Piktor

Jim, can I ask if the gel has a tendency to get “munged up” with dust, hair, etc? I was thinking that it might have a stickiness similar to therapy balls. A D6 restoration is going to be one of my winter projects.

Holy Jetsons! I love the retro-futuristic design, but I could not see this occupying a space in my house.

TBH, I never put my finger (heh) on what exactly throws me. Sometimes it might be related to how someone crosses over their thumb (or doesn’t). I see a number of YouTube synth guys who might not want to deal with their fourth and fifth fingers. To be clear, I’m not thinking about judging any players and I agree that there are many ways to execute ideas. I’m just observing my reaction and wondering if anyone else experienced something similar.

I have been wondering if anyone else experiences this. Sometimes I watch videos of certain keyboard players and feel uncomfortable watching their hands to the point where I want to look away. The players might sound fine, but something in their fingering throws me off. Do any of you have similar reactions?

I glued mine on with some Goop (a flexible adhesive). Seems to have worked, because they stayed on.

I wish that J. Dan had changed his avatar before he left us.

Maybe this would be helpful: I know that there was a recent update to make patch selection more convenient. Touch the patch name in the upper left corner and a screen with all of your patches and the factory patches are right there. I like this change, though you might have become used to the original setup.

Oh man! So sorry to hear that Marino. I’m hoping that now that you are in the hands of the medical folks that they will help you make your way back to full health. Good thoughts going your way.

Key-tar confession: The very best controller that I ever got on with was the Roland Axis 1 pitch wheel back in the day. I never program synths to bend less than +/- 4 semitones. I want to be able to bend into a note and then perform vibrato sharp and flat from the target note in the way that one might do it on a violin or guitar with a floating trem. Because of the way the Axis pb wheel was positioned on the “neck”, bending and playing manual vibrato felt natural and accurate to me. I still have the Axis gathering dust in a closet somewhere. After I eventually crushed that pb wheel into an irreparable state, it wasn’t of much interest to me. Fun trick if you have an Axis: Run your synth through a RAT pedal. Bend a note, step on the sustain pedal. Keep your bend finger in place while you take your right hand and shake the far right end of the casing. Makes a great vibrato. For extra drama, lift the keyboard over your head and grimace, or walk to you amp and point the keyboard into the speaker a la Hendrix. If you programmed the patch to crossfade into a fake feedback sound you might even get a few wtf??? stares…. Um, not that I did ANY of that, because that would be immature, right? 😉

Hi Greg, Sorry, but I am about to go way off from the original topic here to answer your question. I think that you might be the only other Multimoog owner on the forum (sorry folks) and years ago you and I did discuss the “discovery”. Remember that I figured out that the Multimoog’s keyboard force output also functions as a voltage control input. By applying a voltage source to the keyboard force output (I am not sure if the 1978 spec is the same that modern Moogs use today), you can get the MM to do new tricks like: using a pedal to sweep synced oscillator, using the filter envelope to sweep the synced oscillator, setting the two oscillators an octave or more apart (something that the MM doesn’t normally do), applying PWM to BOTH oscillators, etc. I converted a volume pedal into VC pedal using a design that I copped from a Craig Anderton article (Keyboard mag April 1980, I think). If you recall, I made a very dull YouTube video about it and I shared that with Tom Rhea and asked him a couple of questions. He did say that in their design they “made a number of nominal output[s] function also as inputs.“ The trick that I found is not mentioned in the manual, but I wonder if it had been if Moog would have sold more than 1000 Multimoogs and maybe a good number of voltage control pedals. For a performance instrument that came out in the late 1970s, the Multimoog sure comes with a lot of inputs and outputs. I got the sense that the designers wanted to encourage experimentation. I did ask Rhea why the functions that I could get by adding a simple control voltage weren’t hardwired into the instrument. This is what he told me: “The Multi was conceived of as a "front end" to a modular system, i.e. as a controller. If you look at what we put on the back, it would do this pretty well! And, it was cheaper to put it as I/O rather than a front panel function.” I hope that answers your question. This thread has made me a little nostalgic. 🙂

