Josh Paxton

Wow, you're right. That's a perfectly obvious feature that I managed to miss entirely. Thanks for pointing it out.

I've been messing around with a scale you can use over a dominant 7 chord, and since I'm sure I'm nowhere near the first person to mess around with it, I was wondering if it had an established name. It's an altered scale, but with the addition of a natural 6. So over a C7 it would be: C, C#, D#, E, F#, G#, A, Bb. If you take the shape formed by starting on any note, skipping two, playing the next one, skipping two more, and playing the next one, you get the following upper structure triads: By shifting around between those upper structures, you can get some pretty nice, juicy sounds. I actually derived the scale by deconstructing a Bill Evans lick where, over that C7 shell voicing, he played G#, A, F#, and G# triads before resolving to Fm. It occurs to me that it's closely related to what's commonly called the "Barry Harris 6 diminished scale," i.e. a major scale with the addition of a flat 6. This is the same idea, applied to a melodic minor scale and moved up a half step. That is, this scale is a C# melodic minor scale, but with the addition of a flat 6 (the A natural). I'm only passingly familiar with Barry's approaches to the 6 diminished scale, so I don't know if he dealt with this idea. If anyone does know, I'd be interested to find out. Or, for that matter, if it's been talked about in other places.

The Richard Tee Rhodes is pure sonic heaven for me. One of my criteria for evaluating any DP is how well it nails that sound. It's the main reason I kept using my SV-1 even after it was no longer the hot new board and there were technically "better" options with more detail and velocity layers. And it's why I was so looking forward to the SV-2. This was the recording that made me fall in love with it.

Oh cool, I didn't realize this was gonna be preserved after it went out live. And I didn't even notice there was an overhead camera, or I probably would have been more nervous. Thanks for posting this, Joe!

SSSSHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! He'll hear you! Seriously though, I look forward to the inevitable blind shootout videos comparing it to the OB-X8.

Mine has been one of my main gigging boards for probably three years now. No issues with the keys. Action is a subjective thing, of course, but to me it feels as good an any other non-hammer action in recent memory. And I still like playing it, for whatever that's worth.

Well handled. I used to do more of those kinds of shows than I do now, largely because I got tired of being the most prepared person in the room. The only ones I say yes to these days are those where I know everyone involved, and I know they're all going to pull their weight.

There's no objectively right or wrong answer to this, since it depends so much on context, and really on what you think sounds good. But as a general guideline, assuming the bass player is playing the root, then there's no need for you to include it in your voicing. And if you do include it, then while there are no hard and fast rules, I'd say chances are exceedingly good that you don't want to play it in the same range as the bass player (unless you're intentionally doubling the bass line, of course). Beyond that, the best advice I can offer you is, try different options and see what you like. A tightly closed voicing (from the bottom up, B-C#-E-F#) will give you a particular sound. Spreading it out a bit (F#-C#-E-B) will give you a different sound. Stacked fourths (C#-F#-B-E) will give you yet a different sound. Stacked fifths (E-B-F#-C#) will give you yet a different sound. Doubling certain notes will give you different sounds. Playing a shell voicing in the left hand and some sort of upper structure (triad, octave with a fifth, stacked fourths, etc.) in the right will open up many options. Then there's the matter of what range(s) you put it in, which can vary things radically. Then there are questions like, do you really need both the 6 and the 9 at all times, and do you really need to leave out the major 7 and/or the #11? Do you need the 5th in there at all? How much do you want to keep a consistent voicing versus changing it up? And then of course there's the timbre of your instrument (piano, EP, organ, Clav, polysynth, other?), which will play a huge role. In the event that this response has not made your life any easier and has only exacerbated your existential dread, well, on one hand, I'm sorry. But on the other, welcome to music.

I had never heard "Beatrice." Thanks for introducing me to a really nice tune.

My first thought after the solo started was that this guy had clearly absorbed a lot of Kenny. Great player, great energy.

No way, man! We're gonna keep on rockin' forever!... Forever!... Forever!... Forever... Forever... forever... forever...

I will never not love a Richard Tee thread, and that video is soooo unbelievably good. I've been a fan of his playing forever, but over the pandemic I started really digging deeply into his playing. It's deep, and there's a LOT to learn there.

I saw the title and thought, "Yes, amen!" Then I read the first post and realized the OP and I actually had opposite complaints: he wants only one envelope, and I want more than two. My first synth was a DX21, so I got used to having a separate envelope for each operator/oscillator. Later when I learned analog subtractive synthesis, it was on a massive Polyfusion modular that had a dozen of everything, so I could easily patch each oscillator through its own amplitude envelope. Got some killer sounds out of that thing. Then when I started messing with "real world" analog synths and realized they mostly had only one envelope for amplitude and one for filter, I was bummed!

