David Emm
-
Posts
3,847 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Events
Articles
Downloads
Gallery
Store
Posts posted by David Emm
-
-
18 hours ago, dacm said:
I attended and graduated from the Hartt School at the University of Hartford in West Hartford, CT in the early 70's. Tommy Mariano (aka Tommy Mars) was a legendary figure during those years at the conservatory.
Once during a concert of John Cage music, he performed one indeterminate Cage work on a solo Fender Rhodes Suitcase 73. When he was done, he reached up to a small Tensor Lamp that stood atop the Rhodes. He proceeded to turn it off in a dimly-lit, large-scale rehearsal hall for effect. Awe inspiring...
I have always regretted not attending his formal piano recital where he allegedly played concert literature on grand piano and then on multi-keyboards.
He is the pride of Waterbury, CT.
I remember a tale of Tommy making the cut. He was at the piano, struggling through some of Zappa's intense sheet music and not quite hitting even his own usual standards. He said "Frank, I'd need a lot more time to play that the right way, so let me do some improv and see what you think." He did this strangely bouncy vamp and accompanied it by singing like a Munchkin. Frank lost it and doubled over laughing. He called Gail in for a listen as well. Tommy said "That's when I knew I had the gig!"
-
During an extended vamp at a Zappa concert, Tommy Mars ran out front in purple briefs and neck sash to do a vaguely disturbing and FUNNY free-form improvisational dance. After a bit, Frank gave him a Look, so he did a big stage-cringe, crept back to his keys on hands & knees, popped up and took up seamlessly with the music. I always enjoyed the big Yes and Floyd stage shows, but Frank's band WAS the show. I love those incredible memories.
-
I'd enjoy modular if not for all of those cords. After an hour or so, I'd begin flogging myself with a fistful of them and screaming. I prefer my "modular" action inside a slab synth or software. There, I can pretend that I know 30% more than I do.
-
1 hour ago, Ibarch said:
On my RD-88 the speakers were just about sufficient for band rehearsals, playing against one moderately amped guitar and a bass amp. They did not cope once we added the full acoustic drum kit.
I would say they would be fine for individual practice or playing with mainly acoustic instruments in rehearsals. Perhaps even for gigs in very small venues.
I'm sure quite a few of us would do a can-can in our undies on the evening news for a solution to the power & weight issues of speakers. The Harmon-Kardons in my old iMac were a wonderland of clarity. Thumping bass, no, of course, but I wish more small speakers would go there. You can't cheat the physics too much and get a proper bass tone. Speakers like that for an RD would wreck the cartage factor anyway.
Until "They" devise drones that will form speaker gangs in the air that you can configure to taste, at least there are some nice rechargeable party speakers that will give you a couple of decent hours' pizzazz. The Mackie Thump runs for 12 hours and only reaches down to 50 Hz, but up to 20k Hz, @ 200w peak. Its not "budget"-priced at about $450, but its still a semi-magical option. Just charge it carefully so it doesn't 'splode and cause your band to re-write "Smoke On The Water."
-
1 hour ago, Tom Williams said:
I understood JazzPiano88's post better than I understand this.
C'mon guys, help me out here.
If you play Peer Gynt's "Hall of the Mountain King" as the guy tip-toes, it makes a lot more sense.
-
28 minutes ago, Ibarch said:
This is the new world. A number of software companies are using the browser to do their authentication. I don't know the logic behind it but it seems to becoming more common. Even some Microsoft tools do this.
It's horrible and totally user unfriendly but who cares about the user anymore?
Fair question, but the real issue is... overpopulation. There are so many OF us that our individual unit value has dropped, in conjunction with companies having to keep track of the often top-heavy user base. Business needs and operating practicalities are inevitable. You need a whole 'nother machine and staff to handle various customer issues, apart from producing your synths/software.
If I was facing 2000+ e-mails a day, I'd be keen on a utility for keeping some of them at bay, too! I'm not wild for browser & cloud-based situations, but I can live with it. That's part of why I have a D-50 and a CS-80+. Oh, the anguish, however will I cope??
-
1
-
-
Its a first-among-equals thing, but for me, its a toss-up between "Beauty In The Beast," her alternate tuning treatise and the full-length version of "Timesteps" from her own full "Clockwork Orange" soundtrack. The latter is a surreal modular masterwork I've never heard rivaled. The nearest contender is "Wuivend Riet" by Johannes Schmoelling, which has some serious breadth. Wendy made me think about synths critically while I was being amazed. My hero.
