Stokely
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Posts posted by Stokely
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I hope they don't ditch the computer, personally. If they do both, fine.
If the computer DAW ever actually went away I'd move to Ableton or Bitwig or something else. I like the Logic stock plugins, but i have enough 3rd party tools to make the switch any time. -
Fair enough. I'm not versed in the realm of big biz and investors and all that to know how fast that sort of thing can happen.
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It's a giant load of bollocks is what it was, to steal a phrase from friends across the pond. "remains committed" my ass.
If you are saying that in March, and then closing in early May, you didn't mean one word of that spiel. You always intended to close all the stores.
I feel bad for the employees, who possibly believed that tripe. -
27 minutes ago, Motif88 said:
Here you go -
https://www.totousa.com/washlet-s7a-contemporary-elongated-with-ewater
Heated seat, heated water, drying function…you’ll never poop outside your house again.
Since I was responsible for starting this whole thread (please kill it with fire after this), I'll say that we have something similar.
It's a game changer. Seriously.
Anyway, despite my annoyance with AI taking over I'll probably be checking out the updates when I get my new laptop cranked up. My 2016 has started having performance issues ever since I went to Monterey from High Sierra. I had the chance to inherit my wife's M1 and hopefully it'll be a big improvement.
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AI AI AI AI AI AI AI
"Our new toilet paper has AI!"
Ugh. But everyone else seems to love it, so carry on!-
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Yep, that's a big reason why I don't go out for shows. I can listen to prerecorded music at home.
Other than a few corporate shows, my current band makes less per show than my frat circuit band did in 1989--and we were the cheapest of those bands in our area! Granted, after truck rental and PA payment we ended up with the same per-show as I make now. But that was WAY, WAY more work with (sometimes) 4+ hr drive times. Just setting up the light trusses with all the power cables was the stuff of nightmares. We set up now in less than 30 minutes in a pinch, lights and all.
As an aside, our guitarist is a machine--30+ gigs a month, most of them solo with his vocals and guitar. He sometimes makes a LOT in tips--$800 one night. More than the band does, usually, though we each got an extra $100 each at a recent gig from the tip jar.
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I'm normally in the back with drums on a typical stage. Years ago when we really started ramping up gigging in my band, we played a really wide and shallow stage, we were five across.
This one woman apparently really liked our bass player, who was out on the floor with his remote bass rig checking the mix, and suddenly all I see is boobies being aggressively thrust out loud and proud for his inspection. I'm like "so this is what its like up front!"
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I can see why they might do it. We've had friends of the band that supposedly knew how to do live sound (and this is before we got a semi-dedicated sound person) completely and royally screw up just about everything. Like massive cuts and boosts in EQ, wacky compression settings and crazy fx. Less is more, but some people look at a mix like they are a mad scientist and start waving their scalpel around. Our band is very consistent from show to show and there's no reason for drastic measures normally (we don't have feedback, or hardly any, because no wedges.)
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Ah really good point about ideally having the bass be separate--but unfortunately the Modx only has L and R. You'd have to go mono and pan separately.
Unfortunately a lot of engineers slap some pretty extreme (from my perspective!) compression/limiting on keys and anything else that pops up (or even before it pops up...). I've monitored via aux post-processing before and it sucks if they have over-compressed. I started using a Rolls box at a few gigs that lets me combine an aux with pre-FOH keys for that very reason.
If your band plays a variety of stuff from quiet ballads to heavy rockers as we do, it's nigh impossible to have perfect patch balancing that works in every venue...just do the best you can and hope the engineer is willing to do a bit of mixing vs just limiting you to oblivion.... -
To be fair, it's one store and I gather that Sam Ash (and probably GC) pull their stock from the various locations...and probably some of them are less than organized. Ie, their job is a bit tougher than Sweetwater's.
But yeah I immediately got a bit on edge when I saw no shipping label. And it makes me wonder just how long I'd have waited if I hadn't been a squeaky wheel. -
Good luck, hope you stick with it. I'm a bit ahead of you maybe (beginner moving into intermediate with certain skills, not with others), but if I'd stuck with guitar instead of doing it for a while and dropping it again, I'd be a monster by now!
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I would probably have gone with vb3m for IOS if had been out at the time. It's much cheaper, sounds good, and the phone option is a nice backup plan (or even the primary plan, if you map everything out). Very easy to velcro a phone somewhere on your stand!