Ah, this reminded me of my tenure with Tony Clifton. Sometimes the Gentleman Jack bottle he was swigging from all night contained tea... and sometimes it contained Gentleman Jack. You just never knew...

Same. Ironic, since I don't think they've updated it for decades (or at least, they hadn't by the time I got my last Nord, which I think was an Electro 5 that I kept for about a month). Even without the release samples, they nailed the tone way before anyone else did.

"AI-powered" will be to the 2020s what the "e-" prefix was to the 1990s.

Sad news. I met him in the '90s, and we remained casual friends ever since. He always stuck me as a remarkably kind and generous man. How we met is its own story... When I was studying with Ellis Marsalis and digging heavily into James Booker's music, Ellis once mentioned a series of unreleased live Booker recordings that were made when Booker was playing piano in the lobby as the pre-show music for a musical, in which Ellis was playing in the pit band for the actual show. Every night Booker would play for about an hour before the show, and the sound engineer recorded his set. This was several nights a week for several months. And he said those tapes changed hands a number of times, "but they eventually ended up in California with a guy named George Winston. You know who that is?" I said yes, I had a couple of his albums in high school. Then he said "You know what? Let me see what I can do." He picked up his office phone, called one of his contacts at Sony records, and asked if they could get him a phone number for George Winston's management. He got the number, called it on the spot, and left a voicemail introducing himself and saying what he was calling a bout. Then later that night, George Winston called me at home. Bearing in mind that I was some early 20-something piano student whom he'd never heard of, he basically started the conversation by saying "So you're a pianist and you're into Booker, is that right? Then let me send you copies of these 60 or so cassettes I have..." That was it. That was all he needed to know. And we continued to have a lovely conversation about New Orleans piano and music and life in general for probably another hour or so. And then sure enough, about three weeks later a box, probably 18 inches square, full of meticulously hand-labeled James Booker bootleg cassettes arrived at my door. That was the single event that sent me deeply and intractably down the Booker rabbit hole, and played a hugely significant part in how I would come to play the piano. I met George in person not long after that when he played a show in Biloxi, and sent me tickets and backstage passes and the whole thing. Every bit as gracious in person as he was on the phone, and I was impressed with some things he played that I didn't expect. After that we kept in touch mostly via email, and he was always a huge supporter or mine. There was one year when he was in New Orleans and he threw a "piano players' birthday party" for Henry Butler, where a bunch of us got together and played for each other. I would describe the roster as "all the heavy cats, and me." Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, Jon Cleary, Tom McDermott, Joe Krown, I think Davell Crawford was there, and quite a few more. It was a pretty amazing time. At one point I said to George, "I haven't even told Henry happy birthday yet." And George said, "Oh, it's not really his birthday. I just used that as an excuse to get all these guys together." Fun fact: he hated the term "new age piano" and never described his music that way. But he reluctantly accepted that that's the term people had settled on, and he lived with it. And while that's the style he became known for and made his name and his money with, he was a more-than-decent New Orleans style player too. While his more popular recordings never moved me much, I could understand the appeal for those who dug them, and I was happy for the success he had with them. I might have to go check them out again. I'll miss you, George, as will a bunch of us.

I know a keyboardist who uses a collapsible wagon and swears by it. I don't know which brand, but a quick search will bring up many options.

Ding ding ding. This is the reason I basically stopped going to movie theaters somewhere between 10 and 15 years ago. That was when my idea of what constituted Acceptable Movie Theater Behavior became irreconcilable with the general public's idea of it. Every once in a great while I'll make an exception and go to a weekday matinee at a small neighborhood cinema, and more often than not I end up regretting it, because that many people either don't know or don't care how their behavior affects those around them. For a movie to make me want to endure the presence of random strangers for 90 minutes, it's got to be something pretty special.

Yeah, I'm using the pre-amp. My wife has an LR Bags DI. Hadn't occurred to my to try it, but I will, thanks.

I've had one sitting around for a few years, then recently started using it on one of my regular gigs. When it works, it works well enough, but every once in a while I'll simply get no signal from it. Unplugging and replugging everything doesn't seem to help. Then I'll get it home and plug it in to test it, and suddenly it works again. Wondering if anyone else has experienced this, and what the solution might be.

Because this is something I've been saying for decades, I'm well aware of the reaction it will cause, and I am prepared for the heat... The Grateful Dead have more than a few songs that I like more than a little when said songs are performed by competent musicians... i.e. not the Grateful Dead.

Sounds great. Does it let you play a low E, or is Guido still being a stickler about "authenticity"?

I discovered some years ago that an iPhone turned on its side did the trick.

I learned a lot of valuable information from those tapes, and almost none of it was how to play like Mac.