Iconoclast

Do you need the 5 pin or can you just go midi over usb to your computer? If you can go midi usb to your computer and only 2x1/4 inch outs, don't be afraid of just using the 3.5 mm jack on your mac into a splitter. Way cheaper than an I/O device. No one can tell the difference audio-wise...literally no one. I have played many times through both an I/O and the stereo 3.5mm stereo jack and found no discernable difference. I usually play through an I/O device but that's because my rig is usually more complicated than that (I either run multiple keyboards or I run my Nord back through Mainstage as a separate channel strip. But when I play with a USB controller only (SL88) I just use the stereo Y cord and no I/O device, midi over USB. Works great. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K59CQ3R/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?_encoding=UTF8&aaxitk=6d6cac6cb90d9087cc3b6b0ef37468f4&content-id=amzn1.sym.417820b0-80f2-4084-adb3-fb612550f30b%3Aamzn1.sym.417820b0-80f2-4084-adb3-fb612550f30b&hsa_cr_id=4574585810201&pd_rd_plhdr=t&pd_rd_r=2a9cd1bf-c3b1-4490-91f0-7930668464a2&pd_rd_w=6ueMa&pd_rd_wg=a4yhA&qid=1699204389&ref_=sbx_be_s_sparkle_mcd_asin_0_img&sr=1-1-9e67e56a-6f64-441f-a281-df67fc737124

Personally I liked watching Max Domi better. Couldn't picked a better dude to punch than this fight. Not that I hate Ryan Kessler. Loved him when he played for USA hockey in the Olympics and hated him when he was a Canuck and a Duck. Probably be a great guy to have a beer with though.

I mean, below middle C, the differences can be very small, especially with some Rhodes pianos. Some of the models in the Nord Stage are vey similar in that range too. I think I only missed 2, but then a lot of them I already knew before he started. I mean, one of my favorite patches on the Kurzweil is Beck's Wurly, and no way a Supertramp song would be on a Rhodes!

Seen them live and it was pretty mind blowing. Such incredible talent. My only complaint would be that they don't seem to translate into the "just listen" category. They're so cool to watch and experience in a room full of musos, but without the visual element, I haven't really been able to dig them.

I define stage 3

So digging this dude. I bought some patches from him a while ago when he was a bit more incognito. They were all spot-f'n on.

My Doctors name is Bill Evans. He's a crap musician but also plays hockey and soccer, although not much better. There is also an Agent, Producer and Keyboard player named Bill Evans who has some connection to Kerry Livgren, Steve Morse and the Dreggs. I've talked to him on the phone and he's a great chap. Also probably not the guy this thread is about.

I know Kurzweil recommends balanced cables but I have had, on specific stages/venues, better results with unbalanced cables. Weird I know. I was always taught that balanced cables had less noise, so I was kinda shocked to see this happen. I run balanced cables on my Forte when I can.

If I thought I'd be doing more fly gigs, that might be a player. Looks amazing.

Roatan is an island off the coast of Honduras. There will be no where to buy a keyboard there. I do already use the Korg nano control and the SLMixface and either one will fit that bill.

Flying straight into the Island so I can't imagine that anything could come from the mainland, but it might be worth a phone call.

I have a vacation planned to Roatan, big group thing with some friends. The resort we're staying at has let some people in the group play gigs while they're there and is actually hoping they play again. I've gigged with these guys in the US but never there. No capability to backline. Supposedly they have a Bose stick thingee for a PA. I'm perfectly fine with Mainstage for the whole gig, but I need to figure out how to get a usable keyboard there. So I'm looking for a lightweight keyboard to do the gig with...Something that I could fly with, and won't break the bank, as I'm probably not going to make it part of my normal rig. 61-76 keys? I've never done a whole show on a 61 key keyboard but I typically gig on a 73 key NS4. Gig will require a lot of piano/EP/organ so I'd like something that's not terrible on action, but I'm willing to make compromises! Any specific recommendations on what to buy and how to travel with this? Never done it before.

I think I see more of him on this forum than anywhere else. Big fan of the dude.

Pretty much guaranteeing Kharmatically that someday your own children are going to tell you to $&#$*@(#. Or did I miss the clever emoji that would have somehow made that humorous? 🤔 Anyway, children are the great equalizer. You've never really lived until a genetic copy of yourself sorts your sh!t out for you. And I generally find that anyone who uses that phrase has not had that experience. 🧐

I have not used the Roland. The NS3 used the Nord Lead engine and I've used it a whole bunch and found it really useful and super easy to use. It's got a sound that sits real well with a band and can really cut through. It's general tone is really great, especially for leads. I wish it was a little more analog-ie like some of the modern VA stuff is with selectable drift on envelopes and tuning. I'll never fully embrace the wooden pitch bend stick...but it works. For some reason, Nord doesn't do poly portamento, or at least on the NS they don't. On the NS3 you could only get two layers of it, which I sometimes found as a limitation. Not often. TIFWIW given that I never played the Roland or the actual A1.

I'd clearly rather listen than watch. And yes, for much of Bowie's career I felt the same way.