I still have all of my past issues, but right now the 1977 bin is inaccessible. About ten years ago I actually made contact with Mr. Rhea about his Multimoog manual and something that I had discovered about that instrument that I thought that he might find interesting. He was a Berkeley instructor at the time. I just looked for him online and found that he has recently released a book that might have the information that you are interested in. https://www.electronicperspectives.com/

Sometimes, when I used to go to movie theatres, as soon as a trailer for a movie that I wanted to see came on I closed my eyes, plugged my ears and hummed. 🫣 Apparently, market research shows that compressing the whole story into a trailer increases attendance. Human beings are strange. 😁 Anyway, thanks for the heads up on the movie.

If you want to save time, spend three minutes watching the trailer. As with most modern trailers, you get the entire story in that compressed time frame.

I only missed hair in my early thirties. Once I figured out the whole shaving my head deal, accidentally joining an emerging trend, things improved noticeably. I met my wife to be soon after that. Conveniently, only one of us has to have a hair care/hair products budget, I never spend a moment fussing with the stuff and I get to shave away the remaining grey edges.

If only I could PLAY like Jordan Rudess….😁

As a young man I used to marvel that anyone would spend years learning to sing with an operatic voice instead of learning to sing like Ray Charles. I recently heard John Mayer talk about his voice on Cory Wong’s podcast (Wong Notes) and he demonstrated how he manipulated his tone to compensate for his limited range. What I came away with was the idea that it would be wonderful to be able to make the best out of whatever voice you were born with so that you could make expressive, soulful, warm noises and write or choose music that worked for that voice. Having said that, if someone ever invents a box that can make me sound like brother Ray, I would be tempted to buy the thing. 😁 I now a gifted songwriter who made a number of recording with a voice that was not authentically his own - sort of a Tom Waits rasp. Some people (certain blues singers come to mind) get by with a fake soulful voice. That really puts me off. I would much rather hear anyone sing with their own authentic voice that they develop through listening, experience and technical practice. Enough with the put on, fake husky voiced, greased hair, suburban “blues” singer shtick.

Tom, you are right to move on if that musical situation has run its course for you. I know how inertia can hold a person in place past the best before date. The group of friends that I played with had a long legacy and many good years, but due to health reasons and differences in attitudes, the last years were inconsistent and sometimes embarrassing. I realized at the end that professionally I could have pulled the plug earlier. You don’t want the last thing that you eat from the plate to leave a bad taste in your mouth. Life is short. Do something musically satisfying, especially if you are not relying on gig income for a living.

I got into JD from his third album on. I heard and felt joy from the first note. In my estimation, he was the greatest organist in jazz. I was very fortunate to have heard him live four times (starting with John McLaughlin’s trio) and even got to meet him once and express my appreciation. Joey seemed like such a warm and gracious person. My condolences to his family, to all who knew him and to all who loved him.

Hey Eric, I missed your post. Once again, this sounds great. You guys really have an identifiable thing. If you don’t mind, I have a few questions. 1. Where did you film this video? 2. What are we hearing in the instrumental break? Sounds cool. 3. Are you engaged to the lead actress yet?

One of the newer Mini Moogs with the extra LFO. I don’t need one, but the 1970s teen inside me keeps going on about “that” sound. I keep telling him to shut up and explain that we are retired, but to no avail. At least he doesn’t go on about how I need a cape, or something.

In short, no, butI have done something similar with an accordion, of all things. I was gifted an instrument that did not have the usual dimple on the C bass button or the hatching on the E and A flat buttons. It’s a nicer accordion than my other ones, but I am not precious about such things. (I once posted photos of my Leslie and my clav under the heading “Dig My Wreck”.) I care less about an instrument’s looks or resale value than its unplayability. A bit of sandpaper made the instrument navigable. If you are concerned, why not order a pristine replacement part now that you can install if you ever decide to sell the keyboard? Just my two cents.

