PianoMan51

I gigged for years with an ultra-plush bench. Nice and wide. Soft. Heavy as a MF. About 17lbs. Nope. About twelve years ago I bought a cheap, tiny, under-padded, kinda low, X bench with the Casio logo. Under 5lbs. Success! But not immediately. It was a tad low, so I drilled an extra set of holes to raise the seat. But of course this brought the two feet of the seat much closer together. Nobody was watching but i fell off it the first time i did a gig with it, and sat on an edge. But only that one time, cause I learned the hard way to sit dead in the center. For an old musician I can bungee together my K&M stand with my Casio seat into a 10lb package.

Regarding EQ, see my response above. You must do experimentation yourself to train your ears on what each frequency range sounds like. Don’t skip this step. This is like how a chef uses their tasting spoon to find out if the soup needs more salt. The second issue is really a matter of both volume and placement of your amp. They work together. Lets explore the problem set: 1. Your audience needs to hear your keys at right mix volume with the band. Pretty obvious. 2. Your bandmates need to hear your keys slightly lower in volume than their own instruments. 3. You need to hear your keys slightly louder than the rest of the band. How to achieve this? First step is to get the right volume level for the audience. You have to have a trusted band member to go out in the audience during sound check to help you set it correctly. Note your keyboard and amp settings and leave them alone. Second step is to situate your amp so that you and your bandmates can hear you, but you hear yourself slightly louder than they do. Very small movements in position and angle will make a significant difference. This is not easy, so plan on using patience and time to get this right. When you get the volume and amp position right, remember them. Consider this the norm for this band in this venue. You will have to repeat this process when you setup in a different configuration. Now here’s my warning. Failure to do the above will mean that people don’t hear you, and you get ignored musically onstage and off. Frustration and tears. Or, your bandmates hear you too loud and then hate your guts and turn up.

Today at 71 my internal metronome is way better than it was 50 years ago. I’m as sensitive about a bad tempo as an out of tune Strat. I realize that speeding up tunes was a technique I and my bandmates used when a song had lost its initial magic. And I think in many cases the “magic “ lost was that the song was no longer culturally hip. So we played it faster to artificially pump back the effect. Today I try a different mental approach. I try to place myself back in 1972 when Superstition was at the front edge of hip. Way before Saturday Night Fever. Platform shoes. A slower funk that was powerful without the speed. And then do the same mental work for an Artie Shaw chart.

Hi Charlie. I don’t use Nord or Motion Sound. But I believe you have a keyboard that can create excellent stereo piano and a speaker that can sound very good. So you have very good gear. You didn’t mention the EQ on the Nord. I play mostly acoustic piano sounds for gigging and I can’t imagine getting a musical sound without using multi band EQ. Using my Yamaha CP4 or YC73 I find that there are three EQ settings that are crucial. 1. Bass. Let’s say from 80Hz down I drop the low shelf down 8dB or even more. This keeps my left hand able to play when needed, but not conflicting with the bassist. The lower notes still sound just like my digital piano, but with the fundamental less pronounced. The character of the piano is not affected. 2. Low-Mids. From maybe 100 to 200Hz, very small changes, like +/- 2 or 3dB make big differences in the “warmth” of the piano’s baritone range. So if it’s a ballad where I want a warm full sound I’ll raise low-mids 3dB. For louder, faster tunes with more instruments I’ll do the opposite to clean up the band’s sound. 3. Low-treble. I made up that term just now. Most mixers will have a treble shelf that starts at 10kHz. This is way too high for piano overtones. A treble shelf like your Nord is, I think at 4kHz, which is good. Plan on making changes to this depending on the song, the band instrumentation and the room. Make these EQ settings your servants. Yes, your piano may sound perfect through good headphones, but your sound through your amp with your band playing your song choices at your gig needs to be crafted by you.

I read the original post. A couple of days later I realize that this melody has been a recurring theme in my mind for the 50 years since I heard it. Just about every time I would start an improvisation using ascending fourths I would reflexively start playing this song. I barely remembered that it was BS&T. Our human (and probably mammalian and reptilian) ability to remember musical bits gobsmacks me.

When Behringer kept introducing more and more analog synths I had some industrial thoughts. 1. They have an amazing in-house ability to design and mass-manufacture copies of just about any musical gear you can imagine. Cool. This is great for the players in the world. And this is how competition improves our lives. 2. But how many different analog synths can they continue to manufacture and stock without losing money? 5? 20? 1,000? Onto the price drops. I interpret these as the natural reaction to number two above. Businesses rarely drop prices just because “it’s the right thing to do “. Businesses form to create wealth. Some of these (relatively new) products just don’t generate it. So you drop prices either to spur demand or to close out the losers. This is a marketing tactic.

