WillNeverPost
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Posts posted by WillNeverPost
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I don't have to because by the attitude and lack of manners revealed by your words, you do that to yourself.
You're not going to win any arguments with manipulative tactics either. And you just pulled one with the "it's all my fault and you're never to blame." And instead of addressing my assessment of Behringer's engineering skills, you resort to another manipulative one with the ad hominem tactic. If you truly are an engineer on my level, then you would had provided conclusive evidence that Behringer has indeed turned around. So far, all I have seen are ad hominem tactics so I'm not the one with issues with manners.
Ad hominem is not applicable. I didn't really attack you or display bad manners, unless you think saying you were shaming yourself after touting your credentials to back up a claim is an attack and bad manners (and that after some provocation). Someone said you seemed angry and swore at you for questioning their integrity. I didn't see you reply to him. I guess I'm an easier target.
I would say that since YOU made the original assertion in the thread (Behringer products are still sh*t) that the burden of presenting real evidence is on you. But in the long run I doubt you would change your mind even if the data didn't back you up, whoever presented it.
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So the next time anyone wants to lecture me about lack of factual basis in an attempt to silence dissenters, you better be able to fit a man's shoes because I do not submit to shaming tactics.
I have over 30 years engineering experience in commercial electronics as well. But hey, if you want to compare shoe sizes, I guess you win. You certainly know how to swing it. But just to be clear, I didn't try to shame you. I don't have to because by the attitude and lack of manners revealed by your words, you do that to yourself.
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I won't give any of my money to a chronic plagiarist who sells landfill fodder. I don't buy into the argument that Behringer has turned around because I have been lied to too many times.
That's your right as a consumer. But if you won't buy any Behringer products that are more recent or believe people who have then you don't have any factual basis for believing Behringer's reliability is as shoddy today as it once was. I think everyone knows your position on the matter - no need to belabor it.
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I'm sure I heard some prog rock before my high-school days but it wasn't until midway through high-school in the mid 70's that I got a really good taste of it. Not all the bands I was listening to back then necessarily qualify as "prog" (e.g., do Queen or Supertramp qualify?) but prog rock started for me with Rush, Yes, Pink Floyd, ELP, Kansas, early FM (the Canadian band not the British one) and Saga, the latter still my favorite of all of those. I segued from that, somehow, into post-punk, new-wave, synth-pop and other 80's derivatives but never lost my appreciation for prog rock.
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sh*t, at this point, I'd give a major organ just to be a mediocre keyboard player!
But not a Hammond. You should never give one of those away.
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this thread is what happens when there's no gear to talk about.
And here I am, thinking it's the music we make with that gear that really matters. Silly me.
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Other examples of can't-quite-put-my-finger-on-why mediocrity are the recent bunch of endorser videos on the Nord website. I intended to post this in a separate thread with the title "Mediocre musicians play Nord".
Keyboardist playing a pad (and lead that is not discernible in the sequenced mix) but making a heavily concentrating face, while the camera is carefully positioned so that the drummer is not visible behind the singer:
[video:youtube]
And another band that doesn't know how to look (clothes, faces etc.), with the bassist hiding behind the horns:
[video:youtube]
I like both of these more than toto.
While I wouldn't go that far, I certainly don't get the disdain. If I close my eyes both performances sound essentially decent. They're not examples of mastery, but I wouldn't choose them as examples of mediocrity, either. Sure, you can diss their sense of fashion or the faces the keyboard player in the first video makes. But personally I don't give a rat's ass about any of that.
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Joseph Campbell said 'follow you bliss'.. that is the bottom line. Play, practice, share your music with joy.
Wise words.
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How about this definition:
Talent allows a performer to more easily respond without struggling in new and unexpected situations.
I'm thinking of Bach or Mozart improvising brilliantly on tunes called on the spot. Heck, JSB was said to be able to instantly improvise a 4 part fugue on a tune.
I could practice for a century and not be able to do that.
Sure, the agility of your brain has a lot to do with it. But I would argue that this too is a function of your ability to learn. Mozart and Bach could improvise on the spot because, I believe, they had learned and deeply understood the essential characteristics of the various kinds of music of their day (fugue, minuet, allegro, etc.). I'm sure players here who are good at improvising (I'm certainly not one of them) will say that it took a lot of learning and "Deliberate Practice" before they could do it with ease. And while they may be able to improvise in one genre (say, jazz) that doesn't necessarily mean they will be able to just as easily improvise in another, unrelated genre (say, country) - not without a whole other round of learning.
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The word talent makes be mad. As, most of the people (not you guys) I hear that word from, think they don't have it. The common quote is " I wish I had your kind of talent". Then wish your ass home and get to practicing. I've spent at least a year of hours practicing guitar and keyboards. That is 8760 hours. Likely more. In my 48 years. And, by all accounts I am a competent musician.
I see that word used as negative reinforcement all too often. Sure some people pick stuff up faster than others. But, I've never seen a person that worked at getting better. Not get better. I don't mean playing Judas Priest songs in your basement every saturday and Sunday. Real, concerted practice. I just don't believe in talent
As I said above, and in this I am fundamentally agreeing with you, I think what we call "talent" is a function of how fast you can learn something. If you learn something very fast people will say you are "naturally" talented. However, if you take longer to learn something and compensate by putting in the hours necessary to perfect it, people will also call you talented. The only difference is how long it took to get there, which no one but you (and your family) will know.
