Jump to content

stoken6

Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    5,253

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by stoken6

    Your Latest Purchase (music related)

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    5 hours ago, Docbop said:

    We only had the APC's to keep the power going until our diesel generator kicked in. 

    My favo(u)rite story about why testing is fallible:

     

    A company regularly tested their UPS services: battery backup for a few minutes to cover the time for the diesel genny to start up. Every time, they would turn off mains power to the server room, the UPS would switch to battery, the fuel pumps would start pumping diesel to the generator, which would generate electricity, and the UPS would switch back to that.

     

    Then they had a real power blackout, not a test. The UPS switched to battery, the fuel pumps ... didn't start

     

    They had wired the fuel pumps to the mains side, not the UPS side, of the supply. Of course it worked during tests.

     

    Cheers, Mike.

    • Like 1

    Thinking about using an iPad...

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    15 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

    Soundcheck over, and guess what? Buzz! It was the wall wart for my keyboard, a ground loop through my in-ears mixer. I thought I would play it safe and use the AC adapter instead of powering it via USB which I was doing without issues at home. That’ll teach me. I unplugged it and set the keyboard to use USB power and the noise is gone. One hour to showtime.

    So your keyboard was powered from the USB connection to the iPad via the USB dongle? And the lightning connector on the USB dongle was passing power to both iPad and keyboard?

     

    Cheers, Mike

    Book recommendation for non-jazz non-classical students?

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    21 minutes ago, bill5 said:

    Yes, this is what word processing and page layout software hath wrought. Amateurs think they are designers, typographers, editors when they are not. It is the downside of self-publishing. Professional graphic designers and editors have skills that amateurs don't have and actually contribute something to publishing that regular people can't do, even if they are good writers. It's an old complaint of mine. Thanks for letting me vent. 

    And of course, sampling, DAW, quantise, Auto-Tune have brought exactly the same kind of "do it yourself, badly" capabilities to music amateurs. Any technology which democrati[sz]es a previously specialist skill opens up the possibilities that neophytes will make a mess of it. 

     

    Cheers, Mike.

    Song(s) that artist covered that became "go-to" version.

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    10 hours ago, IMMusicRulz said:

    Up until a few years ago I didn’t know this was a cover of a Tommy James And The Shondells song.

    My favourite music trivia fact: this song replaced Billy Idol's "Mony Mony" at the top of the Billboard Top 100. Both were Tommy James and the Shondells originals. It is the only time in Billboard history that two consecutive number 1s were covers of the same artist.

     

    Cheers, Mike.

    • Like 3

    Book recommendation for non-jazz non-classical students?

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    This reminds me a little of me at 11. Classical lessons, and I had just discovered pop. I was lucky enough to live near a library that had a great sheet music department. I would borrow books of scores and just learn stuff from them. Not necessarily how to play whole songs, but "this is what m7b5 sounds like", or "how to voice a 7#9" or "what are the bluesy grace notes in a rock and roll figure" - all the stuff you won't learn from classical lessons.

     

    I would perhaps invest the cost of a lesson in downloading scores for, say, 10 songs that your colleague's daughter likes, and let her work through them. If she has the aptitude, she should be able to internalise what she sees - and also see the limitations in the arrangements (such as the melody nuances that MoI mentioned). 

     

    Beyond that, a few lessons with a pop/contemporary piano teacher would be invaluable. 

     

    Cheers, Mike.

    'best' guitar player (from a keyboardist perspective)

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    Question is too wide. "Best" anything is almost impossible to define. 

     

    But speaking as a keyboard player, and therefore (almost by definition) having a modicum of knowledge of harmony, I'm turned off by guitarists who stick to the "blues scale of I" for their solos/riffs. I prefer someone who can reflect the movement inherent in chord changes. Knopfler can do that, Brian May - but too many can't/don't.

     

    Cheers, Mike

    • Like 1

    You play piano and left hand what?

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    7 hours ago, Tom Williams said:

    I can sing parts much more easily when I am playing LH bass and something else in my right hand, than I can playing RH keytar bass

    I have similarly something weird like that. I'm "OK" at LHB - concentrate, keep it simple, focus on time and groove. But I cannot play a grooving bass line with my RH. Why is that?

     

    Cheers, Mike.

    Setlists and Patch Changes - What category do you fit in?

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    I mainly do D, and I'm not surprised to find that it's popular. You don't need IT skills to use the tools available (beyond a basic understanding of MIDI and the ability to count to 127).

     

    I also do A. I have my common "bread-and-butter" patches printed out on a small bit of paper attached to my top keyboard. (I don't get the newspaper though). That's for the spontaneous/jamming moments when I quickly need to dial up EP under strings, or clav with autowah under Moog square lead, and BandHelper doesn't have those patches associated to any specific song in tonight's set.

     

    I sometimes wish I could do F. A gig with a stage piano, a clonewheel, a lead synth and a ROMpler all on separate playing surfaces would be cool. Although I know what would happen - I would need to play a woodwind line with my right hand while comping organ with my left, and the ROMpler's to the left of the organ...

     

    Cheers, Mike.

    • Like 2

    Casio CT-S1 vs CT-S400 for a kid (and myself)

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    7 minutes ago, DaveMcM said:

    I purchased a ct-s1000v for quick in/quick out rehearsals. I could do without the vocal synthesis section

    You should have got the CT-S500?

    7 minutes ago, DaveMcM said:

    In a nutshell, get the ct-s500

    That taught me a lesson - read to the end of the post.

     

    Joking aside, the CTS500 has useful gigging features for a budget board. A CTS888 that adds organ model (instead of vocal synthesis) to the CTS500 would be a winner.

     

    Cheers, Mike.

    Nord 6D 73 or 6HP or Hammond SK Pro 73

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    Lots of good advice here so far. I think the first decision is: hammer-action or waterfall? If the former - and I'm thinking that might suit the OP better - then the YC73 has stellar pianos, and very good (with the latest OS) organs. It's 30lb, which is a useful weight saving over the 45lb Krome. More limited synth/rompler soundset than some of the other options. I personally would avoid the Electro HP with its TP/100 action.

     

    For waterfall keys, +1 on Vox Konti (the slightly limited organ implementation might not matter too much in this case), Kurz PC4-7 (which is more of a workstation board), and I would add Roland VR730 to the mix. I love Hammond's concept for the SK pro, but acoustic piano in particular lets it down. 

     

    Another angle is to combine two lightweight boards with differing action. You could plug the Hammond's piano deficiency with a Yamaha P121, for example.

     

    Cheers, Mike.

     

    • Like 1
×
×
  • Create New...