarist in that band quit, in 2014, we added an old friend of mine, a bassist who had graduated from Berklee, and a killer bass player. Since then I have barely touched my basses, though I still have a pretty nice 4-string Japanese Jazz copy, and my main bass, an Ibanez 6-string. Playing bass all those years really helped me hear my playing differently, and made me more about grooving and delivering the time than flashy soloing. I feel like I've taken those qualities back to my keys playing. Sometimes I wish I'd listened to my prof and kept practicing keys seriously all those years I was gigging in bass, but I do think that experience really shaped my playing today. My last public gig on bass was NYE 2011, I was playing in a Rush tribute band, I mostly played keys while our bass player sang lead and did most of the Geddy parts, but for some of the earlier material without as much keys, I'd play bass. At the stroke of Midnight, 1/1/2012, we launched into 2112 and played it in it's entirety, with me playing bass. It was a fun gig!

Nice track, would love to hear more!

Cool stuff, dude! Proggy, Synthy, Hammond-y, jazzy stuff is totally my wheelhouse. Definitely looking forward to more material!

Nice! We were in the path of totality on the 2017 eclipse, it really was an amazing experience. I sat this one out, but I did notice that, in the intro to their live radio coverage of the event. NPR used Genesis' Watcher of the Skies as backing music, definitely won points from me for that!

I thought about this in my initial recommendation, and I think that Logic's instruments really tend to skew towards the modern electronic pop that the OP references. Plus, it's expandable, if the OP finds he can't get the sounds he needs from the internal sounds, he can always add AU's I've always thought it did, but TBH, I don't know for sure.

I was going to post this as well. but the more I though about it, the more I thought that the T5 is too dependent on the mod matrix for any interesting patching, and I could see that being too confusing for new students. I do love my T5, though. I don't know about where you are, but here in Oregon, we legalized the pots for recreational use years ago..

I literally just received mine this morning, I only had a short time in the studio to set it up before work today, so all I did was unbox it, plug it in, do all the registration and software installation, upgrade the Firmware, etc. I had time to open one session and play around with a few channel strips. Even though the install was semi-complicated, the instructions were pretty straight-forward, and everything seemed to work right off the bat. I was pleased to see that the 3rd party plug-ins I used on the session, mostly UAD, SoundToys and Sonimus, were already mapped to the controls. I may change some of the mappings, but it's good to know that stuff I use all the time is already mapped. I'm pretty excited about this, I'm in a situation where I have a lot of stuff to mix, both for clients and my own stuff, and really need to improve my workflow and efficiency, it feels like this box will definitely help.

Unitnentional typo? 🙂 Apple's Mainstage would do you well for this, it gives you a gig-worthy host and a set of instruments that would likely cover the material. You might even be able to find pre-made Mainstage sets for specific songs you are doing. Good luck, and have fun!

If you want a real challenge, you could transcribe this for solo piano: I'm sure it'd be a huge hit!

I think I agree, I can't really A/B the Vent and the internal. I'm a bit worried this is part of the reason the Vent sounds so good through a PA system., and cuts through the band so well. I have a couple gigs booked later this month, I'll see how it goes. And I agree, no one but me, and perhaps one other local keyboardist who sometimes comes to my gigs, will notice the difference. We live in pretty great times.

What a fun concept for a gig! I did Black Hole Sun in an organ trio (Hammond/Tenor/Drums) and it was a lot of fun. It's a really cool set of changes to blow over.

So I spent a couple hours yesterday programming the onboard Leslie sim of the Mojo, comparing it against the A100/Leslie 251 combo in the studio, and I'm pretty happy with the results. I think the Mojo sim sounds closer to the 251 than the Vent did, though I never really attempted this kind of comparative programming with the Vent. I think I like the grind of the overdriven Vent a bit more than the Mojo, but I can live with this, and it does simplify my pedalboard.

Allegedly the tuning algorithm learns as you run it. I have no tuning issues at the studio/rehearsal space it lives at most of the time, after running the calibration several times in the first months I owned it, but I do find it drifts on gigs, especially outdoor shows. Also, I just found out yesterday that the lower-octave shift point is programmable at the patch level. Amazing what you learn when you actually read the manual!

I'm also bringing my Take 5 to gigs lately. My core setup is Rhodes Stage 73 (or Korg Grandstage 73 for smaller gigs) and an Arturia Keylab 61 controlling MainStage on top, and in an L-config to my right, a Crumar Mojo with the Take 5 on the 2nd tier. Before the T5, I did all my synth stuff from MainStage, along with clav, Mellotron, etc. My main band is a funk/Afro-beat/Hip-Hop/Reggae band, so it's heavy on the Rhodes/Hammond/Clav sounds, but there's a decent amount of synth leads and pads in what we do. I love the T5, it's become one of my favorite synth solo instruments, I have a collection of highly tweaked mono lead patches I'm really digging. the short keyboard doesn't bother me that much, usually I am only playing it with one hand, and don't need the extra real estate. When I do, the front-panel octave/2 octave split feature helps, though I do wish it had programmable split-points. The T5 really sounds incredible, and has been really inspiring to program. The only downside I've found with the T5 live is that its tuning can drift. I try to remember to let it run a bit before the start of the gig, and run the tuning routine a few minutes before the start of the gig.

I don't have another power supply to swap it with, but I did check the voltage coming from it with a multi-meter, and it seems ok.

That’d be awesome! We’ve got a pretty big show coming up April 20 in Corvallis. Let me know if you want to come, I’ll slip you onto the guest list.

Thanks for the tip, I'll give them a try. Yeah, especially for the meantime. When I first got the Mojo, I did a quick comparison between the internal sim and the Vent, and the Vent won, but I've never really delved deeply into tweaking the internal, now I just need to find a VGA monitor...

Would you only be using Mainstage for the bass parts? If you're already taking the computer/Mainstage to the gig, I'd definitely go with sourcing the bass from MS, you'd have more sound options, and you could still run the Nord in stereo. But, if you could do the gig with just the Nord, I'd probably do that out of convenience/laziness.