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Piktor

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Posts posted by Piktor

    Amazing niche product (Standalone Modwheel/Pitch bend with other features as well)

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    I’m still using my old Yamaha MCS2, so I know how useful a product like this could be. However, I see a box with squared corners. I wonder if such a device  could be made with a more ergonomic design to fit the contours of the left hand - one that could accommodate players who P bend with their thumb and people (like me) who use their middle finger. Then again, I am a niche within a niche. I hope that a Ukrainian company could improve on the design. 
     

     

    Let's hear it!!! Post your music here!

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    13 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

    …the lyrics took longer. 

    I’m not surprised. I think that most of us who make the attempt struggle. It is really challenging to convey ideas using just a few thoughtful words, while navigating the minefield of cliches and awkward phrases. You seem to be really good at doing that. Thanks for sharing the song.

    • Love 1

    Let's hear it!!! Post your music here!

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    16 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

    Might as well drop this here. I was in a "song swap" a few weeks ago. How it worked was, each of us turned in a line or two of lyrics from our notebooks, something we weren't going to use. Then we were all assigned someone else's lyric as a prompt to write a song to. We didn't find out until the performance whose we got and who got ours. We had a month or two between getting the prompt and the performance, but my first crack at using the prompt ended up in a completely different song that didn't use it. I was pretty sure that was it and the air was out of the balloon, but then the week before the show this one popped out.

     

    The prompt I got was, "He looks like Oklahoma." Here's the song I ended up with.
     


     

    Josh, this doesn’t sound like something that would just “pop” out. Sounds like a fair bit of sweat went into writing that. Nice work. 

    • Love 1

    Tip of the Day

    in Craig Anderton's Sound, Studio, and Stage

    Posted

    6 hours ago, Anderton said:

     

    I'll take the whole joke of living on this planet as far as it can go, as long as I can still be active and contribute something to the world. But when I no longer have quality of life, I'll head for the exits. My mother spent about the last decade of her life managing medical issues that weren't really all that terrible compared to some. But she said in retrospect that if she had to do it all over again, it wasn't worth shifting her goal from living life to stalling death.

     

    Same tip as show biz: Always go out on top :)

     

     

    Thanks for your thoughts Craig. I do apologize for writing such a long post. Due to my current circumstances, I have been thinking a lot about personal responsibility in aging and thinking about how I can avoid creating burdens for other people as I age. I hope to give and receive compassion, while avoiding guilt, ego and unrealistic desires. I hope that I can recognize and acknowlege the concerns and efforts that others might make on my behalf and reconsider my choices whenever necessary. 

     

    Maybe the fact that I have no children frees me from that dreaded and always disappointing  unrealistic state of holding expectations of others. 

     

    In Canada we have right to die legislation, though I think that it was intended to serve people who are fated to experience suffering from terminal illness - think some forms of cancer and ALS. Certainly, the legislation is controversial, mostly for people who have spiritual beliefs. To each his/her own. Most of us hope to kick ass until we die peacefully in our sleep,  free of regret and guilt, satisfied with our contributions to family and society (and music?). 

     

     

     

     

    • Like 1

    Tip of the Day

    in Craig Anderton's Sound, Studio, and Stage

    Posted

    A. Small idea: Buy a roll of Velcro tape. You will find several uses for it. 

    B. Big idea: You cannot stop time and what it brings. Prepare for aging. Be realistic. Be considerate. Be responsible. Be physically and mentally active NOW, if possible. 
     

    After 33 years spent serving the needs of students and their parents, I have spent several more years dedicated to serving the need of my own parents. While I remain grateful for the care and resources that were generously bestowed upon me and have been happy to provide love, time and care in return, I have been learning lessons about how I do not want to burden anyone else as I “ripen” into very old age. 

     

    Consider: 

    Do you have a genetic disposition towards aging into your late eighties or even nineties? If so, no matter how much you are willing to deny reality, you will need help. 

    Look at your family history. Look at your current lifestyle and realistically assess how it will impact your family and life as a very elderly person. While you are young and mentally capable of doing so, ask yourself:

    1. Do I wish to stay in my house for as long as I can?

    2. Have I taken responsibility for ridding myself of the years and years and years of accumulated “stuff” that filled my home?  

    3. Is my house wheelchair accessible? 

    4. Am I able and willing to pay people to maintain my property and my lifestyle? (You are highly unlikely to be the rare person who can do these things for yourself in your very advanced years.)

    5. Have I saved enough and am I willing to pay for homecare and other supports, so that members of my family are not burdened by my insistence on staying in my own home past my ability to do so on my own? 

