Tom Williams

They're not ugly -- they just need a haircut. (ducking)

FWIW, my Nektar Impact GXP 88 is semi-weighted and has the wheels on the left, not above. It also sports channel AT. I give it a 4.5/5 rating, as there are a couple of MIDI button things I wish it did differently, but for gigging, it's da bomb. Oh, and as of this writing it's quite inexpensive as well.

Ordered this evening.

Thanks Dave; yeah, Royer looks to be above my hobbyist budget. That said, your advice has never been anything but stellar. Cheers!

Having recently bought my first acoustic piano (5' 2" YC), I've had several relatives and friends ask me to record a bit with it. Budget ain't huge. A few years ago folks here directed me to the Roswell Mini-K47, which I love. I plan to use it for realtime vocal while I record the piano in stereo. A buddy who records for a living recommends a pair of Aston Origins, not because there's anything wrong with the Mini-K, but because "If everything emphasizes the same response hump, that will get annoying." Makes sense to me. Then, just to confuse me, he recommended a couple of pencil mics. The Interwebs are full of advice from pencils to lolli's to omnis to figure-8s. (probably eliminating the latter, as my music room is most likely too small for a Blumlein approach to be meaningful) Do any of my fellow amateurs / cheapskates (or even pro cheapskates) have any passionate opinions or better yet anecdotes relating to this?

I can't help it. I've known since the 1980s that Moog rhymes with vogue, but every time I read the name, in my head it rhymes with fugue.

To me the beauty of current digital keyboards is their plethora of expression options. I have a PC4-7, on which I use controllers differently in two different contexts. Church I have a multi setup with switches and faders for 888 clonewheel, piano, synth brass, and strings in positions 1-4, bringing 'em in as needed for each song. The last 5 faders are dedicated upper clonewheel drawbars. Most pedal usage in this context is damper pedal and Leslie speed toggle pedal. I usually bring, but rarely use, volume CC pedal. Band Two keyboard stack, comprising the aforementioned PC4-7 and an 88 key MIDI controller, with channel aftertouch on both. Out of habit, i'll call the external controller the "lower manual." Lots of fader-as-drawbar use on upper. Pitch bend wheel (2 semitones) on both Mod wheel usually for bringing distortion on organs or guitars Separate expression pedal for each keyboard, both of which I use to balance between them for accompaniment / lead playing a bunch of switch pedals. From right to left -> Lower manual sustain lower manual sostenuto (rarely used) PC4 sustain PC4 Sostenuto (occasional use) PC4 soft pedal (never use) PC4 aux switch and leslie speed -- use it all the time Finally, a CC on the left that looks like a switch pedal. sold as a "half damper", but I use it for an extra variable controller for things like asymmetric steel guitar bends. Ribbon controller. I used it all the time on the PC3, but due to programming quirks on the PC4 I've been unable to make it work well. It was calibrated to allow things like trills and hammer-ons, as well as intervallic pitch bends and jumps. Currently use it almost none. 😞

Any idea how non-urban people can tell crap gaffer's tape from the real deal? (I'm still nursing a roll given me years ago by a professional stagehand buddy.)

Yeah, in a couple of ways: In the driver, I trimmed the buffer size down to 128 bits like I had done with the XR18. At 48 Khz sample rate this reduces the input latency to about 3 ms, if I recall right. Another couple of ms output latency, so definitely less than 3 meters total "added distance" to the piano sound. Also, the hardware itself has a slightly weird "mix" knob (shown below) that lets you choose any mix you want of "PC -> ASIO -> interface" and/or "direct input-to-monitor output without any PC intervention" -- or a variable mix of the two, which would make sense if you are monitoring other tracks but want the keys or other input signal directly. There's probably some more subtlety in the box; I've only had it for a day....

