nadroj
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Posts posted by nadroj
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"Lay down some of that deep, neo-natal groove. By the end of the tune I want to be crying and shitting myself."
I can give you crying or shitting yourself, but not both.
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It looks like things are back to normal where I am, though England (where the laws are more lax than Scotland, where I am) are looking like they may be heading for some sort of lockdown trouble again, but these are just rumours.
When you say "everyone seems to be playing along," do you mean that they're honoring the vaccine honor system?
Yes. There are a couple of complaints I'm seeing on social media, but on the whole everyone is happy to do whatever if it means getting to go out again. As I said in my last post, the vast majority of adults (rougly 80% now, maybe) have had their two shots, so for most people the biggest difficulty with the vaccine passport system is downloading and using the app.
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Update on the UK side: with "vaccine passports" now in effect (where you must prove via a government app/website that you've been double-vaxxed to get into certain events), we had a sold out gig last week where the venue purposefully reduced the max capacity from 650 down to 500, so that said passports wouldn't be necessary (AFAIK, anything beyond 500 requires the passports). I'm not going to comment much more on this, because I know there are stark differences between the UK and the US when it comes to stuff like this, but everyone seems to be playing along. To be honest though, given how utterly packed out the place was with 500 people in it I've no idea how the heck they'd fit another 150 people in that hall, or what difference another 150 bodies would have made.
There's a noticable difference in how gigs currently feel compared to 2 years ago. We've had a few sold out gigs over the past couple months in mid sized venues (~500-600 people) and they've honestly been some of the best gigs we've ever played. Everyone is up for it. The crowd (and band) are wild, non-stop, start to finish. We've had to introduce a couple of slower songs into our set just to give ourselves (and them) some breathing space. I think it's less to do with us and more to do with the fact that people are desperate to party after 18 months of being cooped up. People seem to be ravenous for a good time.
It looks like things are back to normal where I am, though England (where the laws are more lax than Scotland, where I am) are looking like they may be heading for some sort of lockdown trouble again, but these are just rumours.
All in all, I am fully on board with and enjoying gigging again.
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Minilogue XD is on my wishlist. Only had a shot in store, but it's hella fun, and can sound huge. The effects and user-made oscillators can really make it stand out. Low profile too.
The module version is also one of the few synths available to include the pitch bend/mod sticks without the keyboard, which may be something handy to bear in mind when thinking about possible set ups.
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CS80 and Bosendorfer libraries are great. The "Wooden Box" preset from the latter is my current go to for home playing.
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UPDATE: I've potentially got a buyer for the Roland, which is good, but more out of the blue and more excitingly...
...Someone local has asked if I'd be willing to trade the MODX7 for...
...A Dave Smith Prophet Rev 2. I almost shat myself when I saw the message.
Of course that would mean I wouldn't have enough for the Stage 3/SK PRO if I were to sell them all, but the chances of them being sold together in a window where I have no gigs is looking less likely every week. An Electro 6 (if I were to pick one up) and a Rev 2 with Mainstage for backup would leave me a very happy camper for a long time, especially since I could do 95% of my gigs with the Electro alone.
Aah. Part of me really wants the Prophet. It's not as full fledged as the MODX, and probably not as practical for some gigs, but I'd play it a hell of a lot more than I currently do the MODX (which is basically sitting on top of our family Yamaha Clavinova acting as a glorified £1100 MIDI/Audio interface) I'd need to go and have a look at it to make sure all is kosher and not too good to be true, but if the guy is serious I might be very tempted to make the trade.
Thoughts?
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Do you use ear protection?
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The market they were in was tight enough...their main product was niche, and expensive. How on earth did they imagine that the "trajectory" they were on would go anywhere profitable?
I feel sorry for the workers, based on reviews at Glassdoor, the CEO and executive team were nightmares to work with. Two reviews that stand out:
Terrible management structure, HR are overzealous and ineffective at the same time. The CEO has some severe personality quirks that make working at the company and working on the products very mentally draining. My years in the industry prior to ROLI were fun and I learnt a lot. My years at ROLI were increasingly depressing with no career development, no budgets to do anything meaningful in my segment, and no acknowledgment or reward for how hard I worked considering all of the restraints placed on us. Half of my team found other jobs because they were very unhappy.
Endless and pointless discussions on the culture and values of the company, which always came before any discussion about product development and how to fund future projects. None of the executive team understand music technology or the customer base.