For now think I'll stick with Logic's vintage organ for computer, I could always hook up the ipad running b3x as an external sound source if I cared to, presumably. -
On 5/4/2024 at 6:12 PM, AnotherScott said:
RIght. Any current/recent Hammond models listed in B3X are MIDI mappings to use those boards as controllers, that's all.
I've seen it said elsewhere that the B3X engine is the same as SK Pro (or similar)... personally, I suspect the IK software is entirely separate, and the Hammond name on it is a licensing agreement. But even *IF* there is shared code, it is not identical. If nothing else, the set of editing parameters is entirely different. So even if there were some common base, neither would be able to duplicate all the other is capable of, because the available set of editable parameters is different.
I used b3x for a while, and used an sk pro for a while.
They don't sound the same to me, at least with the settings I used. And the cabs/amp options are pretty different. For example, with B3x I could mix a leslie with a guitar amp/cab to taste. It sounded a lot louder/brighter on the top end right out of the gate too.
I also suspect they are entirely different, but in the end it's a hammond + leslie so of course there will be some similarities! Both can sound darn good to my ear, though I'm not really an organist by any stretch of the imagination.
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I'm with you.
I can't stand presets on digital mixers. I'd be 100% in favor of taking them completely off and applying what actually needs to be applied based on the instrumentation of the band in question and even the venue. That's why presets are bunk--one size doesn't fit all.
I've never liked noise gates live on anything but if I did they'd have to carefully dialed in--and there's no reason to use one with a modern keyboard. If some old analog thing was generating a lot of hiss, then maybe.
The closest thing to a "universal" thing I'd ever apply would be a high-pass EQ getting rid of the very bottom end, though with you playing some bass I wouldn't even do that.
So yeah--play your loudest to set gain, take off EQ and any dynamics, take off effects unless you want a bit of reverb--but if you do that, might want to make your patches more dry. I own a Modx and most of the stock patches tend to be quite wet (more than I like actually).
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Funny how at gigs even though I'm maybe 10-15 ft from the drum set, I desire them to be miked up (with an overhead) so I can hear the cymbals with my in-ears in
It's like, take everything out then add it back in, but lower!
I'd consider ambients, but I've already spent so much on various earbuds, including customs which I don't like....our guitarist has some Westone ambients that he is not using, I might see if I can try them out. -
Do you mean you set them to transparency, and it knocks down some of the volume even still? So you don't have any signal running through the airpods? (I generally use noise-cancelling mode when doing things like the dishes while I listen to my book, but holy hell does the wife get annoyed when she asks a question that I can't hear!)
As an aside, I just got mine run through the wash when I left them in a pocket. They were making high-pitched squeals at first, I figured "that's it", but as they dried out they went back to normal. if you get them wet, advice I read online was to let them dry out before trying to charge them, which makes sense.
I just had a band practice where I had my normal stereo in-ears, man it was great to actually hear everything
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On 5/4/2024 at 11:57 AM, GovernorSilver said:
I called 2 more times.
On the 2nd and final call, I was told that they actually only had 2 FP-90Xs in the warehouse - one was an open box, and the other was a return that they intend to sell as new. I said no thanks and asked to cancel the order.
Shame as 20% off brought the price down into the $1600 range but you win some, lose some.
Argh, well at least you are (like me) able to reset. I felt a bit relieved actually even though I missed out on a great deal.
I'd say that when you sell things online as new, then it comes out that you don't have the stock--which is the same thing that happened to me--it says a lot about how organized you are as a business. As in, not very. Contrast with Sweetwater and how they sold me my guitar--I got to pick the actual guitar, see the weight and so on. If I lived near SW I'd be in serious trouble financially....-
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Ironically, when I demoed The Legend years ago I took some of my favorite patches on it and removed the reverb. What a massive difference. It wasn't that the patches were "bad" without it, it's that they were completely different....in other words--and not a knock on them--Synapse employs some really nice-sounding fx heavily in their patch design.
Same for Dune 3 (same company). Sounded amazing, but very wet patches. With that synth I am a bit leery of one-finger and layered patches that do everything and Dune 3 had a lot of those (though surely it could be used in a simpler fashion as well.)
