MathOfInsects

That was bloated and unnecessary and hella fun. I wish PS had STFU for 12 seconds so we could hear everyone play. Yeah, Paul, they know they're getting another chorus, and yeah, we remember the name you just told us. They're famous, we know who they are. I enjoyed hearing how everyone approached their playing after hearing what the previous guy did. Joey D in particular made a point to slow the pace down and let something build before doing those crazy 16th-note triplet arpeggio runs. I couldn't tell from his expression if he was enjoying PS's playing or bemused by it.

First, I 100% agree with you and don't favor the "music olympics" approach to our field. But I do think some of the "X or Y" conversations are about something different than competition; they're really a conversation about people's aesthetics or preferences, and in that sense they can be interesting and helpful.

Seems right.

Libra. Sorry, I thought it said post your signs.

I always feel like I shouldn't admit this, but: I'm a good LH bass player as long as you don't also want a great keyboardist. If I'm really paying attention to being an effective bass player, I'm way less of a keyboard player. Sometimes that's a good thing! I've gotten better over the years, but when it comes time to really separate the two hemispheres--say, during a solo--I have to concentrate very hard to keep the bass doing what it's supposed to be doing while my right hand is doing what it wants to be doing. However, I will say that the times I've had to be LH bass for groups that normally have a bass player, my relationship with those songs is way deeper when I'm back to being keys-only on them.

I call them the Buttmy Tonebro’s. “But my tone, bro…!”

Steve Cropper’s parts are probably easier to play than Steve Vai’s, too, but I’d still give the crown to Cropper every time.

Hmmm. Ok, definitely a Honky Cat vibe on those chops in Redneck Friend. Obviously channeling Nicky Hopkins there, too. BUT I don't hear a note of piano in Delilah. And I barely hear one on the Hollies tune--maybe twice really on some distant chords in big moments, unless that's also piano in the right speaker. (But it sounds more like guitar.) So maybe the takeaway is that he was the guy playing parts that people ended up not using...? 😀 The BJ tunes...yeah, could be anyone. No wonder he's not sure.

Hang. Heng. Hong. Hung.

Whoa, cool. I didn't know that (either of them), or forgot it if I did. I'm going to listen to all these tunes with that in mind a bit later. As for BJ remembering which notes he played on a session when he was 14...? I mean...maybe? But does he really? There's been a lot of shall we say "impeding" done to his memory in the years since then. But still, cool bio item. I wonder if anyone's alive who could say definitively it was or wasn't him. https://www.songfacts.com/facts/the-shangri-las/leader-of-the-pack

Want.

I don't see the contradiction. No one thought it wouldn't continue to exist as a genre. Just that it wouldn't be the death of all other music or performance forever.

I don't see a problem with AI training with copyrighted material. We all did that, right? We played existing songs of all styles until we got good at whatever is we do. It seems certain that some of the future musical landscape will be AI-related, forever. I can foresee entire Sirius stations that play AI-generated music. I will think that's pretty cool. I just want it labeled as such, so people can still seek out people-generated stuff too.

There's a guy in town who does the "one board for each sound" thing -- a Hammond chop with a Leslie, a Wurly and/or Rhodes (plus separate amp), sometimes a clonewheel, even an upright piano. It makes great optics. I'll leave it at that. Signed, Guy whose NS3C weighs 22 pounds.

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I used to be completely in the "the room is already reverb" camp. In the last few years I've started adding just the slightest bit of reverb to my live keyboard and organ sounds, a subconscious amount; it makes the patches feel more "real instrument"-like to me. Like you're in the room where those instruments are being played. But lately I've been pushing it up until I notice it and then pulling back from there. It's not too far off from "start at 0 and add a smidge," but a different approach: Start where you can hear it and pull back just until you can't." It functions more as a clean boost than real reverb. It just draws out some of the realness in the piano samples and organ. (I don't like it on Wurly, though.) It's great on clav.

Negative reaction emojis are always a weird one. I had a friend I hadn't talked to since college, which was -- spoiler alert -- very long ago, DM me out of the blue on Facebook because I "angry"-emoji'd a post he made about some aggravating circumstance that happened to him. He thought I was letting him know I was mad about him posting that, and wanted to know why I'd even bother to respond rather than post something negative. I was like, "No, I'm agreeing, that situation is infuriating." He never quite believed me. I'm still peeved that the "hover" on the emoji option here turns the thumb to a thumbs up instead of giving all the choices from there. I never got used it.

Exactly.

The thumbs-down emoji here tends to be used as a review on the post itself, rather than a disagreement with the content of it. It's rarely used, and the few times it is, have been for reasons of trolling. It's certainly possible that over time, it will come to mean, "I can't cosign that sentiment." But as of now it is only read as, "Why don't you just go suck on a Volkwagen's tailpipe if you love Hitler that much?"

I got that same promotion, and thought that same thought. I wouldn’t need 100 CD’s for free, let alone a buck and a half. I don’t have anything to play them on. I’d practically rather make 8-tracks than CDs.

If synths are your instrument, then sure, play synths. If "keyboards" are your instrument, and you have to play synth, IMO it's crazy in 2024 to purchase a separate board just for that. You might as well purchase a professional-level digital camera because you sometimes take pictures with your phone, and a police-grade flashlight because you sometimes use your phone as a flashlight, and a portable reel-to-reel because you sometimes use your phone's voice memos. I wish the people with money to spend on a separate instrument for every keyboard sound, would send me some for a single board that contains all those sounds.

I enjoyed that. I agree that unless you're really looking for fundamentals on bass playing, it's little light on educational content. But I miss that old generation of personalities, and was actually bummed to hear him talk about having "more time" these days to practice, when before the gigs were his practice. It's crazy that just when people are at their height of experience and ability we age them out of circulation. Ok, maybe I'm projecting here. What were we talking about?