Marketing would often hog budgets, and then wouldn't budge on those budgets, meaning product development wasn't funded the way it should have been. This is partly because they feel they are a "design led company".
My mental health is completely different since I left.
Advice to Management
When staff come to you with problems don't tell them to "write your own narrative" - that isn't a solution. That's responsibility dodging.
Don't have weekly standups where you talk about whatever sociology theory of the month HR is interested in. You should be talking about music technology and what customers are telling you and what people actually WANT from their products.
When you've got people with 6, 8, 10+ years experience in the music technology sector, don't treat them like juniors.
The CEO is a distrusting leader who lacks skills either in leadership or management. His neuroticism bleeds into every level of the business, leaving the executive team entirely ineffectual, and the company without direction.
ROLI is an environment of uncoordinated efforts, constant chaos, and clashes where the 'non-hierarchical" organisational structure throws everyone into the fray with conflicting goals and nobody present with authority to take ownership.
Essential improvements go without investment for years, staff battle against improper tools without any support, issues that are destroying the company"s sales and brand are ignored because no-one is permitted to make a decision on anything above themselves â the CEO"s ego wouldn"t allow such power
The office is a converted railway arch with one glass sliding door, no windows, over half of the bulbs are dead, the ceiling paint peels onto the desks (and into your coffee), the floor has wide cracks in the concrete that catch your chair wheels, the chairs themselves are almost all broken, the coffee machine is permanently on the fritz, the wifi is frequently down, and there are ants everywhere.
Burn out is very common. The standard working hours are 1 hour longer than a normal working day (9 to 6), assuming you don"t work overtime, which you will.
ROLI's culture is an Orwellian nightmare. The company attempts to be intensely ethical, and expects you to agree at every step. ROLI"s culture and 'our values" (relating to business and your personal opinion) are mandated from above and dispersed in Keynote presentations. Open discussion is always invited, but never entertained in earnest.
The culture is one of double-speak. Many terms are replaced with no functional purpose, and you will be corrected until you comply. We don"t have 'customers', we have 'creators'. We don"t have 'employees', we have 'team members'. Your boss is called your 'PAL'. Your quarterly performance review is a 'Team Member Reflection'. We have a 'flat hierarchy', but we still have an org chart.
The CEO so dislikes hearing negative sentiments that they are discouraged at all levels, even in the form of constructive criticism or demonstrable facts. Important metrics have been removed from reports for a long time because nobody wants to explain them.
Advice to Management
It's too late now since people are being laid off, but you had so many talented voices telling you that these decisions were poor all along, and you ignored all of them. Listen to the talent you hire.
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Sounds like the main band I play in. Ska is basically white guy music influenced by reggae. In particular, check out the Specials, they are/were a ska band fronted by both English and Jamaican musicians. They blended English pop, Ska and Reggae like no one else.
Some suggestions more on the reggae side (with some that aren't "pure" reggae):
A Message to You Rudy (The Specials)
Food for Thought (UB40)
No No No (Dawn Penn)
Rat in Mi Kitchen (UB40)
Pressure Drop (The Specials)
Rude Boys Out of Jail (The Specials)
Monkey Man (The Specials) - the breakdown here is a good reference
You're Wondering Now (The Specials)
Nite Klub (The Specials) - not particularly reggae, but my favourite song to play!
Racist Friend (The Specials)
In terms of what to actually play:
Off beat piano stabs (single, double stabs, sliding from one chord to the next - experiment). The more detuned and beat up the piano sounds the better.
Hammond. Some drawbar settings to try: all of the fundamentals out, 1st and 9th out (mix in the 3rd), just the 3rd. Mixture of stabs, rhythmic comping, pads and lead lines. Expreriment.
Vox is great for this too. Picturing a single manual Vox, all 4 drawbars out, vibrato on. Try with and without amp and rotary sims to taste. Same playing style as above.
Lots of Marley's stuff had clav buried way down in the mix. Usually in the lower-mid registers, comping and playing around the bass line. Hard to do without making it sound messy or getting in the way of the bassist, but can be very effective if done right.
For proper Reggae, Bob Marley is the obvious one to listen to. His first album with the Wailers is a great reference for the sound you might be after. Good luck.
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Recently got to play a Wurly for the first time ever. I fell in love.