-
2
-
-
On 3/24/2024 at 11:25 AM, Anderton said:
When the original Kurzweil was demoed at AES, I was amazed at the sound quality and seamless velocity and positional splits. I made flattering observations that were used in a "quotes by an expert" context. What I heard didn't seem at all possible with the RAM and computational limitations at the time.
Well, apparently it wasn't. A Kurzweil employee told me several years later there was a hard drive under the table holding the keyboard, and the hard drive was doing the heavy lifting. I felt deceived and exploited. Even if Kurzweil didn't actually plan the stunt himself (and I kind of assume he did), the buck stops with the name at the top of the company.
I never reviewed or covered anything else done by Ray Kurzweil after that.
That chaps my @$$ so badly, you'd have to see in the ultraviolet range to view my blisters. Then again, half of everything reeks of AI flummery lately. It can be hard to see where the line is drawn. Ethics have been something of a vestigial organ for a long while now. 🤨
This reminds me of an antique "Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers" strip. Phineas has a nightmare where he's approached to be President. He proceeds to list his dubious habits and then light up a spleef. The agents pull out a super-dusty, cobwebbed stovepipe hat and thrust it at him, saying "You'll be the first honest one we've had in quite a while!" Of course, he wakes up screaming. I can relate to that a lot these days.
Historical note: Patrick Moraz and Bill Bruford did a duo tour for their album "Flags," with Patrick on a lone K250. Its the best overall showcase the instrument ever had, even though a few notables like Paul Shaffer took them up. (Eons ago, when Letterman was still on NBC, they had a "Paul's Top Ten Synthesizer Sounds." One was a big downward swoop that ended with a thump, entitled "Plane landing and running over a monkey on the runway.")
As to paranormal phenomena, I have a picture of some dark woods with two blurry yet very eye-like lights in the middle. The legend says: "This is what your dog is barking at that you can't see." 😬
-
2
-
-
On 3/23/2024 at 7:56 AM, Ed A. said:
I recently bought a Native Instruments Kontrol S61 Mk3 for the polyAT and find that I almost never use polyAT. 😄
HAH! There's the other shoe dropping! Poly AT still has the aroma of "parlor trick" wafting around it. MPE has arisen just as brick-&-mortar outlets are in sharp decline. If you ever needed to lay hands to a thing to truly get it, this would be the one. Its hard to imagine anyone but Sweetwater having such things in a demo rack. Its not something you can fully explain verbally, yet its self-evident when played in real-time.
The next big challenge with MPE is not what it can do, but getting the perceptual experience outside the confines of just YouTube. 🤨
-
1
-
-
On 3/23/2024 at 8:52 AM, TJ Cornish said:
Just visited the House On The Rock in Spring Green Wisconsin. What a...um...unique experience. Loved the antique player pianos and music boxes; the mechanized orchestras were both impressive and disappointing due to how much has fallen into disrepair and been replaced with MIDI and speakers, and the Organ Room. Such a weird mix of genuinely grand instruments and then movie-set mad scientist creations.
I'm glad I went, and was equally glad to leave - I was feeling weird anxiety due to overstimulation and covered the last 20% of the exhibits very quickly to get some air.
Isn't that the Geoff Downes rig from the ASIA years? 🤔
-
I'm naturally concerned about the lop-sided performance between models, but after sleeping on it for a while, I realized that I haven't had to freeze a Logic track since I landed the M1 Mini. I'm not mixing a Pink Floyd or Zimmer album and juggling 112 of them, so I haven't had any issues. We'll see where things are at upgrade time, but I get the feeling that even with the clunkiest M model, I'll never notice a change. I'll cross my fingers and hope I never have to eat those words. 🙄
-
21 hours ago, Thethirdapple said:
More walled gardens
Every home a prison
... and every backyard patio a nuclear protectorate! Sorry, what was the question? TBH, Zenology fascinates me because of its depth. You can buy emulations of most of Roland's synths from multiple software shops like Cherry Audio. I wonder how many people have committed to that synth universe as their main toolbox? Vintage emulations aside, the full Zenology engine isn't exactly lacking. Its not as detailed as a Papen synth or something in that vein, but its respectable. Surely there are more than a few people for whom its a go-to. Personally, I'm too crusty to depend on the cloud that much.
