David Emm
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Posts posted by David Emm
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I missed the VST part and wrote about pedals and tabletop units. Its been a very subtractive day.
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"MOOOOM! BILLY'S PLAYIN' AT 117 BPM AGAIN! WE'RE GONNA GET BUSTED!!"
Chechnya wasn't exactly a hotbed of music tech anyway, but I briefly envisioned mullahs going around putting car boots on drum machines.
At this point, I recall Zappa's comment about politicians trying to potty-train artists.
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I need another analog poly like I need more toes, but if its a Chroma, bugger all that. I'm probably in. I got to briefly play a real one. I still remember the great sound & keybed feel. I recall the mention of Herbie Hancock grinning big-time upon first playing one while an operator turned on splits & such.
It'll be interesting to see how an emulation stacks up against that brief moment of magic decades ago. It was on proud display in the store, all plugged in, but if you're one of the KC's greybeards, you know how iffy those first jaw-dropping moments can be. At this rate, I'm going to need a Cherry Audio tricornered hat with a flashing LED logo on it. 🤪
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20 hours ago, ksoper said:
In the mean time, until these programs can pass Adam Neely's musical Turing test, proceed as planned.
So that means "by the end of the summer pop cycle." By October, look for a Japanese "TAI-lor Sw£ft" android so exquisitely modeled, it makes Beyonce sound like a croaking toad. The lawsuits will start flying like ninja throwing stars. A "Weird Al" AI will accidentally sing the Brown Note at a country fair and flood a 5-mile radius.
I'm so far behind. All I can do is sorta play the pipe organ and not humiliate myself on a celeste. 🤨🤓
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2 minutes ago, CEB said:
This is my “I’m retired from gigging but playing some summer Blues jobs. This is first time I have taken the Kurzweil to a job.
Nothing fancy.Oh, I don't know. Power-wise, it looks fairly "fancy" to me. Blues gigs don't have prog-like demands for wild synth elements, but your K has that on hand if desired. Some rigs are fancy on the outside; this is one where its internal. I mainly responded out of admiration for your strength of will in hauling two biggies like those!
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Dave Lovelace has been doing the Packrat strip for many years, beginning back when Keyboard was still a print item. Its unique and hilarious. I have his collected book and so do a few friends who got 'em as gifts. Highly recommended, obviously!
BTW, he plays THE most smokin' JD-800 pieces I've ever heard. Our Kind can richly appreciate what it means to find a synth worthy of marriage.
Swallow your drink so you don't spray it when you read this gem.
https://www.umop.com/art/new_001.png
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My feeling over it: surreality. The profit margin on keyboards is woefully small; serious rack effects likewise. Now, more than we've seen in a while, many are too freaked out by the social n' political atmosphere to sustain bigger-ticket sales. There will always be a place for pros and the unsane such as we KC denizens, but as a sales guy, I sold far more guitars, strings and drums. Keys have always been an advanced form of life and not easily engaged without a good start and some mentoring.
Between online sales and the rise of software, Sam Ash probably won't be the last to fold. You can also bet that when you see the term "private equity" in the news, the business that's closing is often doing so because they're being gutted. Equity fund participants clean up, people are put out of work and properties become haunted houses. I also know its sometimes a 10-car pileup which isn't that cut & dried, to be fair. Still, I have a seriously vile term for the practice, but this is a family group. Addams Family, sure, but still family.
The real culprit, though, is Us. Music has lost ground as a proactive personal habit as the technology made it more of a consumable. The loss of music and art classes in school is, IMO, part of why we have more nervous & self-centered citizens. Both the discipline and sheer pleasure of it builds personal and philosophical muscle you won't get from just brushing up on C++.
I'm just wistfully happy that when the Jupiter-8 was new, I had 3 excellent music stores where the gear was plugged in and the help was helpful. I got the Full Synth Monty, which has informed everything since. I'm grateful for keyboards and you should be as well. They're the main reason I'm not in the basement building a dimensional portal to Crom knows where.
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1 hour ago, KuruPrionz said:
What bothers one person may delight another.
I would hope so! The more the puckerbutts squirm over some minutiae, the greater my pleasure. I've made several friends by simply playing some odd thing for a group and seeing who grinned versus who looked puzzled or puckered. Its a proverbial dead giveaway.