You are a fortunate man. Enjoy!
PS. If that local choral group ever feels like donating something to Scotland I can give you my address...
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Chiming in here, finally back gigging as of the start of this month. Observations from the UK:
- Weddings are now no different than how they were before. Apart from the staff wearing masks, there is no indication anywhere that we've just come through a global pandemic. Back in July I had friends who played weddings where the staff (and government) said people weren't allowed to dance, but they mostly danced anyways. There was one venue where the police drove past every night to check no one was dancing, but that was an extreme case.
As of August however, when restrictions (apart from masks) have been relaxed and around 80% of adults are fully vaccinated (a number which is quickly rising), nothing is different. In one band I subbed for we did a celidh (Scottish country dancing) set before the break, which requires people to dance in groups and change partners often, and the manager came up at the end and said that he shouldn't have allowed it. He requested that we don't get everyone in a circle for the final song at the end of the night, but surprise surprise, everyone did it anyways.
Dancing, mingling, standing at the bar, all back to normal. My wife helps with tracking the virus for the NHS and weddings are currently COVID hotspots - many outbreaks she's dealing with are linked to weddings, and having been at a few, I'm not surprised. Cases are on the rise again, but symptoms, hospitalisations and deaths are way down, likely thanks to sheer number of people here who are now double vaccinated. There are rumblings that we may be heading for another lockdown in October, but nothing has been confirmed yet.
-Ticketed gigs are almost back to normal. We've several sold out shows that, at the time of writing, are going ahead in the next two months. Did one at the weekend where the club capacity was reduced from 350 to 250, but we've a sold out 500 cap ticketed gig going ahead next month, so I can't make much sense of it. I think it just depends on venue size, and what the manager decides on. At every venue the only noticable differences were the staff who wore masks 100% of the time, and some of the guests/crowd who wore them in certain areas, or when asked.
Doing a gig at a local club this week that I've played in a tonne of times before. This is the kind of place where the staff come and dance on the tables with the punters, so it will be interesting to see if anything's changed in that regard.
Also, I did a session at a studio last month, and the whole band had to take a lateral flow COVID test at the door before being let in, which I thought was interesting! Would have been a bit awkward if one of us tested positive and couldn't do the session...
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Get a ouiji board or a medium and try get an interview with Jimmy Smith.
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I freaking loved this one. Incidentally I've just finished Lukather's book too, and it was super interesting hearing the same stories from different sides. Steve seems like such a cool, laid back guy, and if that was his last live tour I'm glad I caught him play with Toto in 2018!
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Been catching up on all of these. I loved when he talked about being in TOP and not yet being a jazz guy, and how he had to work his ass off to keep up but kept the gig. Gives me hope
Also, apologies if this has been mentioned before, but I find it very hard to listen to some episodes due to the balance of voices. Often you guys interviewing are super quiet, and the guys being interviewed are loud. I'm often turning up to hear the questions and then turning down after getting blasted by the reply. I'm not caught up on recent episodes yet, so am unaware if someone else has mentioned it (and sorry if it has!), but might be worth looking at in post?
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The kind of sound in the demo is modernist sh*t I wouldn't buy a synthesizer for. Calling that funk is an insult to real players with skills and a proper sound.
T
Looking forward to hearing your own funk demos, Theo.
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Dan Goldman is a member of this forum. Hopefully, eventually, he will stop by and chime in directly.Hey folks. Hope you"re all well. Great to be here as always and glad to see everyone is super excited about the new piano!!
To answer a couple of points...
Cheers
D
Oooo... this reminds me of when the giant SS3 thread started its momentum.
This could very well end up being one of those 20+ page threads, right?
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Got 3 listings up on Reverb right now. Any advice for getting them sold? Only ever sold things privately before.
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Yamaha has a great simple stage board concept with the YC88 (that's what I have) but apparently are content turning a deaf ear to it's clientel's suggestions & feel there's no need to offer updates like the other guys , hell even Roland updated the organ on their Fantom & offer tons of sounds.
Great board & action for APs & EPs!!
Yamaha are very good at updating their keyboards. The CP and MODX/Montage lines have seen some significant updates over the years. They've already released a small update to the YC (1.2) and judging by their update history, are due to release another one in September/October.
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Well, it's a new day. Yesterday I was all about the E6 and Minilogue. Today I'm all about the SK-PRO.