I sample the bleep out of my rig, because these days, if someone says the sky is blue, I still look up and check. I always loosely expect for my instruments to go POOF. My last line of defense is Autosampler, which has generated a healthy library. Of course, if my Mac goes, I'm screwed with my pants on. 😬
-
25 minutes ago, Ibarch said:
Whatever Roland's reasons for releasing the RD-08, I just don't see Cloud membership and data acquisition as being the main driver - despite all the paranoia here.
A one off purchase for a likely small number of users is a drop in the ocean and will have exactly zero benefit in any valuation. Having just been through a valuation process for my own software business I can tell you a few one off purchases count for nothing. Investors need repeating, guaranteed revenues and high numbers of regular active transacting users.
My view is that Roland are using their cloud as a single point of sale system that also manages device licensing and authentication. Nothing more.
Fear of Roland Cloud and a hate of subscriptions is, excuse my pun, clouding the view.
Well said. I try to keep in mind that as an Old Synth Fart™, I'm naturally going to feel resistant to sea changes in the field for a while. You and sam6599643 have encapsulated the issue neatly. There are so many sketchy ratbags in business that its easy to forget how vital the nuts & bolts are.
I'm not wild for the cloud, but having owned Roland hardware that performed at a high level, I was a lock for the Cloud D-50. (Its defining sound is part of the IP, so no emulations are forthcoming.) I never quite landed the real thing, through several swing-&-a-miss moments, so its a serious WIN to have it with endless patch sets and a built-in PG-1000.
The RD-08 doesn't wow me personally, but just imagine the starting player who gets one with a D-50 installed. That makes it hella bigger!
-
1 hour ago, RABid said:
I would never depend on a a Mac internal drive of less than one TB. It is a constant battle for space. I always us the option, when given, to install samples and other data to external drives. NI and Spectrasonics are good about this. Akai MPC software will not let you specify external drives for samples, and now they have started hiding storage location to keep the user from moving it. So with NI Komplete, a bunch of Spectrasonics, Ableton Live Studio, Bitwig Studio, Reason 12, Logic Pro, FL Studio 21, Roland Cloud and a few others, despite moving as much as I can to an external 4TB drive velcroed to the back of my monitor, this is the info from my internal drive. Glad I decided to step up to 1TB, which is what I had on my previous MacBookPro 6 years ago.
Boy, are you singing my song! With only 500 GB internally, I'm having to dance around like a wombat on a hot sidewalk. I'm hating it, because my general work flow would be pretty happy with 1 TB. Making outboard safeties, sure; having my internal doings depend on external drives, GNARGH! Its working just fine, but it still keeps me a bit nervous. As I growl and stash money for a bigger Mac, I'm even considering taking the hit for 2 TB. Its a bitter pill in one sense, but growing pains are called pains for a reason. I wish I knew how to synthesize a little more peace of mind! 😜🤨
-
My summation: there's a group at Roland who are mad at management, so a conspiracy was hatched to market a miniature white elephant. The company's pianos have had sluggish actions that put me off for years. Attempting trills on one felt like a job for the Hulk. I haven't played either of these new instruments, but for me, wedding that action to a hamstrung, cloud-dependent OS is a recipe for future pawn shop filler.
If I was shopping for a starter digi-piano to give a newbie, I'd breeze past Roland and go for the Yamahas. The CP line has great sound engines and more engaging actions. All they need is an outboard module with Roland's otherwise killer sounds onboard. 😜
I feel rather fortunate in having resigned myself to synth actions, even for piano. Properly lively-yet-buttery keybeds appear on workstations more than in digital pianos, IMO. I haven't played everything, though, sooo... 🤔
-
1
-
-
3 hours ago, Synthaholic said:
Last night's setup.
You have enormous brass ones to be playing an Alesis Fusion live! Its a beautiful synth that was never fully baked and perhaps a bit too ahead of the curve. For instance, it included some physical modeling, but it was such a recent technology, it didn't seem to stand out as you'd expect. If it came out now, with the ragged edges addressed, it'd be a monster. I'm oddly pleased to see that you can trust it, despite its age. 👍
-
2
-
-
3 hours ago, ElmerJFudd said:
It is, the M1 is astonishingly capable with the minimum spec. The 256gb storage - should be ok if you’re just using it for MainStage. I had to recently put 11gb of samples on my MacBook Pro for show specific sounds. I deleted it after the gig.