I don’t see that there is any one answer to this issue. I certainly would not want to do anything that sounded corny, but even “corny” is in the ear of the behearer. I have worked with people who had widely differing feelings. I also got to work with with a horn section, which was great once I got the band to stop putting them standing in front of me. (GRRRR) I agree with some here who suggested that if you are going to do horn section parts, either do them with organ or an analogue type synth sound or even layer analogue “brass” under whatever sampled sound you use. Minimize. Notes of shorter duration might be best. Get in and get out before anyone gets annoyed, unless you have mastered some fantastic patches and performance techniques. I had a drummer who refused to play Santana songs, because the band did not have a percussionist. Would the audience have cared? I don’t know…because he refused to do those numbers. Would your guitar player refuse to cover mandolin or banjo parts?

Reverb is so attractive that it can easily be over used. For me, the amount of reverb that I would use in a recording often depends a lot on the density of the arrangement. It can work best in a sparse setting. Unless it is part of an ambience, I usually don’t want to notice it so much. I have a friend who loves reverb so much that it distracts me when I listen to his mixes.

Well, that would make sense given that the solo seems to quote an idea from Del Shannon’s “Runaway”.

Edgar Winter with Rick Derringer and his band: I think that it was the early 1990s? Winter had been booked to play at a conference center in town and that gig fell through. Given the time period, it might have been due to low ticket sales. A local young and inexperienced (want to be?) promoter picked up the date and booked the band into Andantes, a small, but cool local club. I don't know how he expected to make enough money from ticket sales, as the club was pretty small. It just so happened that my band had already been booked into the club for a three-nighter, so the club owner arranged for us to be the opener on that Saturday night. We had played a lot of original music in this club and had performed there many times. The business was clearly the owner's labor of love, as he did much of the renovations himself and the club sort of just scraped by during its whole existence. The owner was a musician himself and he lived in a loft apartment just above the club. After the Friday gig, we struck our gear, knowing that Winter's band would be coming in to sound check late the next afternoon. After the check we were expected to quickly reassemble in time to perform an hour before the headliner took the stage. Winter's folks showed up as expected and got a load of the severely underwhelming house p.a. system and demanded some necessary upgrades. The next few hours were taken up with a newb promoter contacting a sound system company, gear piling in, a very long sound system set-up, musicians sound checking, etc. In the meantime, people who had purchased tickets waited outside the club for literally hours and hours, well past the announced door opening time and well past our intended opening slot time. Understandably, patrons were getting more agitated. All this time, none of us saw Winter and Derringer make an appearance. They were still waited in the tour bus parked outside of this dinky club. Because this affair was turning into a sh*t show, the club owner suggested to us that it was in our best interests that we load our waiting gear into our vehicles and NOT perform. We agreed. Normally the club's green room was the dingy basement accessible from a set of stairs at the back of the stage, but for this gig the club owner agreed to turn his loft apartment into the green room. After securing our gear in our vans, the band headed to the green room where I am pretty sure that we finished off most of the food and beer that had been laid out before the headliner got there. (Sorry EW.) FINALLY, a bit before midnight, the green room door opened and in walked Edgar Winter. None of us wanted to bother him, so we took our beers and made our way downstairs to the club to find a place to watch the show. Now, this place was packed well beyond capacity. Clearly, the crowd was ready for something...anything, so when the band hit the stage, it seemed that all was forgiven. It certainly helped that the band and Winter and Derringer were nothing short of awesome. They performed like they were playing for thousands. I was sorry that such a relatively small number were witnessing this show, but it was one of the best live shows that I have ever seen. I don't think that my band was ever paid for our hours and hours of time that night (another "got paid in sandwiches and beer" gig*), but the sum experience made up for everything. * Which is a lot better than the time an advocacy group paid us in butter. Sheesh, if you can't organize a fund raising event, how are you ever going to stop nuclear proliferation? 😄