BenWaB3

I've had quite a few cats over the years. Never had one damage any equipment.

Can't help with this one but if you get a chance check out his solo version of Like Someone In Love off the Time remembered version. If someone asked me for a definition of the word beauty I would play that for them. That one does have a transcription available on Youtube: Someone with better searching skills than I might be able to find a transcription of Polka Dots and Moonbeams for you.

GRollins - Very sorry to hear about your daughter. I hope she makes a full & complete recovery. You are especially allowed to be curmudgeonly now but I hope the extenuating circumstances all resolve to the best and you can just be curmudgeonly on your own.

Although I've been blessed with never having to actually play it Dreams by Fleetwood Mac gets my vote as the most boring song in the history of Rock n' Roll.

Another possibility: The Kawai MP7SE? I must confess to never having heard it. I've had an MP6 for many years & love the Rhodes sound. The acoustic isn't bad either. I figured the MP7 would have added new features to the already fair amount on the MP6. The 6 has a fair amount of editability to its organ section but I've always used dedicated clonewheels for that so have rightly or wrongly limited myself to the "It ain'ta gonna be good enough" school of thinking on that issue. I just use mine for the bread & butter sounds so have never been that anxious to replace it with something newer. Again, I have no real knowledge of the MP7 but just pose it as another alternative to consider.

There's this: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/olive-pro-2-in-1-hearing-aids-bluetooth-earbuds#/ Don't take this reply as an endorsement. I'll admit I did get caught up in the excitement when they were first announced & ordered a pair but they haven't even shipped yet. I doubt they can live up to the hype in their ad but I'll give them an honest evaluation when they get here.

Back in my Long Island years (early to mid 70's) my band was hired to play at one of the race tracks - I can't remember which one. We couldn't play during the races or the warmups because it would spook the horses so we would do 10-15 minutes tops, stop playing, hit up the food stands (free eats was part of the contract) and hang out in the furnished trailer for a half hour or so while they went through the warmup, race routine again, repeating until all the races were done. It ended up being a total of 3 to 4 hours during which we played about the equivalent of one set, and it payed well. The band I was in prior to that got hired to be kind of the "break band" for Lester Lanin for a few jobs. He probably achieved his peak fame during the 50's & was known for his "smooth" medleys (read: Lawrence Welk-like). He would play the debutante balls on LI. Of course the deb-aged kids were bored as hell with all this so when he took a break they would have us, the rock band, play. After we had done 2 tunes at most Lester would come back on & start his band for another 50 minutes to an hour, much to the kids dismay. That one payed well too. Kind of ironic comparing these two jobs to the long hours for chump change that would describe most of our other jobs back then.

Well, since it's guitar player we're speaking of here: cords, no - chords, well, that's another matter entirely (ducks for cover as he hits the Post Reply button ).

I had the module for awhile & can relate to the not connecting with it worry. Plus it just didn't sound very robust, to me anyway. It was part of the 3 year odyssey that led to the SK Pro 73. I had been using an Sk-1 73 but it's shortcomings (not in the organ sound itself) resulted in getting a Roland FA-07 and the Viscount module. After that I sold the module & used an iPad for B3-X plus other vintage instruments. It was an improvement, IMO, for the organ sounds. Finally the SK Pro addressed the flaws in the SK-1 so that's the instrument of choice now. Since most of my playing is as a single the iPad went from virtual instruments to playing MIDI files which is an improvement over the internal sounds in the Roland. Of course there's still a lot of tweaking to be done on the Pro but after a couple years I had the extra voices on the SK-1 very close to my liking so hopefully the Pro won't take as long. So the conclusion for this long-winded ramble is that, for me at least, the dedicated clonewheel is the best route to go. With the 73 note model you can cover a lot of situations well.

Just to clarify: When I first saw this I thought you meant the three bands only had one fixed point each, but I see what you mean is that you can choose between multiple point options per band but it jumps from one to another w/o letting you do a continuous sweep to put it exactly where you would like on the spectrum. Yes, that is a bit limiting. We could hope they may fix that in an update but I have a feeling it's probably baked in to the hardware. Those with more computer knowledge than me (which is just about anybody) can chime in with a more informed answer. I was hoping to see a new thread also but understand the reasoning behind keeping it all on this one. One thing I did notice was that it could take close to a half second to switch between combinations, a distressing thing when playing one drawbar setting and doing a palm smear while going to a different one. I put this problem on the SK Pro group on Facebook and someone suggested having all the settings match as far as organ model & serial number, Leslie setting, effects settings & having the other 3 allotments the exact same. That did solve the problem. It kind of means you have to dedicate a whole bank to what is essentially organ only but at least there's 9 other banks to do everything else (plus different organ sounds when you don't need instant change) so it's definitely not going to make me ship it back to the store. I hope to see more people weighing in with options, tips & tricks in the near future and I'll also be putting in my unsolicited $0.02 worth from time to time

