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marczellm

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Posts posted by marczellm

    Billy Joel's New Single (No, Really, He Has New Music Out In 2024...)

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    On 2/1/2024 at 6:20 PM, SamuelBLupowitz said:

    someone leaving the pitch correction plugin on at slightly too high a level in mixing?

    It has now become the standard, from aspiring artists all the way up to McCartney, Rolling Stones and now Billy. An album I worked on had the mixing engineer tell us "no out of tune note will ever leave my desk or you can get out of here". F*** that. I want to hear what they sang, not what the computer thinks they wanted to sing. Ruining the music of our time.

    • Like 1
    • Love 1

    Looking for songs with this type of percussion loop

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    Imagine a percussion loop, 1 or 2 measures long, generated by a drum machine. It combines various percussion instruments, maybe including congas/bongos, shaker, claves, open/closed triangle etc. It does not really have an authentic tribal or Latin feel to it, rather it is used in a sort of 90s pop context. I know Genesis did some similar things with an analog drum machine but here I'm thinking about more realism and samples.

     

    Do you recall any songs like this? Maybe in addition to pop songs I can imagine it being used in musicals or Disney songs...

     

    The reason I'm asking is because I have something like this in mind for a song I'm planning to record, but I plan to do it with real instruments instead of samples, and I'd like to show examples of what I'm looking for to the percussionist. Except that I don't have examples yet, only this idea in my head and the feeling that I've heard something like this before.

    Should MPN set up a rant sub forum?

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    I frequent another forum where there is a subforum for discussing controversial topics including politics etc. It fulfills the intended purpose of keeping the rest of the forum clean from these topics. But it has caused situations where some member is unwilling to interact with another member outside of the cage too, because now their politics is known.

    Ideas for a music focused living room?

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    I'm planning to move out of my parents' house sometime next year. One painful loss that comes with that is the fact that here I've been able to create my own makeshift rehearsal space in the basement. I was fed up with hauling my gear to poorly maintained rehearsal spaces that are in the most decrepit parts of town and completely dry out my creative energies and good mood.

     

    Now that I will be moving, this will not be possible at the new place. On the other hand I will be living alone in a 3 room apartment, so I'm looking for ideas on how to create my music focused living room! I know that some of the good people around here have something like that.

     

    I figured out that I can still have a complete silent rehearsal space minus the drum kit. I've asked a drummer friend if an electronic drum kit would make up for the current real one but he said nah, not worth the $$. So I dreamed up the idea of having a living room which can host a few friends over for some drinks, but can also double as rehearsal space. Here are some ideas and questions that I'm trying to make my mind up about:

    - Is it possible furniture wise to combine a living room with a rehearsal space? If I approach it from the living room side, putting a rehearsal space in there sounds like blasphemy. On the other hand I'm seeing more and more pictures of modern day studios and fancy rehearsal spaces being furnished and decorated as if they were living rooms, because that makes everybody instantly more relaxed and chill.

    - I've been to a rehearsal space where I loved the idea of having all the amps and instruments in fixed places, plus a good number of microphones on stands, standing by the wall, equally distributed around the room, in dedicated fork-like wall holders so they don't take up a lot of space when unused, and all of that is supported by preinstalled cabling that runs all around the room, so you usually don't have to plug anything into the mixer, just turn everything on, grab some mikes, push some knobs and start playing.

    - I can't decide if I want my desktop PC in the bedroom or in the living room. Right now I have it in my bedroom, the advantage of which is that's my completely private space. But if I want to record demos I have to bring the keyboards and stands over from the rehearsal space.

     

    So I'm looking for furniture ideas, decor ideas and functional ideas on how to arrange all the tech - mic stands, music stands, cables, the mixer etc.

    Nord VA vs Roland VA

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    I think Nord VA sounds generally have more balls than Roland. The Nord Stage VA though is less capable than the Wave / Lead, you would have to check for yourself if it can really do everything you used the A1 for. Rolands on the other hand are much more flexible with fully configurable zones, multilayers (essential for brass + strings IMO), velocity layers, effect chains, plus it has sampling pads, drum machine...

    • Like 1

    The Future of MPN?

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    I have nothing really new to add, just to agree with some points from others.

    Quote

    any time we want to try and add value like paying folks to cover trade shows, do videos, do reviews, curate press announcements, ..., run the MPN Store and more.

    I agree with the great points MOI and Geoff Grace have made as well as JazzPiano88. I'm a casual not too heavy user of these forums. For me the main value is the forums and community. The aforementioned types of content that cost extra to produce, I don't consume (read / watch). I think there could be quite a logical next step to turn just that into subscription-only while keeping the forums free. I feel these already cater to the most committed crowd. I'm also not against cutting the amount or certain types of that content if it turns out, maybe via a survey, that very few people read / watch it.

     

    I think Patreon also could be the way to go but there needs to be a coordinated, well thought-out "marketing campaign" to hopefully reach all regular and casual users, as well as new users in the future also have to be greeted by very clear messaging on
    - what we need the donations for
    - and what is the recommended amount. This second point is basically a middle ground between pay-what-you-want and fixed subscription: you can pay as much or as little as you like, but there's a recommended amount that's sort of like a subscription. Also I have seen Patreon supported companies tie some content to Patreon membership exclusively. So that way we could have the best of all worlds.

     

    Quote

    I’ll strip what folks in that group can see to the bare minimum, just allowing reading and posting in only the music forums - just the basics.  Then, I’ll be happy to switch anyone over to that group and they won’t have to worry about any donations or payments at all.

    An idea: maybe a statistic can be extracted from the forum software that reveals what percent of users participate in the music forums and what percent consumes the extra content too. That would inform the decision.

     

    Quote

    I think what’s hard is that I don’t feel like MPN has done a great job with promoting the sheer depth of knowledge and decades of information here.

    Quoted for emphasis. Marketing and messaging is very important and it's just recently that I'm discovering how much.


     

    • Like 2

    Iconic Tony Banks?

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    Maybe less iconic but all his synth sounds on the pop flavoured album We Can't Dance are perfect in my opinion. Even when you know that he mostly used presets by then, he found uses for them that most of us would never think about. Also the synth solo in Fading Lights has a great emotional arc.

    Play all the instruments yourself (poorly) or emulate them on keys to play them (good)?

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    If it's a demo, use keyboards. If it's a recording to be released to the public, use real players.

     

    I might put a distinction between: is it a creative project, like your band or solo stuff? Use real players. That's when it will be good enough for yourself to be satisfied with the result. Is it a commissioned recording, like a TV show soundtrack or a commercial jingle? The client doesn't care if it's synth drums or whatever.

    Sick of audio-related bloatware

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    It should be also possible to disable the auto-starting of those bloatwares. I know how it is done but only on Windows. Then when you want to use the plugin, you have to think ahead a bit to start the bespoke updater manually, wait the update out while you have a coffee and then do the work. Recently the open source notation app MuseScore also joined the club with a new Muse Hub background app :(

    Organ solo @ Springsteen @ Fallon

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    18 minutes ago, Reezekeys said:

    Sounds like he had a split going on in the beginning of the song, with organ on top and pad below –  easier to do on one keyboard, I would think. Do I hear some acoustic piano in there too?

    The first verse also has a faint wurly in addition to pad and organ, and there's acoustic piano in the second verse. But I have a suspicion the pad might be a backing track.

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