    6. Am I able to bathe my nether regions when I am old and overweight? (This is not a family problem, but I have had friends who had terrible issues. This is an extremely important consideration. I have take flights and attended events/rehearsals where it was obvious that some folks were woefully unaware that their personal hygiene had huge impacts on others.)  

    7. Have I considered that, as a very old person, I need less stuff as I age and that I can be very happy in a smaller and uncluttered home? Could I get rid of things before I am too old to do so? (What a great time for us to have an abundance of virtual instruments, amps and effects that fit into a single laptop.) 

    8. Have I considered the possibility that my personal decisions have impacts on the people that I hope will think well of me when I am gone? 
     

    While we are of sound body and mind, my wife and I have agreed that if either of us becomes a burden due to physical or mental health concerns, the one who is still well should ship the unwell one of us off to a care facility. If it is me who is unwell, I love my wife enough that I would not want her endangered by caretaker burnout. Everyone deserves to be as well and as happy as they are able to be. When my mother-in-law was in care, we visited her often and I wrapped my head around the idea that I could always find a way to be happy and grateful for my circumstances if end up in a similar situation. (While I am not a practicing anything, I can appreciate the Buddhists’ wisdom regarding the concepts of gratitude, anti-desire and appreciation for the here and now.) 
     

     

    • Thanks 3

    Tip of the Day

    in Craig Anderton's Sound, Studio, and Stage

    Posted

    7 hours ago, bill5 said:

    Make up your mind :)  

     

    I kind of disagree with these, not that I think they're "wrong" but they're too general. If I want to play hockey, I'll play hockey. Life to me is not a spectator sport (granted this viewpoint is shifting with age!). If I want to play better, I'll practice. That doesn't mean I don't want to watch hockey or can't learn from listening to other musicians though. As for poetry, IMO most poetry would make lousy lyrics and vice-versa.

     

    Again, make up your mind! ;)  

     

     

     

    Agreed Bill. I wasn’t suggesting that you watch other people and NOT do the thing yourself. However, without models I think that one would just spend too much time reinventing the wheel. Good models are more effective than poor ones. 

     

    As for the poetry idea, I realize that pure poetry and lyrics are not the same thing and I agree that there is a lot of poetry that would not work as lyrics. Some of it is also pretty obscure for me, though I might still enjoy reading some of the lines. However, there is clearly poetry in some of the best song lyrics. Though I never paid attention to lyrics when I was younger, today I can’t bring myself to listen to listen to songwriters that don’t even seem to try to avoid cliches and obvious, lazy rhymes. What I suggested was that one try to absorb some of the sense and devices of poetry. I love hearing a line that creates an image in my mind or conveys a powerful idea without just saying the thing literally. Some of Joni Mitchell’s work does that for me. To each his own. BTW, this idea of soaking in poetry is not my original thought. 

    I hope that you were not suggesting that you would be miserable writing music. 😁  
    I was reflecting on the fact that I have a friend who always sends recordings of songs and seeks some sort of validation. My question to him is isn’t enough that you think that there are good? Of course, I was not thinking about commercial success. 

     

    Maybe the thoughts that wrote earlier were not so clear, as I was consuming a non-poisonous liquid at the time of writing. 

    Tip of the Day

    in Craig Anderton's Sound, Studio, and Stage

    Posted

    1. Have gratitude for something every day. 

    2. Avoid having expectations of people that you do not control. 

    3. Eat a bowl of Bran Buds, followed by two or three large mugs of water (or any other non-poisonous liquid)  before bedtime. Drink them early enough so that you don't have to get up in the middle of the night. Just sayin'.

    4. If you want to play hockey, watch hockey games. If you want to play better, listen to good musicians. If you want to write lyrics, read poetry, even if you do not always understand it. Read something daily. Read it silently and read aloud. Soak in the feeling of it. 

    5. Compose and record your own music, even if it isn't great. Do that for years and years. Make yourself happy. Do NOT make your friends and family listen to it. If and when you do make it available for anyone to hear, make it known that you do not expect feedback of any kind. (It is near impossible to get civilians or musicians to hear and appreciate new music, especially if it has not been hyped in some way.) Congratulations. Now you can die knowing that you are an "artist", even though the world doesn't yet know how awesome you are...assuming that there will even be a functioning world by the time your grandkids are adults. (I suspect not.)

    6. To accompany singer-songwriters on organ, start by pushing in every drawbar except the 8 foot one.  Alter Leslie speed frequently and use the volume pedal expressively. Use additional drawbars to color the song from there. That doesn't work every time, but it works often enough. 