There used to be a column written by Cecil Adams called The Straight Dope. I always loved his answer to this question, written in his usual style: https://www.straightdope.com/21341456/what-are-the-real-lyrics-to-louie-louie His final paragraph is great.

I saw him when he was breaking the Headhunters album. At that show he played Proof Positive but called it the theme from The Spook Who Sat By The Door. Since the title was an epithet they probably decided to change it when the Thrust album came out

I went from that to a Hammond SK1-73. Gave up 2 manuals and the super tweakability of the DMC/Gemini but got the bass back and, IMO at least, a better Hammond sound. The acoustic pianos in both weren't anything to write home about. It was close to a draw on the Rhodes & Wurli sounds. Actually I thought the clavinet on the Hammond was better. Of course they could have updated all those sounds on the Gemini by now. The ability to program a synth sound from scratch was an advantage of the Gemini.

I had the DMC/Gemini a few years ago & that was among the considerations that led me to sell it.

I think there may be a solution to this. Since I think you can have different effects on each of the 4 sections, you should be able to put the same Rhodes sounds in both the Piano and Ensemble section, layer them, and set the first one to have auto-pan, and the other the one to use delay. If you set the delay parameter to 100% wet, the second sound will only have the delays, and will not audibly duplicate the initial strike. This is similar to a suggestion I made to Jim Alfredson in a facebook post, after he commented that he didn't see a sforzando brass patch. I suggested that he might be able to layer two instances of a brass patch, have one set with a filter/amp envelope that quickly diminishes, while the other starts quiet and gradually fades in the louder/brighter sound which can take over after the first one decays. The possibility of layering two instances of the same sound with different settings (effects, envelopes, whatever) would seem to open up a bunch of possibiliies. Thanks for the suggestion, Scott. That should work!! Actually I do the same thing for the Rhodes on my Kawai MP6 but just couldn't generate the brainpower to think of it when contemplating the Sk Pro.As to Al's observation: it probably does. Since Rhodes chord voicings usually end up being more sparse than piano ones though it shouldn't become a problem, or at least I hope it wouldn't.

I don't have the SK1 anymore but almost all the shortcomings that led me to sell it seem to have been addressed in the Pro. One of the main concerns was how the Rhodes/Wurly sounds were on the new model. The videos shown around 14-15 posts ago plus the supposedly more extensive editing capabilities have me leaning towards (yet again) switching the keyboard lineup. IMO the Hohner sound on the SK1 was really good so that should carry over to the Pro as well. As it seems though, with all new products coming out they always seem to have at least one flaw that drives you nuts. Referring to Another Scott's post about 6 or so back, having the auto pan and delay both in the effects II slot is my particular peeve. At certain times I like to be able to have both going on the Rhodes. On the SK1 the delay was in the reverb section so maybe they'll include one there in the Pro as well.

I was getting at this in my earlier post. I've had way better luck loadiing all my apps since dropping NSKS2. I was able to set up some good Rhodes but there's a lot of under the hood work possible (it's like programming a synth) which makes the app hefty. I can't compromise on Ravenscroft and B-3X but I can get a very good Rhodes out of a leaner app such as VTines without the crashes. NSKS2 is the piece that throws my CPU over the edge. Scarbee is good out of the box, but you have to load Korg Module and get through that first, and I wonder if that's at the core of the app's latency. VTines makes a lot more sense, and for that matter the original NeoSoul Studio, with its smaller footprint, has similar advantage over it's bloated second version.[/quot ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ These are valid points. I haven't had any problems with NSK crashing everything else but at this point I'm only running that plus BX-3 & midimitr. I like the concept of having everything in a "suite" as far as the non Hammond electro-mechanical sounds go. I never use more than one electric keyboard sound per song so I can run all the NSK voices on MIDI channel 2. If not then I'd have to go in, put each sound on its own channel, troubleshoot all my setup combinations to see if there was already an instrument on that channel and be running 5 programs at once, 6 if I was in a situation where Ravenscroft was needed. As said before I'd love to see AcousticSamples have all the Fender/Wurly/Hohner sounds in one suite type of package. With their lower cpu footprint it would be tremendous.

