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David Emm

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Everything posted by David Emm

  1. Smart move. I retain a small dose of shock that anyone ever toured with them. The basic delicacy has "studio use only" written on it in bold case. I went to see Triumvirat open for ELO, but their Mellotron snarled and local radio blared forth from their apparently unshielded Minimoogs. ⚡Early analog at its finest. 😬 Concerning the Mellotron's predecessor, the Chamberlin, Tom Waits once said "Its a beautiful instrument that dies a little every time you play it." All too true.
  2. This is either one of the best or one of the worst synthesizers you could give someone who has OCD. I won't even tackle it as software. 🙄
  3. Sequential Prophet-6. I've always been a poly slab synth player. Unison has handed me what I needed for solo leads and Gorgo bass. You have to approach it differently than you would a monosynth, but its easily managed. I'd like an added multi-FX box for added Moog-balls here & there, via pitch-shift or sub-oscillator. Otherwise, I'd feel well-covered. I could make a go of it as a module, as well. Give me one of each and I'll grow an added finger per hand so I can fully milk 'em. Sorry, that sounds a bit gross... sort of a Tom Waits burrito-&-Ouzo nightmare. 😬
  4. I know how it works, heh! You either buy one of Marcus Resch's excellent digital Mellotrons or you take up GForce's comprehensive plug-in, M-Tron Pro. You can buy the real thing from mellotron.com, but I'm slightly afraid of people who are willing to tackle tape racks. Its a clarion call to madness. I'm a constant M-Tron player, but I'd play the kazoo before I'd engage in a masochism tango like that. OTOH, I love the unsane instrument so much, I hear Mellotrons playing under part of my dreams. I've got it bad!
  5. I already feel like a zombie half the time. No point in resurrecting that! There is also the high probability that only the super-rich will be able to afford its first iterations. That works for me. If an Assburger's™ case like Elon goes for it, he'll be a good beta test. If he grows tentacles, we'll know its a no-go. If it leads to the means to re-grow a lost limb like a lizard's tail, I'll follow the upscaling process keenly. I have a few things that need re-growing. 🤨 As a synthesist, one secondary life lesson I've learned is that I can't dismiss a parameter just because it doesn't fit my whims. You have to be either subtractive or additive. Sorry! I'm reminded of a screen shot from a breezy Friday night NINE P.M. news magazine show on NBC, back in the Age of Dinosaurs. Just before the commercials, they posted this: "Thesis; Antithesis; Prosthesis." I'd buy that stitched on a pillow. Now, let's talk about the soul. *CRUNCH* Oh, sorry, no religion or politics.
  6. Cockatiels are an ultimate high-end hearing test. The way they shriek, you could lose a lot of it! If you live in an apartment, be prepared for eviction. Properly amplified, the sounds of just 20 of them in a cluster could cost you a new windshield.
  7. I do understand high pricing for high end gear, but I always choke a little when I see a $6K price tag. I can't help but translate that into a healthy home studio with a well-muscled computer and a few potent softsynths. I love First World choices! I can easily respect the VV-love. I had it for my Shoninger console, which had a major voice for its size. I sold a Roland RD-1000 to a guy who lit up like Xmas as he stepped through the presets. He said "This is going to up my game immensely." If it lights you up inside, its a keeper.
  8. Likewise. My first experience was with traditional wheels, but I bonded best with the joystick. No, you can't set-&-forget as you can with a mod wheel, but that was never a big gesture for me anyway. I was far more wowed by being able to assign an axis to effects depth, which was more useful to me, live and while recording at home. My big ol' hand wrapped around the end of the synth and fell into the ideal position. Roland's joystick always failed my Marie Kondo test. Too clunky and non-fluid in every direction. Everyone ends up with a favorite, based on what worked the most smoothly for them early on. I expect to eventually see something like the Touche become more common. It allows you to uniquely lean in, quite organically. As MPE takes hold more, I think the market will go for a small sea change.
  9. I have only gotten to demo a few MPE controllers, but the Sensel Morph felt like the right fit for both my hands and musical sensibilities. I was sorry to see the line come to a stop. Each of these things is esoteric by definition, so there's an added layer of effort required to elicit their best. That's part of why I "settled" on CME XKeys. They don't hit every mark, but they bat above their weight class. I'd still love to have a Morph for its less traditional gestural responses. Everything else seems to command high dollars and a very arduous path to more fluid playing. Not to diss an entire field at all! I simply get the feeling that with the Osmose and Keystage now available, the range of MPE-capable tools will naturally broaden.
