MathOfInsects
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Posts posted by MathOfInsects
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Can you just make a new personal account? It's dead easy, even for newbies...
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It definitely sounds like the VPN is at least problem-adjacent, but you also might try typing the code without copy-and-pasting. It’s possible there’s something else coming along for the ride when you do that.
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17 hours ago, miden said:
Quite a bit as I play the bass (on keys) and keys in the bands I am in
Fair enough, but I still find myself curious what percentage of that bass playing would require playing on the B string of that five string bass, and having those notes be in that exact octave. Even the bass players I know who use the five string, tend to only to use that lowest string for occasional effect. Are you playing a bunch of songs where the notes are concentrated between the B and E flat underneath that first E?
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5 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:
Possibly if you're playing LH bass, and you're covering music that was either played with a 5-string bass, or drop-tuned. Or your band occasionally (or routinelsy) drops songs a half or whole step to accommodate a singer. If you can't hit the low D or whatever on your bass line, you might have to play in E and resort to the dreaded transpose button. 😉
Sure, I understand the individual circumstances that might make those notes beneficial or necessary. I use them too.
But you're describing something very, very specific. And even then, OP seems to be talking about solo piano gigs.
What percentage of songs on a solo piano gig would require matching the lowest note on a five-string bass, in the correct octave?
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18 minutes ago, Leroy C said:
Not the OP, but I don't hit A0 very often. I do hit G1 on a regular basis, though.
Sure thing, and even E1. Lower than E1 is beyond a bass's lowest string, and if I'm playing that, it's almost always for effect/because I can. Funny enough I have a song of my own that has an obligato bass part that reaches that low D, lower than my NS3C offers me, so I have to just change the part a bit when I play that song on that keyboard.
But that's one moment in one song in the course of a night. I personally wouldn't give up all those high notes for that single event, and am curious who requires those notes often enough to have a keyboard geared toward it. What is the playing context that makes notes lower than the bass would play, a crucial part of a rig? Honest curiosity.
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1 hour ago, miden said:
Perfect for playing drop D and C basslines....it gives you the chance to play a five and six string bassline.
...A phenomenon that occurs what percentage of the time, when you play?
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Just now, cassdad said:
Yup, that would work…. but seems like a lot of switching, etc…. that doesn’t compare in ease to just having the keys I want there to be there. I think the former suggest of at least having the keys go down to low “C” is a good compromise.
Right, but that board doesn't exist. Many boards that could fit the bill, perhaps with a little bit of adjustment, do exist. So I'm just trying to see if we can get you what you want without manufacturing a brand new keybed from scratch. Call me crazy but that latter option seems like it would be time-intensive to me.
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What if you set up a layer/split that you brought in as needed, where, starting with the Eb above that lowest E, you added the same piano patch an octave lower. Then you could play the one you have and still get the sonic benefit you're looking for from that lower octave.
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What percentage of the time would you say you are playing the lowest A on a piano/keyboard? I can't envision a playing scenario that would call for multiple forays down to that note. I'm curious how you use it.
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If you're thirsty, you need high C. If you're tired, we're talking about low G.
A Swiss girl is high D. People with huge ears: very low B.
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3 minutes ago, dazzjazz said:
please don’t recommend Scribd - that site is a cesspool of copyright infringement. Some a#$hole decided they had the right to publish my PhD thesis on Jazz Organ there for the whole world to have for free. Luckily once I wrote to Scribd, they took it down.
if any book is worth having, then it’s worth paying for.
The libraries of the world called and said they would like to have a word with you.
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Oh man, you're missing some amazing writing. Some of best American literature of the last 50 years has come from rap.
"Couldn't afford a car, so she named her daughter Alexis."
"It's like we got Merrill Lynched."
"I can hear sweat trickling down your cheek/Your heartbeat sound like Sasquatch feet/Thundering, shaking the concrete."
"First ship ’em dope and let ’em deal to brothers/Give ’em guns, step back and watch ’em kill each other/'It's time to fight back,' that's what Huey said/Two shots in the dark, now Huey's dead."
"I bomb atomically, Socrates' philosophies and hypotheses/Can't define how I be droppin' these mockeries/Lyrically perform armed robbery/Flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me/Battle-scarred Shogun, explosion when my pen hits/Tremendous."
“Goin’ through public housing systems, victim of Munchausen’s Syndrome / My whole life I was made to believe I was sick when I wasn’t”
And on and on and on. So much great writing out there.
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48 minutes ago, cassdad said:
Good Point…. except I lose the weighted action, which, along with the sound quality, is most important to me. Also, I can’t see any point in shifting lower than the normal 88-key low “A”, so that is a waste IMO. Is there a 73 or 76 key board that has piano-like weighted action and killer piano sound?
Sure. That’s a common set-up. SV, NP5, ElectroHP6, Yammy P121 or CP, others I’m sure.
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Couldn't you just pitch shift your board down an octave and call it a day?
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8 hours ago, AnotherScott said:
OTOH, white folks who don't like rap may still be motown fans. I suspect a lot of jazz is disliked by people who don't even know what the players look like (especially as it's generally not the most accessible music to begin with). I'm not denying that there can be racial elements to all kinds of preferences, but I think you may be attributing too much to racial elements there.
Right....TODAY. But I was referring to contemporaneous responses, which were not subtle or mysterious about those elements.
The same will happen with hip-hop over time. It already has, in large part--particularly Golden Age stuff.