A tailgate gig is usually a gig in a parking lot just prior to a large sporting event. You pull up in your truck and sit on your tailgate and party. In American football, tailgating is HUGE. People show up hours before (if not the night before) to party in the parking lot pre-game.

I get this all the time. I play guitar too and suddenly they want me to cover one part of one song...but do I really want to load up a guitar, guitar stand, preamp, possibly the amp and assorted cables, picks etc...just to get that 1 or 2 songs? Plus, now I'll need to borrow the wife's SUV. So yeah, if I'm coming home with a fat wallet full of folding money, it's worth the schlep and making sure that Bessie is tuned up for her brief moment on stage. But if I'm playing for tips, free drinks and $50, Bessie can stay at home in her case next to all her amp/pedalboard friends.

I also recently discovered that a basic sawtooth poly patch with just a little bit of filter to taste, can fit in with certain guitar songs. We do WhiteSnake's Love ain't No Stranger and when the guitars kick in, that kind of oberheim brass-ish sawtooth (not completely dis-similar from the infamous Jump patch) actually backs up the guitars nicely and allows you to catch their groove. Again, spacing out your voicings is the key to making this not sound like the Archies trying to cover Metallica. I use a similar patch to cover Hardline's Hot Cherie (another hair metal kind of song with no keys) and again, I think it fits without being silly. So yeah, also try a sawtooth poly patch, and spread out your voicings like root in the L hand and the 5/3rd (or 3rd/5th!) in your right or something like that. It's a challenge sometimes and of course, like Al Quinn, sometime you can just go get a mid-set drink while the guitar stringers wank-on.

How does an ADSR with D set to a long time and S set at or near zero not accomplish this? Or alternatively, I can name several soft synths and synths that have ADR envelopes. Do they not do the same thing? Am I not understanding you?

Old me used to think a driven organ (888000000), and that can be appropriate for some songs, but I find that organ doesn't complement the rhythm that guitars bring to a song and they can take away from the space between the guitars. So unless I'm going to sit above the guitars and be more above it, maybe ok. Especially if you can mirror something like vocal harmonies in the chorus. Some quick examples: Think "Stone in Love". No keys in that song but you can back up the vocal parts in the chorus in an organ and it sits in just fine. The guitar outtro on that song you can do on a cp70 or any chorused piano. Or "You Shook Me All Night Long", an organ would be appropriate for the chorus's up in the vocal ranges above the guitar, but I don't see using an organ during the Verse as it would detract from the rhythm. "Behind Blue Eyes" a wurli doing some icing during the acoustic parts, but when the drums kick in I do a pretty driven wurly coving the electric rhythm guitar. It has to be right on that rhythm and have some attack so I don't think an organ would work there. New me is using a dirty dusty wurli in these cases and much happier. Try to stay away from triads and close 3rds (sometimes they work but I usually look for a different solution) and spread out your voicings. Usually one note L hand and 2 notes R hand and stay with the rhythm of the song. Usually keeping everything below A4 (basically the same notes that most guitar rhythm parts come from). Some of the less bell like Rhodes sounds will work ok and will sit in the same place very well. But again, the voicings become critical and are not typical to piano players. I've done a whole lot of ZZ top, Cream, the Who etc using the wurli and it doesn't sound cheesy at all. Sounds like it should be there. I've tried the Jan Hammer thing, but you have to have just the right song and sound. And each guitar player sounds different so if you match a synth tone for one dude it won't exactly work with another dude.

Am I not mistaken that for many synths you can assign the amp env to mod the filter? I'm quite surprised Omnisphere can't do this. Pretty sure Pigments does (? I'll need to test this later but I would be surprised if it doesn't) Then you leave the filter env off and just mod both with the amp env? I can totally see that for most of my purposes I'd prefer 2 separate envelopes for amp and filter, and it's not too hard to match them up on a hardware synth. Kind of a pain on soft synths!

And that is why the red keyboard is so popular. My time is worth all the extra money it costs. Last night, audience wants an encore, frontman calls out Highway Star (not on the setlist, not played with this band but they know I've played it in other bands) took me less than 5 seconds to dial in the organ I wanted. I've had (and still have) other keyboards that were a grand or two less and arguably sounded better once you had them dialed in, but the Nord saves me time, that I get back by playing and not tweaking. My time is valuable. I wouldn't say there weren't things I'd change about it, but there's things I hate about every keyboard I own. The Nord just gets the job properly done with the least amount of WTF.

I get a lot of use out of it by just using the Drums/Bass/Vocals and then playing along with it. Since I'm also a guitar player there's a lot more utility for guitar music as it does a pretty good job of removing guitars. You get the real rhythm of the song and it's a great practice tool. Also, just breaking out some of the background vocal parts (although I find that some of them get smeared into the "middle" track.

Moises is great at separating lead vocals, drums, and bass into tracks, but it's not so good at getting the rest into different tracks! Guitars, keys (esp synths) and background vox are frequently smeared into the other 1 or 2 tracks. Are any of these getting good at separating out all the "middle stuff"?