This topic could be as contentious as religion or politics. Chacun a son gout!

I’ve been playing a CP4 for many years with a single speaker, with 99% acoustic piano only. Best sound for me is the default stereo grand piano taking the Right hand channel out. Still get all the upper partials from the left hand, but the left hand bass response is attenuated appropriately.

For me there are some different zones. One of my favorites is when I’m over my peak. Hands are buzzy, mind is tired but wide awake and now completely relaxed. I’m in a certain sense “played out”. I’ve already said everything I need to say musically. I have nothing left to say or prove. And in rare but special times, I can just let the music itself flow. It plays me. And shit comes out of the keyboard that I have never played before and never will again.

As I understand your situation, you are not counting on music for your livelihood. If that is true then accept music as something you do primarily for your spiritual sustenance. (This is certainly true for me.) And if that is true, then… Listen to your dreams.

A cocktail party of 50 who are politely tittering at social banter, maybe. But as soon as one person starts to tell a loud story with loud responses, that noise level in the room doubles in perceivable volume. And if you follow the physics of sound, doubling volume is a 10dB increase in level which requires an increase of 10 times the power. Your keyboard will be swamped. And you as a player will be miserable thumping out your tunes that no one can hear. So, I might bring a keyboard with built in speakers to a funeral. But not to any kind of semi-loud function. PS, I’ve played hundreds of these.

I agree. What I was trying (but not succeeding at all ) to point out is how the original post had been forgotten.

Love me some Billy Preston. Now just for giggles re-watch the OP’s performance video. 😃

Hello Brother.

Well, my desires have changed since I was a pup. Today, I want to experience a human being. But only through their music. Quite simple to describe. But very rarely achieved. I tried to explain this to an older bandmate as he was deciding to retire from performing. I said “we don’t care if you can still play fast, we care that you’re a human being who has lived a life inside music and is willing to share it with us.”

It’s a frigging drug. Sometimes you sit down and start playing and this amazing new stuff just flows out into the universe. And you’re not really sure where it fully comes from. And a feedback loop is formed and then you realize you’ve been sitting on the bench for hours. The next day you want more…

As the questions get deeper, the answers might be more elusive. But I think that the roles of entertainer, artist and wallpaper are ones that we all shift between when we are in a great conversation. I tell a funnily story, then back away and let others do their thing, then come back with an insightful viewpoint. Isn’t this exactly what we want onstage from ourselves and our bandmates and later after the show from our audience?

Great topic. There are a universe of feels and techniques to be explored in “time”. Since most everyone here is focusing on 20th and 21st century pop music, let me remind you of music where the tempo, at times, breathes. I spent about five years gigging at a local dinner theater, playing piano and synth in a small combo for Broadway musicals. My drummer had a masters in percussion from the New England Conservatory. While we would lock into a tempo in the 95% of the song where needed, we also had great fun in letting the tempo breathe. In an orchestra this requires a conductor. In our case we watched each other and relied on our mutual sense of where the music needed to go. I’ve never played with another drummer who could do this. Even today when playing solo gigs, or accompanying a singer, I look forward to being able to add tempo variations in musical ways that I can’t get with a modern combo.

The Silent Piano is a reasonable start, but is unnecessary since a savvy FOH engineer knows what to do… Turn up the keys for the occasional piano intro. Turn up the keys for the last chord on the B3 so we can hear the cool effect of the Leslie spinning down. Else… Keep the keys below the noise floor.

Real, strong, unfaked Stage Presence doesn’t start with ‘what you do on stage’. It starts with you, the performer, actually relating to your audience. As you walk on stage slowly look out at the audience. The whole room. Really see them. As individuals. They have come here partially to see and hear your music . Feel that situation as deeply as you can. There’s a line in a Yes song: “The strength of the meeting lies with you.” Now that your mind has acknowledged the physical, psychological and spiritual reality of the individual musicians and audience coming together for this unique moment in time, what is your desire? Why are you here? What do you want to communicate? In a worship setting, perhaps a musical message of love is your goal. So meld in your mind the music, your bandmates, all the audience, and your personal intent. From this perspective Stage Presence will be an organic outcome, not an act.

I understand the desire to eliminate unnecessary gear, but I’d like to make a sales pitch for the lowly mixer. With basic treble and bass EQ. A live mic without treble EQ, to me, is like a meal that has been pre-salted. Maybe it’s good, maybe bad, but you can’t ‘salt to taste’. And an optimal treble EQ setting is going to depend on the singer, the mic, the PA, the room, the band, the audience.

Glad you only had to pay $100!

As this thread winds down, I’d like to remind folks about the music that can be played using old fashioned bellows and reeds…

Once the piano and humidifier are stabilized to a ‘new normal’ you should find the tuning lasts considerably longer. This may take more than one tuning cycle.