Garubi

We send the digital files (music and artworks) to a pressing factory for printing both CDs and Vinyls

We still print CDs with our music. Not many, a few hundreds. We offer them as rewards for our crowdfunding campaign, alongside vinyls and digital downloads (and others merch). We have them with us to sell at merch tables (but we hardly sell them anymore). We hand them to promoters, journalist, etc We (still) print them because: - it's still the easiest / most common way to "sell" your music giving people a tangible good in return. - there is no equally effective way to communicate the visual aspect (apart from vinyl): cover, booklet, etc. On the other hand I'm pretty sure that the majority of people who buy our CDs (or vinyls), when at home listen to our music on others media: streaming etc... In the next album, for which we are doing the crowdfunding now, we will include a QR code on CDs and vinyls for the digital download of the songs... so at least they don't have the hassle of ripping it 😜 It must be specified, however, that: we are an independent band, all in our fifties, we have been making original music, singer-songwriter style for 30 years, we have a limited but consolidated following... in short, real boomers! 😂 I'm sure the situation changes in the case of younger artists or bands, or with a different audience, or another repertoire.

I often play a duo with me at electric piano and accordion and a singer/guitarist. We play mostly original song in singer-songwriter style. It's really liberating having just to follow the mood of the moment, in connection with the small, intimate audience. I'll go as real-time as possible... maybe adding a loopstation for some "boom" "chick" "tac" rhythm. Very acoustic, very live, very connected to the audience

Well... what a drummer will do is always a mystery... 🤪 Jokes aside ... Thanks all for all your suggestion! The drummer will play with both brushes and sticks. Looks like that I'll keep bringing the little D205B 😁

I'm looking at a CK61 for it's onboard speakers (together with all the others notable features, obviously), and since I haven't a chance to try it I'm asking to those who own it. The context: I'm involved in a semiacoutic act, singer-songwriter style: the singer with it's acoustic guitar, me with primarily my accordion and a Roland FA 07 on a bunch of songs, a drummer/percussionist with a small set. While when we perform we have our PA, I'm intrigued by the idea of realying on the embedded speakers for the rehearsal. We often meet for rehearsal at our homes, without amplification of sort, but for the FA 07 I bring my Behringer B205D as a small speaker. If the Yamaha speakers are loud enough, I could swap the FA 07 for the Yamaha: the sounds will be at least the same quality (I'm using the usual ones: piano, el. piano, hammond and some pad), I'll loose an octave, but for my use is not a big problem, the Yamaha is lighter, and I can leave the B205D small speaker at home. Do you think that the Yamaha speakers will be adequate for the rehearsal or are too weak?

The Gemini acts as USB host, but only for MIDI, not for the audio part

Shane MacGowan, irascible frontman of The Pogues, has died at age 65 I don't know in the others parts of the world but here in Europe, during '90s, the lesson learned from the Pogues, their mix of punk and folk, led to the rediscovery of folk music by younger people and made it significant again. For me it was the key to picking up the accordion, conquering the front of the stage and above all understanding the profound meaning of popular music. Not a small thing for a kid (like me) who grew up with synthesizers first and MTV then...

Do you have MIDI over Bluetooth? There's no latency issues?

You could buy a D9U or a D9X (kit or preassembled) from G.M. LAB, a side-project of Crumar

Never "really" used Nord VAs, but the VA in Roland FA anf Fantoms are really good and impressive IMHO. I found them very easy to program/tweak too. Stefano

Could you expand a little on this? Is that screen just a monitor? a touchscreen? It looks very thin. How does tha NUC fit on the pedalboard? (pictures maybe?) Do you use an audìo interface?

We mostly use a projector to display the band's logo on the back. We sometimes alternate the logo with others pictures: the albums covers, evocative pictures from our song's lyrics, etc. Doing this is very easy, it's lightweight, is usally well visible and as an added bonus it provides some colored lights on the stage. This is for the "standard", small/middle stage gig. The few times in the years that we have a "big" show in theatres or very big stages we often add videos. We don't do synced videos: we just use them as a "moving picture". They are evocative videos inspired to ours songs lyrics that starts at the song start and are more or less the lenght of the song... You can see the videos running here: Or here, just the album cover of the playing song.

Well done Samuel! and thanks for sharing the whole story with us! Stefano

Thank you, much appreciated!

What host are you running on?

I can only add my vote for the IK Multimedia UNO Pro. Great sounds and EFX. Great Keyboard action. Really sturdy and compact. Very versatile. Easy to use

I really quote this. A parallel example could be the hammond and leslie simulation. Don't know in the US, but here in Europe I think that only a little minority of keyboard players had ever put their hands on a real Hammond with a real Leslie. So the vast majority of us, when we try to have THAT Leslie sound, is thinking to what we heard on records, or demos, to to the "pure" sound on an organ through a leslie in a room. And shis is the yardstick used to judge the simulation.

Great setup, and really elegant! do you use the XR18 just for your submixing or for the whole show? What do you send with the 7 out to the FOH?

Thank you all for your invaluable information!

Thank you!!

First of all a little bit of context information: I'm on the way to "pack" the ubiquitous Mellotron samples made by Leisureland in a Decent Sampler preset. (Decent Sampler is a lightweight VST samples player with a nice and easy scripting language that allows to add controls, knobs and switches to the user interface to improve expressiveness of the instrument). I never had a chance to put my hands on real Mellotron so I'm asking you some "first-hand" information about its controls, so when I'll put them on the VST user interface they will hopefully make some sense 😄 - what is the pitch knob control range? - How do you typically use it? As a "set and forget" tuning control or as a real-time control like the pitch bender we use on the modern keyboards? - I read on the Mellotron's wikipedia page that "Pressing a key harder allows the head to come into contact under greater pressure, to the extent that the Mellotron responds to aftertouch.". Is it real? Do you use this technique? what is the perceived audio results? a pitch down? a different harmonic amount? Can you link to an audible example? Sorry for this really naive questions, and thank you in advance for your help 😊

Did you get the editing software? It's very well done, and makes programming the thing about 300% easier. If you check the GearLab section, I did a little review and video there. https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/182449-uno-synth-pro-impressions-and-sounds/ Hi Carlo, It was your review that convinced me to purchase the UNO 😉 (well, your review and the Matt Jonson's video) Thank you very much! I downloaded the editor but still never used... I'll try it soon Stefano

I couldn't have said it better.

I have it since 2.5 version. For me is the right balance between price and quality+quantity of sounds. I prefer to use more specialised plugin for e. pianos, Hammond, etc. but Sample Tank always provides a good solution. I recently used the standalone version for a masterkeyboard+computer gig and it's pretty intuitive for live use, designed a lot like a "classical" workstation

I'm the co-owner of a small company that runs two business centers / coworking spaces and provides (web) marketing services to the vertical segments of coworking. It's my main source of income, but I have to say that in the last years it takes no more than 2/3 of my working time. The rest is playing and writing music and theatre.