Opaque melodies that would bug most people
Music from the other side of the fence
~ Capt. Beefheart
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I found the idea of a "parental advisory" hilarious, because most parents, including my own, forever remain 2-3 steps behind whatever is wowing the kids. Just dropping an F-bomb was very small potaters next to some of the concepts I was drinking in. If your teens are listening to William Burroughs recite his own work, there's going to be a permanent kinked place in their thinking. Its good for them to struggle with some things to get their muscles up.
Likewise, we're already soaking in "Karn Evil 9" to some extent. I pity the kid who is trying to balance the existence of child molestation and The Bomb.
AI won't fail. It may help to kill us off, but it'll be very profitable until then. Its already a WIN, especially if you own stock in it.
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10 hours ago, Jose EB5AGV said:
As a sidenote... Is 500€ a good price for a lightly used, five years old, boxed unit?
It is, but if you can, play it and see *how* lightly its been used. Modestly used synths saved my arse repeatedly, upping my game several times. Looking back, they held up as well as the brand new ones I bought. Just baby it a little more out of sensible caution.
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2 hours ago, D. Gauss said:
Seems a slight better deal than the gazillion dollars i paid for the real deal back in the 80's. Backup on cassette tape. Oy.
"Oy" isn't enough. The sample of a small nuke is more like it. Cassette dumps are among my earliest "scream like a chicken" moments. FSK (Frequency shift keying) can perform an unnatural act on my privates, heh! Prophets & Korgs & cassettes, oh my, oh ****! Part of my current love for cool libraries stems from how it felt to get that (IIRC) Deep Magic patch set into a Prophet-600. I must have auditioned that until the sun set & rose again. I was trippin' happily through Oz for a long while.
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2 minutes ago, Stokely said:
The wife said "fine" when I explained I hadn't yet sold a few keyboards to make room/fund this purchase. Got work to do in that regard!
Here's a fine example of a "real keyboardist." You know what you need vs. what you just have GAS for. VERY high on your gear list is keeping peace in the household by trading things out and making sure your wife gets her fair share of goodie moments. Its just as important as your gig bag of spare power supplies, proprietary cords & critical flash drives, yez it is!
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I was in the 3rd row at one of his concerts, "Thingfish"-era, I believe. The great Allan Zavod was playing an astounding solo on piano, while Frank sat nearby having a coffee break. Allan hit what HE & FRANK might call a clinker (many of us would just call it added color) and he cringed with a grin, dancing right on afterwards, of course. Frank reached over for a mic and said "Allan, was that youuu?" I still laugh at how he never missed another lick.
Allan passed on in 2016, also leaving a wowser of a mark through his time with ace violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. Check it out and then aspire for more from yourself, if you dare. I mean, phew, its amazing.
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The musicianship behind all of the Muppet music is off the charts and always was. Some of their "kid" songs had a darker side, if you just turned them 30 degrees.
This is still one of my all-time favorites. There are days when I can really relate!
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2 hours ago, TJ Cornish said:
We are a hard to please bunch.
Why, we are not! Take THAT, you vile jelly! (SMACK!)
abitw, your query is pretty broad, by necessity. If this was for an at-home board, I'd advise you differently. In truth, I think you need to just dive in at some point, because we can't advise you on every aspect. Some of them are about personal style & likes.
The VRs are not workstations, BTW, just inviting Swiss-Army-knife type players' instruments. Also, Kurzweils "shouldn't" be your first workstation, as they are amazingly (and often dauntingly) deep. That's just IMO, but if you want to step up later on, experience with a Fantom will make it pay off in far greater terms. Skateboard first, Iron Man suit later. The bigger Ks are above your budget anyway.
I can't tell you how to define the feel of a keybed; that's become almost hellishly subjective, with too many klacky ones around. Sometimes you just learn to adapt for the sake of the pluses. As a long-time Korg hound, I recommend one of those as sporting the most sensible sequencers, among other things. Their OSs are generally very approachable. Fantoms are now in a similar category, so carefully consider that 06, for instance. Yamaha uses upside-down Venusian Greek OSs, so avoid them as your first experience. Great sound, twisted OS.