Now that my YC baby grand has pushed my band and XR-18 out of the music room and into the garage, I needed a new USB interface. Presumably the same good-enough-for-a-serious-amateur quality as the XR, albeit 4x4 channels instead of 18. That should be enough for one-man-band multitracks, even "live" solo piano and voice. After 6-ish years with an XR18, the funniest thing for me is that the 404's user interface includes these things called "knobs."

Just turned 65. If weight and fatigue were no issue, I would do a right angle of two two-keyboard stacks, but age and disease are forcing me to lighten up. Current rig: PC4-7 (less than 10 kg / 20 lb) Nektar GXP 88 controller (8.2 kg / 18 lb), USB into PC4 provides both MIDI and power Roland AX-Edge (< 5 kg / 11 lb) 7 switch pedals (one's actually a half-damper CC) 2 CC pedals Onstage KS7365-EJ two-tier stand (13 KG / 29 lb) A heavy PITA, but rock solid. I may change it out next year if I can find a table-style stand with a second tier that I don't hate. On-Stage SB96+ studio microphone stand Another PITA, but soooo much less frustrating than baby booms Manhassett M48 music stand No wedges or side fills -- IEM only (200 grams I would guess, including receiver) 6U rack (about 16 kg / 35 lb) IEM transmitter P16 IEM mixer Keytar receiver XR-12 if needed to consolidate keyboard signals for outside sound companies Optional djembe (stand weighs about 1 tonne / 1 ton) Optional congas (even heavier than the djembe and stand) On smaller gigs I just take either the PC4-7 or the AX-Edge. I haven't made a list with this much weight info since I last went backpacking 20+ years ago. OT: Are we a dying breed? Or is it just mostly old guys posting on this thread? I suspect the former.

Does VAST allow modulating loop position? Did I miss that feature? I'd love to be wrong about that! 🙂

...Which is why I bought a Mirage instead of a DX7.

In lieu of pictures, here's what I think of when I write about Transwaves. Start with sample source: a sawtooth at A440 with a wide filter sweep that lasts 288 ms or so. Sample sample this; for arithmetical simplicity we'll call the sample rate 44KHz. One wave cycle is therefore 100 samples. Set the loop start at sample 1, length 100. set the mod wheel (or other mod source) to increment loop start and end points by 100 for each CC increment. CC0: 1-100 CC1: 101-200 etc Now you can move between filter settings without consuming a filter. This can be used for other purposes too: Crossfade between a rohrflute and a stringy diapason. Do a phase shift. Go from 88-800-0000 to 80-880-8008 drawbars and anywhere in between. Start at the end of a Piano sample and modulate toward the beginning so you can start Roundabout correctly every time. Whatever. And it doesn't take up much memory (which was important back then), doesn't use an extra oscillator, doesn't use an extra filter, and can all be done with one modulation mapping on one multisample.

Regarding EPS features I would have liked to see from Kurzweil, I no longer have either of my EPS's, but if memory serves: Rompler/keymap functions that should be trivial (Perhaps the first one is already there): Sample begin point modulation, which allowed things like marcato / legato articulation of string and brass samples If I remember right, Kurzweils can only modulate by a few bytes, instead of anywhere in the entire sample Loop begin and end modulation, which lets you build your own transwaves (and do other harm if you want it) In-keyboard sampling, of course. After all, we clearly have audio inputs that can be routed somewhere. three or four models for generating crossfade loops from non-symmetric samples Non-sampling playability features: polyphonic aftertouch in the keybed a non-random polyphonic portamento that could be activated with the damper pedal. Someone like Waveboy -- an Ensoniq employee who they allowed to do extracurricular OS tweaks that benefitted the user community. Oh wait -- we do have Dave Weiser. Close enough. 🙂 Don't misunderstand -- I am now as big a Kurzweil fanboy as I ever was for Ensoniq. But the above items seem to be old enough technology that I would have expected the Kurzweils to include all of them, and more. (Easy for me to say, as all that stuff is a magical black box to me anyway.)