  10. This dovetails with the thread about the banning of TikTok. "Social media" curdled a lot of my "milk of human kindness." If anything, it is the antithesis of creativity. I also smelled a lot of envy in the shade that was thrown at Keith. Of all the weird places, it was in Frank Miller's "Dark Knight" series where Superman recalls Batman saying to him "Beware the envy of those not blessed." You have to both manage your blessings and then the crowd that somehow resents their presence. Too many overvalue yours and undervalue their own. I once played at a small festival and got a good reception. As I was moving aside for the next act, a little snot came up and said "You'll never be as good as Keith Emerson." I just laughed and said "Of course not. He got started early on a totally different path. Its not a sensible goal to try to be as good as a pro you admire. Instead, you aspire to it and polish your own powers. Besides, I didn't see you adding to the show. Maybe you should focus on that instead of slagging people who do." You could hear his mouth slapping shut. 😜 I cringe at Keith's end, because I had a dismal couple of weeks when I finally had to accept that my own hands had dropped below the two-fisted playing level. I'm glad to have had it occur at the technological cusp of Logic 8. I was never going to be a live firebrand, but IMO, that's the upgrade where Logic became much more approachable. I came to realize that while I was not a barrelhouse type of player, I had actual compositional chops. I wish Keith had been able to make that leap. He might have hit a higher peak as a composer than he had previously reached as a live rock-&-roller. He would have been a guest of honor for years.
  11. Hm... so is it a violation of free speech or a vaccine against the excessive free agency of bad political actors and perhaps moreso, our $#@! neighbors? I like my often-ephemeral rights, but there's a counterbalance in the form of my obligations. There's a vital You Gotta Pay Attention clause. If you knock back several friendly little Vicodin with a pint of Everclear, that's on you. I suspect that TikTok will quickly regroup so as not to lose the lucrative platform, but either way, its an opening trumpet blast. I doubt that people will change much, but legal liability is going to reshape things out of necessity. All the more reason to support the MPN. Other outlets are too much like being kicked in the taint with a cowboy boot. 😬
  12. My only concern is seeing the site become overloaded with too many separate sub-forums. The individual threads seem to address whatever issues the members post, overall. Some last for months and then rise from the dead 2 years later! The site represents plenty of work for its keepers as it is. I wouldn't want to kill the golden goose. That reminds me... its time to add an MPN donation to my To-Do list. I also allow for my being 98% ITB. That's far afield from buying vintage hardware and trying to address the frequent repair issues. Likewise the esoteric fifth layer down in a newer synth's convoluted OS. A lot of manufacturers now offer tips & tutorials on-site and YouToob covers a lot of it. Then there's the Help/Search sections of virtually every softsynth. Its literally at my fingertips. The information paradigm has shifted enormously since I bought my first Mirage.
  13. That made me cringe and feel the way young Brit rockers who couldn't afford a proper guitar surely felt watching Pete Townshend doing his thing. 😱
  14. Watching that reminded me of my first couple of synthesizers, where I was lucky to even turn them on. A video of me trying to play chords on a Minimoog could make the cut for a Special Olympics music segment. If I ever get that sloppy again, I'm gonna have C-4 for dinner. 🤯
  15. Whereas I once labored over full solo piano pieces, I now sculpt and stitch in generally productive multi-track fits and starts. Debates over losing the human touch or 'too much of a good thing' quickly stumble to a halt for me. Even as a kid, I thought in orchestral terms, so a DAW is a heavenly thing in my view. Craig is right to point out that you may lose aspects A & B, but what you gain from C to R leaves them in the dust. I know its generally best to leave mixing until the end, but I know several shortcuts and basic moves that make it far easier. Its a rather bionic approach, born of simply having the options. DAWs have matured to such a degree that editing and composing have blurred together. I enjoy feeling like the Conlon Nancarrow of Synthesizers.
  16. I'm like that! TJ Cornish succinctly made the flip side of my earlier point about the right synth(s) for your personal mindset. He's the kind of player who truly meshes with a big honker like the Montage and thus gets the most from it. Its no small venture, as Our Kind knows. I admire his tenacity and even envy it a bit. Some of us are more tech-adept; others lean towards the "creative" (*cough*) abstract side of things. I once took comfort from Todd Rundgren saying (loosely) "I learn what I need to know to address the work at hand and then I forget a lot of it, because I'm off to a new song." You have to keep the nuts and bolts properly lined up to reach sensible goals, even while trying to retain that first wild idea that got you rolling. I became pretty intimate with my old Korg 01Wfd, but I still had oddball Post-It notes on it, to help my bucking bronco of a brain along. It was, er, pre-iPad set lists. 😛 Several cost/benefit command decisions about a grant led me to a bigger Mac and some key software over a Korg M3. Instead, I bought a TR61. It had the same problem as the Karma: a display so pixelated, programming it was like building a ship in a bottle. Ugh! I Autosampled the heck out of the ample classy presets, so now, they're at my fingertips within Logic. There are numerous paths to the right hybrid approach for YOU, so don't worry unduly. As the Oblique Strategies card states "Honor thy mistake as a hidden intention." Anything creative involves some stumbling.
  17. I really enjoyed "Deep Impact." While it obviously plays a certain melodramatic tune (cue the violins), it also behaves like an adult, relative to actual science. You can peck at the details, but overall, I appreciated the basic maturity of the narrative flow. They got all too much right about human nature. As to the quote, I do take your point. Doug Stanhope once said "When you have a certain amount of fame, you can f**k above your natural weight class." You can also feel nostalgic when you have a herpes flareup. If you can walk a sane line between wanting attention and handling excessive fans, you're on the right mark. Still, fame has a wearing effect. If you don't keep your internal gyroscope healthy, it can sneak up and grab you from behind like Krampus. 😬
  18. I find it a bit haunting to think that at one time, "Fairlight operator" or "Synclavier operator" were highly useful resume credits. There are probably similar states of grace for E-mu sampling teams and a score of people who created presets, such as Korg's Jack Hotop. He's got really big ears and no pun intended. A lot of us have rocked out on more than a few of his sounds. To this day, I'm grateful that blurry green CRT screens are now history.