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@AnotherScott makes the point that @ProfD was getting at: We only seem to have this difficulty with definitions and the like, when the art is associated with a certain population. There are hours and hours and hours and hours of "real" music with one-note melodies or static harmonies or atrocious rhythm tracks, and in many cases those are the exact tunes folks in the "rap isn't music" camp compare rap against. "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" is the height of Western artistic output for you?
But more to the point, these same objections have been made throughout time. I have previously posted contemporaneous criticisms of jazz and then bebop and the rock n roll, and the only difference (not music, no melody, shouting instead of singing, simplistic or primitive harmonies, just a beat and nothing else, uneducated, unrefined, an affront to proper artistic sensibilities, too violent or sexual, too thing-we're-not-saying), is the target genre of the criticisms. In each case, the what the genres do have in common is their association with the same "certain population."
On the flip side, I think I've told this story before, but I was in the airport flying to a gig, and a woman saw my keyboard case and started a conversation about music. She was from a very conservative part of NY state, and was older, and when the conversation somehow landed on how she didn't like rap, I cringed as I got ready for the reason. Then she explained why: "The lyrics go by too fast for me and I get frustrated not knowing everything they are saying. It's the same reason I don't like opera. I like to know what people are saying."
Holy cow if that wasn't the most legitimate and baggage-free reason to dislike almost an entire genre. I ended up pissed at myself for having prejudicially profiled her.
She pops into my head every time I gripe about mumble-rap.-
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I always say, to anyone who tries to say that hip-hop is simplistic and anyone can "just talk over other people's music"...great. Then you go right ahead and try it. Make a compelling sample bed and put together a compelling and well-crafted rap over the top of it. Let's see how far it ends up from "Straight Outta Scranton" from "The Office."
I'll wait here.
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2 hours ago, Adan said:
You know who else didn't like Rap music? You guessed it . . . Hitler!
Oh suddenly Hitler’s bad too?? Ok, Wokey.
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"This orange soda is terrible, it tastes nothing like tunafish!"
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1 hour ago, stoken6 said:
Melle Mel, surely?
Cheers, Mike.
I think he's thinking of Patti LaBelle.
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Yes, in general you'll aim for the "closest possible inversion." This shouldn't drive anyone crazy. You can generally get from any one chord to any next chord without moving any single note more than a whole step. (That is, moving each note 0, 1, or 2 half-steps, and no more.)
There might be something else in the part you're playing that is catching the guitarist's ear. It could be a rhythm thing, or it could be that your top note is rubbing against the melody in some way--duplicating it, sitting above it, sitting too close to it. In those cases you can either invert down or just drop the top note.
The guitar player might also be playing power chords and sticking the "3" of F on top might be making it sound too obvious that there's a 3, for him. Guitar players sort of notoriously ask us keys dudes to leave the 3 out, even though (don't tell them!) it's usually baked into the harmony one way or another, and their voicing doesn't mean it's not there. If anything, it's generally our job to describe the 3 and the "other number" (usually 7) and let the bass and guitar take care of the rest.
Like CEB, I rarely play a pure triad like that. Even if I want the sound of one, it's maybe just the 3 and 5, maybe with a grace note from the 2. If it's rock I'll play 1 and 5. If it's a ballad I'm more likely spread the chord out into an open 10th with the root low and the 3 (10) in the next octave. But in all cases, we have to sit just below or else well above the melody. Piano can hit the ear like a second singer so you have to choose your moments of melody, if there are any at all.
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11 minutes ago, stoken6 said:
Agree with 99% of this. There's plenty of intelligent, articulate rap, and no end of misogynistic and violent rock'n'roll. On the 1%, I would counter that the Beatles used the studio as an instrument before 1973.
Cheers, Mike.
We do not disagree about that. Rap owes a debt to the Beatles that respect, and others before the Beatles doing experiments with sampling and tapes. But hip-hop turned it from a crazy thing a couple of crazy artists did, to a virtuosic instrument same as a violin or electric guitar.
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50 years! That rec room party on Sedgwick Ave was in 1973.
People who mention the lyrics usually mean something else. No one seemed to mind Johnny Cash killing a man just to watch him die, or Eric Clapton shooting the sheriff that Bob Marley shot first, or Leroy Brown's .32 gun in his pocket full of fun, etc.
While pop has been eating itself alive in a cannibalistic buffet of same-sounding fast-food Happy Meals, hip-hop has been advancing every part of the form that we keyboard players would normally be interested in. They've elevated the studio to bona-fide instrument, used keyboards and software instruments almost exclusively, and found novel ways to make sounds that the rest of the industry still hasn't quite caught up with. I get that it pisses some people off, which is natural, but let's not be condescending. It has spent decades as the only new and original music coming out of our country, and if anything us keyboard nerds should be the ones most interested in the process.
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I peaked late. I'm hoping it means I can count on living to 147.
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STAX: Soulsville U.S.A.
in The Keyboard Corner
Posted
I saw it a couple of weeks ago and really liked it. I particularly liked the social elements they drew out, which I never fully knew about, even as I played that Wattstax record into dust.
To put an even finer point on what @SteveNathan is saying, when I heard that Staples Singers tune on the credits, I literally thought to myself, "Oh, I didn't realize they were Stax." It made me decide that they were even though I didn't previously think it was true. So it had the exact effect Steve is saying, at least in my case.
On the flip side, I thought the living Stax folks, musicians and otherwise, were given extensive and respectful coverage, and I started recommending the doc to folks I thought might be interested as soon as I watched it.