Ironically every time I've tried a new app (Korg Module Pro, House Mark I, VTines) I've turned around and been able to tweek NeoSoul Keys to get it sounding more like what I want. I still think VTines has the potential to become top dog but until it adds the effects package it can't fairly compete with NSK. Also listening to the video originally put out by AcousticSamples the amplification & mic placement capability of the Windows/Mac version can make a big difference. The ability to control the voicing would probably be a huge plus too. Personally I would be willing to spend a higher price to get the VTines, VReeds and Clavi D9 all in one package with the effects, etc included. Until that point though the advantage stays with NSK. If AS could come out with the complete package that would be a very interesting shoot out to see those two compared.

I quickly programmed up a couple sounds to try on the job last night - wanted to compare it to the Neo Soul sounds, although it wouldn't be a totally fair fight since the Neo Soul program has their effects section. However if I used the Neo Soul & then went to the VTines it wouldn't produce sound. I would have to shut Vtines down entirely & restart it, which isn't practical when you're on the job. They're set to different MIDi channels. I'm pretty clueless about this stuff so it's probably just something stupid that I'm doing or not doing. Any suggestions as to what to do will be appreciated, other than the "You're useless, just jump off a cliff" variety

Yeah, I downloaded it about an hour ago & found out about no effects, much to my chagrin. As you say, hopefully in an update. It would make it complete to have that echo delay in there & the phaser or chorus wouldn't hurt either.

Is this brand new or has it been around for awhile & I just missed it? I remember emailing Acousticsamples a year ago & they said they had no plans to code this for iOS. The Rhodes sound in this video goes way past what I like fairly quickly but here is the video put out by Acousticsamples a few years ago that is more descriptive. If the iOS version has all the features in the Windows/MAC version it will definitely be a contender. Now, to wait & see if they do the same for VReeds & their clavinet software.

I haven't actually heard one but here is a link to a thread on it and the 920 from Piano World: http://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/3023031/gonew/1/kawai-announces-es920-and-es520-portable-digital-pianos.html#UNREAD The 920 dominates most of the thread but if you go to the last page there are a few videos on the 520 itself.

This isn't something I've actually bought but saw ads this year for a Chia Baby Yoda. Believe it or not it went downhill from there. There's a Chia Chewbacca and the most bizarre looking offering in that ad was a Chia Golden Girls (Estelle Getty's character). OK, I thought, they've pretty much plumbed the depths of how bad it could get but as the late Ron Popiel used to say, "But wait. There's more!!" Same company now has an ad out with a Chia Richard Simmons complete with Chia chest hair. Now THAT would be the worst thing I've ever bought & believe me folks, I've made some very bad purchase decisions in my life.

Back in my day in was Doug Clark & The Hot Nuts that were shocking to many, although their purpose was comedy. They were most popular in the Southern Atlantic states. They seem so tame today in comparison.

In order to not risk offending the sensitivities of some list members or possibly get flagged by the board I'll let the individual reader place their own level of vulgarity, scatological humor or profanity in the sections in parentheses. So here's an oldie but goodie: A piano player went to audition at a restaurant. The manager asked him to play something. He responds with a peace of beautiful music. The manager says, "That's beautiful, but I don't recognize the piece. What is it?" The piano player responds with (insert your own vulgarity here) The manager gets livid and reams out the piano player for insulting him like that. The piano player says, "No, you misunderstand. That's one of my own compositions and that's the title". The manager was somewhat mollified and said, "Well it was a truly beautiful piece. Can you play something more?" The piano player plays something even better than the first one. When asked about the title of that one the piano player responds (insert another favorite vulgarity here). The manager says, "Let me guess. Another one of your compositions?" The piano player responds positively. The manager says, "You really play beautifully and I would love to hire you but we have an older conservative clientele here. If you were playing one of your own compositions and one of them asks what it is could you just say nothing, smile and nod your head?" The piano player agrees & is hired . On his first night a little old lady comes up to him and asks what lovely piece he is playing. He just smile & nods his head. She repeats the question and gets the same response. Thinking he may be hard of hearing she leans over to speak into his ear, but when looking down she gasps, her eyes get very wide and she exclaims, "Young man, do you know your fly is open & your pecker is hanging out?" He replies, "Know it? Hell, lady, I wrote it!!"