  19. You can blame softsynths a little. For a lot of us, the prices that are far below that of hardware and availability of legendary synths that barely exist anymore are seductive. I wrestled with synth repairs in my day, so casually clicking a few times, installing and playing the new "Zeus Thunderbold" is a dark magic. I feel the loss to some extent. Keyboards are an esoteric realm, so finding a knowledgeable guide was no small thing. I was the keys guy for a median mom-&-pop store that seemingly specialized in geetar strings and drum sets. It was a weird pleasure to sell a couple of RD-1000s and a few D-50s to churches, even as I dug into both enough to sell them. Those folks knew between little and squat about the technology, being just players, so it was fun to teach them the vital basics. Several really took to it and could outplay me easily. It was like handing them angel wings. Going from a console piano to "Fantasia" and that Full Swell-type pipe organ preset made their eyes pop. It added some interesting, useful modules to my musical journey.
  20. I wish I could un-read that. I wanted to continue laboring under the illusion that the band was an endless fount of godly sound design on the fly. 🤨🤓 That's a lot of where I've wound up. Its an ongoing clash between fascination with new synths containing 100+ patch libraries and trying to be something akin to an adult about it. That's where you adhere to a moratorium on new gear while you explore that gluttonous pile of 'em you already possess. I set aside days where I mainly reverse-engineer a few of the standouts from various instruments. They're often so good, I feel little need to build from scratch. The flip side of it is learning how to modify things with greater ease n' precision. That includes a preset that made my toes tingle, but after half an hour of noodling, I realized that it was so big, it would step on anything using it. When I tried trimming it, the magic fell apart. You know how that goes...
  21. TBH, I can only hear a wisp of difference between them. That's excellent news for people who don't have $5K for the hardware. Sweetwater is offering the Arturia version for $74. If you have a serious Oberheim jones going, I feel sure you can get over "settling" for a software take on it. Your ears are forgiving. A few days' playing and they'll latch onto the best aspects.
  22. The problem with China is real enough, but the more central issue is, well, US. Social media reflects us back at ourselves and its been pretty gagsome. Even back in my Usenet days, it was prevalent. One reason I gave it up was visiting alt.poetry and seeing people slash at one another as if there was a Sicilian blood debt hanging over the place. The weirdly volcanic signal-to-noise ratio gave me hives. If I had kids, especially a daughter, I'd fight them to a standstill over smart phones. They'd get a simple flip phone and live with it. Part of parenting is steering them away from toxic things. They'd holler about it, you bet, but if you explain that its all calculated to sell you your own left hand and 98% dishonest at its core, they'll at least respect that you drew lines and provided structure. That's a tough hurdle, but their brains deserve your TLC. In Harpo Marx's autobiography, Harpo Speaks!, there is mention of ten permanent house rules being taped to the fridge. #10 tells the tale, I think: "Anyone found guilty of scratching the felt on the pool table or abusing a pet will be docked a month's wages." Some rules rock. We no longer teach civics consistently and even less so, the art of civility & its benefits. There has to be a middle ground between being a puckerbutt & playing a Redd Foxx party record for your Baptist granny's lunch group. The day I can offer a fix, I'll let you know. There's a line between being wryly amusing and just being a blithering drunk. I tend to fall right on it face first, so I can't judge too harshly. 🤨
  23. I think the issue could be summed up by something I heard a short while ago. The statement was that Japanese people are highly fond of puzzles, which shows quite clearly in X number of hardware synth GUIs. Far more people than not see a synth as another piece of consumer tech, whose job is to make fun noises. Those of us who are serious, furrowed-brow keyboard players take a more serious view of it. That's not to say that any given approach is "bad." Variety has several pluses. Some softsynths are breezy and some are Dr. Frankenstein peyote nightmares. There are synths for oscillator-heads and synths for neo-pianists who like synth sounds. That respected, IMO, Yamaha is the most inscrutable, whereas Roland is convoluted but more consistent & ultimately comprehensible. Korg gets the golden spaghetti squash for being the alphanumeric champs. I've always preferred the company's overall sound, but their UIs are the least abbreviated. Its easier to keep track of what you're doing. The Montage will see its due as a solid pro instrument and a few folks will make part of their living programming it for pros. Yamaha's instruments have always been full and crisp. Still, the MODX line seems a lot more pragmatic. The full Montage is partly a case of a synth that's peacockin'. 🦚
  24. "You really don’t want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous person." ~ Kevin Kelly
  25. That was quite useful on several fronts. I get the blockchain deal and I've known about MIDI show control for years, but the rest was a welcome addition to my casual data base. Well rendered!
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