Whatever you choose, RTFM first! It certainly won't make sense all at once, but a lot of things will come more easily if you dive into the terminology. You can easily play the presets, but once you figure out how to assign control pads or arm a sequencer track, you'll be coming up to speed. Since you're jumping into the deep end a bit, just take a deep breath and roll. You generally can't go wrong with the builds of Korg or Roland workstations. There's always some plastic that makes you feel wary, but I've had them hold up well. I also advise dropping a couple hundred bucks for a rolling Gator or SKB case. They're ATA rated and will protect your gear from a small nuke.
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The term "culture ministry" is generally short for 'bend over and grab your ankles.'
Historically, anyone who wants to administer your culture is a living spoiler who deserves a beating.
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Its hard not to fall prey to at least a little pretension when you can play an F minor chord with a string patch and create Instant Action Movie vibes. I have a few bass patches I'd never use because you can't help but think "Predator" from the first note. BWWAAAHHH, with a metallic filter sweep.
Our words will live on, stored on servers no one has time to access. Our young men have not died in vain, the tapes have recorded their names!
Part of your best defense against Net crap isn't anti-viral software, its the Himalayan mass of archived posts. The headstone will read TL;DR AW LOL.
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6 hours ago, Stokely said:
I also remember the Korg M3 action as being great.
That's one of those blink-&-its-gone moments. It felt comparable to the D-50's, very inviting. I haven't played a Keystage, but if it feels like the M3, I'm likely to lean in more seriously. They were fine for synth/organ, but unlike some, I didn't find them prohibitive for piano, either. Best of Show, unweighted category.
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Pontifex Godzigulous and The Titans of Flatulence
Nice try, but doesn't roll off the tongue very well. Sorry.
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17 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:
There is no such thing as nothing.
Sure there is. Call customer service, pretty much anywhere.
You'll want to set up a mic to catch the Hoover patch moment when your brain gets sucked into the vacuum.
"Can you say 'entropy'? Nice try!"
~ Robin Williams
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I just pored over the specs and that's one hell of a central behemoth. I'd be reluctant to take it on the road without roadies. Its just too pricey and vital to haul around unless you can get a tax write-off, should a drunken patron fall on it. I don't think Roland left anything off this time. Its everything in their history plus n/zyme. Yeesh, Godzilla much? 😛 Its just my view, but its so big, it undermines squawking about a one-company sound. You might have a software piano or specialty instrument you like, but this thing feels a bit like my brain got turned into a workstation. 🤓 Impressive.
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Lucky me, as the Moody Blues were the first serious pro band I got to see live. The volume left my ears ringing for 2 days (I learned the ear plug lesson right away), but the Mellotron still sticks with me. I owe Mike something beyond just his band work, because he's the one who brought the 'tron to life for me. That's a prominent part of my rig now. Thanks, Mike.
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What a little beauty. Its a nice match for a Take 5, which is somewhat like a slimmer Prophet for people who aren't looking to drop $3499 on a Prophet-6. A Trigon-6 is $2499 and a Rev2 16-voice is $2599, so the pricing scale is sensible. Some synths stop at 4 voices too often. With 5, you can go to town more fully. It seems like a good choice alone, but also between bigger synths. It has bass and pads written all over it, maybe a bit less for leads, IMO.
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33 minutes ago, jazzpiano88 said:
My main point was that Disco was in the process of the inflection point of jumping the shark trending to crash&burn, where the mainstream thought it was going to be a hyperbola trending to infinity.
I believe it was Frankie Knuckles who said that House music was Disco's revenge. I concur, as evidenced by how quickly I click away from 4/4 demos of almost anything. Its rare for that not to utterly distract me from the rest of the piece. That's also partly just MY darned problem. Its a fundamental heartbeat/sexbeat with its own merits. It simply has a certain *aroma*, because I was bopping around attending many a concert at the time. THUD THUD THUD THUD ride crash 😱
It couldn't touch the shoe tops of seeing Bruford, Parliament/Funkadelic & Nektar live. It raises your standards, so you have to remember not to get all uppity!
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Oh no... another great synth
in The Keyboard Corner
Posted
All I care about is that I cranked up the preset demo and it came at me like a T-Rex. Its pretty much brimming with the lush character to which we've become accustomed. Its also the most digitized synth to date, so each take on it will be subjective. I'm suffering from an inflamed Mac, so I'm not shopping for More, but I have to say that listening to it was like enjoying a sinful Italian meal made by angels. Damned if it didn't remind me of old music store thrills, playing Moogs, Jupiters and Obies for the first time. WIN.