I find that (usually) u-he patches tend to be drier, though that depends on both the plugin and which developer made them.I did a bit of an experiment with the "lowly" Logic Retro Synth by trying to emulate a favorite u-he Repro 5 patch. I had to add plugins to match the ones in Repro before I could get close (maximizer/exciter, chorus, delay, reverb). The end result sure didn't sound that much like the original Retro Synth patch!
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I've been known to have the larger of two keyboards on top. Heretical! Looks kinda cool in my opinion.
The Modx7 has one pretty cool advantage if you use an ipad at all--a nice empty spot on the right side. I velcroed my ipad down, velcro over gaffer's tape which I found worked great for not leaving much of a residue (I just removed it yesterday as I'm prepping to potentially sell mine.)
Just a side note on splits--If you happen to transpose as I do (we tune down one half step), keep in mind that the Modx split points will move if you transpose using the buttons on the left (shift plus the octave buttons will do it by semitones).-
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Again, if you want a bunch of songs written with unusually put-together chords, listen to that Euphoria Morning album I mentioned
It's Chris Cornell's thing.
What makes it brilliant to me is the melodies over top (and some nice lyric writing as well... "using stars to light your candles" in this tune for example.)
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5 hours ago, ProfD said:
No worries. Provides more time to sell other gear. The new Fantom will cost nothing between gear sales and gig money.😎
That is EXACTLY how I'm looking at it
My rep emailed me back and said we can do "something", and to call him in response to my "can we make a deal on the EX" email.
I'm not expecting a huge break on (technically) a new model. Nothing close to the deal I had of course, though it would be the EX and the SW warranty as value added. I'm afraid to call him as I know it'll be more than I want to spend until I make those sales!
I did just sell my Lester K through Gear Exchange and so far so good on the experience. That was my "test the waters" listing before putting keyboards up there. Saves 7% if I get paid in SW gift card balance, so that's also a bit of an incentive to buy from them.-
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Blargh, no new Fantom for me yet. Sam Ash (they of the closing stores) refunded my order after they called and said they only had "not great condition" floor models on hand.
Might end up with the EX after all down the road.
Not worried at all about polyphony for my needs. Live only, and no sequencing (for now at least) and I don't tend to do lots of layering of patches.-
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My Sam Ash "saga" is over, or will be very soon. They ended up cancelling my order, and will refund me (that's when it definitely will be over).
Reason is, the store that supposedly had it in stock brand new didn't. The one they did have was missing two knobs and according to the guy who called me "wasn't in great shape."
Which is another reason these stores are dying--their stock gets beat to hell by the apes we call "the public". I've seen so many knobs missing on keyboards. New in the box, ok, but I'd never want a floor model unless it was a big discount.
I kinda feel relieved even though I'd have to pay more (by a couple hundred) for any other new Fantom out there currently. I just sold something on Sweetwater's gear exchange and opted for the gift card (to save 7%) so I'll likely be getting the Fantom EX down the road, ideally with at least a bit of a discount from my intrepid rep.
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22 hours ago, rockit31 said:
Lead guitarist has nasty habit of starting in on the next song as i furiously bring up settings for next song. Rat bastard! Lol. No respect for the piano player!
Arrrrggghhh this drives me nuts.
Generally only a problem when we go off script from our set list for that night, whether because our singer "reads the audience" and thinks we should, or a request. Plus we are breaking in a new drummer and a few times we've nixed songs on the list if he feels sketchy on it.
I've gotten good at preparing ahead otherwise, with one keyboard it can be a challenge. Patch remain helps a ton, hold that last chord while you scroll scroll scroll. Our set lists differ from gig to gig and I've found it's better to keep my patches where I know they are, vs re-doing them each time.
Regardless, what has happened is that suddenly a song like the Motels' Only the Lonely (which I start) is called....I'm not quite ready, so the guitarist just starts it which sounds....weird. I join in quickly but still...
iPad Air M2 now with 13" model $799 128gb, also new Pro
in The Keyboard Corner
Posted
My libraries wouldn't fit on a 1TB (or it'd be close), so I'd either need a much bigger internal drive or use externals.
Minimum I'd get on any mac moving forward is 512GB and preferably 1TB personally.
One hassle with all the external power cable/hubs/dongles/adapters I have on my older MBp is that they tend to slip out of the usb-c ports if you breath heavily on it. I haven't yet hooked up the new-to-me M1 MBP to see if they made these a bit more snug. It's one thing I dislike about usb-c. I REALLY like that they went back to mag-safe for power.