     

     

     

    • Like 1

    Haunting Sad Songs :-(

    in Craig Anderton's Sound, Studio, and Stage

    Posted

    On 7/20/2023 at 2:40 AM, o0Ampy0o said:

    Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding ~Jessie Winchester
     

     

    Curses! Now you are two for two. My wife and I saw Jesse perform this in a small club in Edmonton. It was just as beautiful there as it was in this performance. 

     

    A sad song is my favorite musical dish. Two of my favorite sad songs are "I Can Let Go Now" by Michael McDonald and (the ultimate champ) "Kentucky Avenue" by Tom Waits. Waits' song is perfect and earns five hankies out of five. It has the power to elicit more tears than a video of a puppy-less black lab saving an orphan kitten from the jaws of a viper on the tenth floor of a burning building. 

    Obscure films you feel no one remembers but should

    in Craig Anderton's Sound, Studio, and Stage

    Posted

    On 8/3/2023 at 10:01 PM, o0Ampy0o said:

     

     

    Doctors see this as an opportunity for an experiment.

     

     

    I am breaking my own rule in responding to your comment, but that was a movie that was impactful. It was disturbing. That is not to say that it is bad or good. 

     

    Could you please explain your comment? Your claim about doctors is not really clear. Are you accusing doctors of something nefarious?  

    Keyboard-Clueless Sound Techs (rant)

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    Lots of good familiar tips here. Just one more trick: If you have to, make a big deal of your opening phrase on a solo - high end of the keyboard, stand up, play a cluster of notes with your seat…oops, got carried away. Do something to get the new sound person’s attention. 
     

    It certainly helps if everyone in the band, including a sound person, has pretty much the same concept about what kind of sound you are trying to create. The originals projects that I was in had the most success in that regard. In good situations, we’d all be thinking of painting the same picture. 
    Though I rarely performed any Deep Purple material, sometimes with a one-off sound engineer I would tell them to think of the group as something like DP, just so they would crank the organ up. That did not always work. 

    COVERS! Perfect recreation or put your own stank on it?

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    6 hours ago, CowboyNQ said:

     

    I can promise you the only people in that audience who give two squirts about the keyboard patches are other keyboardists.  


    While I generally don’t go out of my way to piss people off (a couple people here might disagree), I have to admit that once or twice when I was young, I did enjoy annoying some vocal and critical keyboard players by noticeably revising/reinterpreting parts and/or patches from well-known songs, while pretending to be serious about it. I mean, if a guy writes sticky notes and shares them with me during the breaks, that’s a bit much, right? So what if I changed a note or two in the “Dancing in the Dark” riff? 😁

     

    I can appreciate the detailed work that it takes to nail multiple, involved parts faithfully. Doing that is admirable, but less interesting to me now. If I needed to pay off a mortgage, I would probably reassess my attitude. I also think that there is a difference between reinterpreting a song with a thoughtful, personal and creative arrangement, versus applying a looser, more improvisatory approach. Either could work, but if the performers in the latter setting are not sensitive and supportive listeners and players, that isn’t much fun to listen to. 
     

    To each his own, according to their circumstances. 

     


     

    • Like 2

    Surprisingly special gigs

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    Though it has not been true in every instance, most often my experience has been that the more money a gig pays, the less enjoyable it will be to perform. New Years Eve gigs are particularly guilty. Though the converse has not always been true, sometimes the humble gigs have struck me as surprisingly enjoyable. Impromptu performances, unexpected guest appearances with musically empathetic performers, etc. Sometimes when the joy of making music was able to supersede monetary expectations, I have had my strongest musical moments. 
     

    My dad’s father was an immigrant coal miner/fiddler. I have an old promo photo of him in spats. He used to play fiddle gigs at weddings and such, long before amplification was the norm.
     

    In the middle of my stint as a uni student I was desperate for employment and I took on a series of gigs as a sub with a kind of hoaky old-time dance band. The band members were salt of the earth nice guys and, during that economic downturn, any well paying summer job was hard to find. The small town band played mostly even smaller town gigs. Once, while we were playing in a remote community hall, the power went out in the middle of set one. We decided to try going very old school, all the way back the days of my grandfather. We cobbled together an all acoustic rendition of the band. I had to wash dried puke off of the community hall piano. (Sheesh!) The drummer applied towels to his drum heads. The singer made a megaphone out of an empty bleach bottle. The tenor sax player was set. The bass player drank beer while I hammered away with my left hand. A gas power generator gave us enough power for minimal lights and away we went. The crowd loved it. Nothing about the gig was “cool”, but I really enjoyed making people who attended happy. 

    • Like 1
    • Haha 1
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