I'm not saying that all it takes to turn into Mozart or Chick Corea or Herbie Hancock or Jan Hammer is practice. But you'll never know how close you can get without trying.
There is yet another factor: The age at which you start affects how fast you can learn something. Young minds are more receptive to learning that older minds and hence learn things faster. How many here have tried to learn another language late in life. Tough, right? How easily do young children learn languages? They absorb them like sponges. If you do it right they can learn five or more languages all at the same time. Young brains are wired to learn, especially languages. And music is a kind of language.
Mozart is a great example. He grew up in a musical family, surrounded by music from birth. He had his first lesson (from his father) at four but you can bet he'd been drinking in everything he saw and heard prior to that. But his sister was exposed to the same environment yet didn't rise to the same level as Mozart did. Why not? I think one difference was the great speed at which young Mozart could learn. I suspect he would have become a genius at anything - it just happened by accident of birth to be music.
Look at Tiger Woods. A great golfer and on the rise before his "incident" caused him to lose his mojo. How did he get so good? For one thing, his father put a golf club in his hand from the moment he was old enough to grasp it. He soaked the game up. Then he practiced, practiced, practiced. He had determination and focus, with one major goal in life: to beat the record of Jack Nicklaus. If you have determination, a goal, an ability to learn, however slowly, and the time necessary to learn commensurate with that ability, you can potentially master anything. (Potentially if only because you may also need opportunity and money. Life isn't necessarily fair.)
BTW, this is a great topic for discussion. Thanks to the OP for starting the thread.
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What makes mediocrity?
1. lack of talent
2. lack of time spent practicing
3. lack of desire
4. cluelessness
How to escape? There's no cure for #1, but the others can be overcome by dedication.
The cure for #1 is also dedication, IMO. That is to say, unless you are a singer where voice quality has a lot to do with the final result (but see * below), musicians who dedicate themselves to their instruments - which really means a sh**load of practicing - sound indistinguishable from those who are supposed to have "talent". In my experience "talent" is just a function of learning speed.
* Even great singers have to practice and learn to do it right to become great singers. For example, by his own admission Frank Sinatra didn't start out with a great voice.
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The "Raining Stars" in the California desert above is one of my favorites Ken!
+10
Ken's photos are beyond excellent.
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Very nice shots, Mike. Are these again with the Super Takumar 55mm f/1.8? I'm also a fan of these lenses. I have several SMC Takumar lenses (same as Super except multi-coated) that I bought years ago for my Pentax K1000 (still own that but don't use it anymore) and they are superb. I also have some nice Zuiko lenses for my Olympus OM-1 and a few decent Nikkor lenses (yeah, for yet another film camera). My interest was and is astrophotography (hence why the 35mm cameras I just listed are manual models) and so I wanted lenses that could image point sources (stars) with minimum aberrations. Turns out that property makes them very good lenses for general photography too (provided they have decent coatings for good contrast).
PS. Although a little bit off-topic here are a few of the astrophotos I used to take back in the day: http://www.cloudynights.com/gallery/member/96203-alen-k/
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...and poly aftertouch on a $100 controller.
I assume you're talking about the CME Xkey. While I've never played one and I'm sure it's a nice product, 25 keys with limited key travel and somewhat difficult control of the AT (according to reviews) is not exactly what a lot of players want. (I understand a 37 key version is coming.). Something like this is closer. Notice how they say they are working on a lower cost version at a target price of $1200. (Of course, if it didn't fold I'm sure it would be a lot less expensive to make.)
Speaking of AT, this looks intriguing: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/instrumentslab/touchkeys-multi-touch-musical-keyboard/posts/566241
So does this although like the current Xkey it is 25 keys: http://createdigitalmusic.com/2013/07/expressive-ndvr-keyboard-new-hardware-polyphonic-aftertouch-done-right/
Unlike the Xkey AFAIK it's still vaporware. And I have no idea how much it will actually cost if it ever does see the light of day. Sure, they say $235 but I don't trust prices quoted from a startup for products that don't yet exist.
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With a title like "Bach to the Future: Piano and Synthesizer" I was expecting to hear piano and synthesizer _together_. From what I can tell by listening to the preview snippets some tracks are piano and some tracks are synthesizer; never both together on the same track. A pity - that could have been interesting.
I don't know what it is but with the exception of one artist I am always disappointed by synthesized Bach. That artist is, of course, Wendy Carlos. She had the training and the talent to use the right sounds and to phrase them expressively that other interpretations seem to lack, including IMO this one. With the exception of track 14 (English Suite in A Minor) the synth tracks don't do it for me. But perhaps I need to hear the complete tracks to judge them fairly.
Too bad Wendy's body of work is more-or-less out of print. According to her web site, "Due to major changes in the music business, we unexpectedly lost our ESD distribution, leaving us stranded with few good options." That happened several years ago now.
Behringer OB-Xa
in The Keyboard Corner
Posted
By my reading nothing that Mary Curtis said above and what Uli Behringer has said (here) contradict each other. I'm sure there's no question of the legality of what Uli is doing and it IS fully in the spirit of patent law, as Mighty Ferguson says.
Now, whether you have an ethical objection to it is a personal choice. Similarly, whether you think that Behringer can make a reliable product or not (notice that I didn't actually state a position on that in this thread). You are free to vote your conscience and your opinion on those issues with your pocket book.