I had to scramble for SSDs when I realized that 2 years of my usual doings had eaten most of my 500 GB of storage. Its been tedious to shuffle libraries around and delete a few casual things I would have otherwise kept, but whose fault is that? Why, mine, for not buying the 1 TB size, or more! That's a sea change from the more generous behavior of my Intel Macs. Live & learn. Its not a bad trade for amazing stability and speed. Besides, every paradigm shift features a few growing pains. The M1 is as solid as a rock, so I'm filling up my Cuss Word tip jar labeled "M2 GoF**k Me Page."
-
1
-
-
1 hour ago, TommyRude said:
I’m running a macbook pro, 100% Mainstage at the moment, 2 boards, Key Largo. Midi hub to connect the Mac to the boards and the KL. Fairly bulletproof. Noting - however - I need to keep the macbook plugged in, I came close to running out of juice once when I forgot to plug it in.
For safety, in the early days, I kept another Mac running on the side in case the first Mac crashed. It hasn’t crashed yet. But I rehearsed switching them out, just unplug the midi hub from the first Mac, plug it into the 2nd - - voilà, took about 30 sec, worked perfectly.
It seems like a good time to recommend a UPS again, even though it adds a few pounds to the gear schlep. Its easier than ever, with the more efficient, conservative electronics we have. SSDs are less forgiving of voltage hijinks, so look for a UPS that employs a simulated sine wave. Its kinder to them than the standard square wave models. Hard ON/OFF bad, sine wave good. I've had one of that stripe from CyberPower and despite the brown power in my area, its kept my rig humming along for a couple of years now. Keeping a computer rolling is fidgety enough on its own. I appreciate being able to apply those meat-CPU cycles to my music and not worry about a power glurp. That's like the Mellotron Glurp, but a lot more damaging. ⚡(Says the guy who has never owned one and screamed like a giant chicken at a snarl event.)
-
1
-
-
On 3/19/2024 at 3:45 PM, dazzjazz said:
It’s hard to believe there’s 46 classic and rare string machines!
There are, but 23 of them are at the bottom of an Everest of e-waste. 🙄 That's a whole 'nother thread, but I have to say that I feel just a few % better over my much smaller Mac and going with softsynths over hardware. Of course, I also know I'm kidding myself, because I've been on the ol' electronic heroin since I was a zygote, so my carbon footprint rivals Godzilla's. There is such a thing as too darned late.
-
22 hours ago, HammondDave said:
“Aging Instability Control”? I wish I could control that!
That reminds me of a great Doug Stanhope moment: "Did you ever look at yourself in the mirror and say 'That can't be accurate! When did THAT happen??'" 🤨😄
I scratch my head over stringers. You could perhaps claim to whiff a bit of hypocrisy when I am such a Mellotroner, but string synths were a mix between real strings only a 'tron could do at the time and a desire for synth polyphony that was still in the wings. They didn't cover either of those desires to a high degree, but its what was available, so you dealt with it. I enjoy them in music like Klaus Schulze's where the sound is a natural fit, but otherwise, they mostly feel forgettable. I was all over the Mirage because despite the 8-bit graininess, the strings were much closer to real. Heh, talk about an esoteric topic!
As a GForce fan, I find favor with the high quality of their accomplishments, even with pieces I don't personally need. Its hard to imagine doing better than the VSM if that's your stylistic bag. They don't provide a full source list, but it appears that the right materials are there for covering all of the name synths, not just the Solina. GForce always goes deep because they're fanboys like us, so the VSM IV can be seen as a one-&-done string synth vault. 👍
-
1
-
-
7 hours ago, HammondDave said:
FYI, when I perform I use samples that I recorded from all my studio machines.
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.
-
6 hours ago, Mark Zeger said:
For the past 40+ years, this
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. 🙄
-
1
-
-
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. 😬
-
2
-
-
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!
Ray Kurzweil predicts humans can transform into an eagle by 2045
in Craig Anderton's Sound, Studio, and Stage
Posted
Gulp!