I just need to suck it up, find a shop that has all or most of these keyboards in stock, and spend a day trying them out. I'll have to ignore the specs and take away the one that speaks to me the most, whatever it is. Unfortunately that means planning a day trip to several stores waaaaaay down in the Mid-South of England.
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It's threads like these that allow Nord to maintain the Stage's cost premium over other boards...
Cheers, Mike.
I might not buy a Stage just to spite them.
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The Electro 6's crappy MIDI implementation has put a dent in option 5. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I used the Minilogue for a synth bass part to be controlled by the Electro, along with a polybrass sample and a piano sound up top both coming from the Electro, because the E6 only transmits on one global channel the synth bass would end up playing over every other sound too? If I'm correct, there's no way of telling the Electro not to play the external synth past a certain range? That's crippling if so.
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Thanks for the responses. Nord Stage 3 makes the most sense given my needs, but there's a part of me that really wants to go for something else lol.
PC4-7 with a Vent for the leslie sim. Great keybed for playability. All bases covered. Affordable.
Dave, your input here is valuable because I once saw a post from you when you said a PC3 with a vent was your single board solution for 10+ years, and it judging by your sig you're quite the hammond guy. How satisfied were you with KB3 + Vent?
Yeah, that gets into very subjective territory. I just played piano on the Fantom 6/7 action this week for the first time, and I found I could easily control dynamics, more so than on the TP/8O on the NS3, which is by no means terrible. From that perspective, I also prefer the actions of the PC4-7, the YC61, and the Vox Continental to that of the NS3, and I even prefer the TP/8O as it is found on the SK Pro. OTOH, I prefer the NS3 action to the Numa Compact series, the Korg PA1000, the lower end Korgs (like King Korg and Kross), the lower end Rolands (like VR-09 and DS61), the MODX6/7, or the TP/8O as found on the Dexibell (and among that list, there is substantial variation as well, I by no means mean to group them all into a category of being of similar quality).Action is very subjective, which is why I don't want to get into it much. I should elaborate that when I say "feels solid" I'm mostly talking about the instrument itself. I don't want to play something that feels like it's going to slide off of the stand if I do a palm swipe, or like I'm going to break it if I'm really getting into it, or that might be destroyed by a single bump. My Electro has survived vans and cars and bumps and jostles and scratches and has taken a beating from me at many, many gigs, and it still works like new. I'm a sucker for marketing, and when Yamaha wrote on the product page about the YC61, that it was designed to be "crammed into vans, cabins, scratched, knocked and bumped with you every night gig after gig" it got me sucked in. They may be the worst for over the top marketing jargon, but Yamaha know their target audience. That's the kind of keyboard I'm after, which kind of puts me off the PC4. I wouldn't say the MODX wasn't well built, but it didn't feel as solid as I'd have liked for regular gigging. I'm afraid the PC4 may have that same problem.
That guy in the other thread was right, maybe we do fret about this stuff too much lol. On the other hand, if I'm gonna drop around £2000 on an instrument I don't care how picky I seem, I want to know I've explored all of my options
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Here's one I don't recommend: K&M Pneaumatic Stool. Looks great on paper, but it used to hurt my lower back and butt when I went through my sitting phase. I bruised my tail bone back in January, and even just 30 minutes on this makes the pain come back. My daughter's pink traditional piano stool is much better suited.
EDIT: It seems I've linked the same one as Ledbetter said he liked. Just goes to show that it's different strokes for different folks.
What Do You Say To This?
in The Keyboard Corner
Posted
I'm probably too British (or Scottish) to understand the offence behind this, but a lot of these replies seem OTT to me.
I can imagine a couple of people in bands I've played with recently who might say something like this, and my reply would simply be "Yeah, well this keyboard is worth £1600, so f**k you man. Why don't you leave your guitar out?" Then he'd say "oh" and that would be it. No hard feelings.
I get that it's a shitty attitude, but I don't think it's worth leaving the band over. IMO, you're overthinking this.
Perhaps we're just different personality types, though. Personally, I try to leave my keyboards setup on stage at every gig we play. If I can't, it's a PITA, but I usually leave it so that it only takes 2-5 minutes to set up a (similar to you) single Nord Electro. Keyboard is thrown in the bag, cables and stand are left out somewhere tied up ready to go as soon as the other band start leaving the stage.