Jump to content

MathOfInsects

Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    6,603

  • Joined

 Content Type 

Posts posted by MathOfInsects

    "The Bands and the Fans Were Fake. The $10 Million Was Real"

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    10 minutes ago, JoJoB3 said:

    Wrong thread

    Where I grew up, the toughest guys would let you know you needed, for your own welfare and continued existence upon our fine planet, to turn and walk away, by saying, calmly and terrifyingly, "Wrong guy." Meaning, you picked the worst option to start shit with, and he just wanted to helpfully and generously let you know that he was about to hurt you forever in your pain place, just, you know, FYI, in case you wanted to rethink your approach with them. Which you did. 

    • Like 1

    Revamping the rig (for my Floyd tribute band)

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    I do our Floyd project with two boards, but played a festival with a third one (Mojo) last month just because I had it there for a set with a different band. It was very freeing to be able to reach over and handle organ and even some keys stuff while leaving the other boards fully dedicated to the various specific requirements. I wouldn't do it every time, for reasons of old age and laziness, but would definitely do it again, which is more than I would have thought. 

    "The Bands and the Fans Were Fake. The $10 Million Was Real"

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    5 hours ago, ElmerJFudd said:

    He created thousands of accounts using false identities for payment and for receiving payment as part of a much broader scheme. At least that’s what it sounds like to me. I also suspect he did not declare these earnings or pay taxes on them.  
     

    I am not rooting for the streaming companies here, I’m just contemplating what the prosecution’s approach will be.  

    I understand. But I have never had to assert anything about myself to stream or submit music. I mean, I have to give a name, and there is (for example) a difference between the actual name of the responsible party and any name you might be creating music under. But it's up to me tell them my actual name. I could make a second "actual name" tomorrow and as long as I had a place for that money to go. If I chose to register a song under my kids' names, and let them have the royalties, would that be fraud?

     

    It would be different if he juiced the algorithm somehow to get people to stream something they didn't want to, or if he paid people to playlist him. But all the streams were him. I just don't see the fraud.

     

    I understand that it pissed the streaming companies off and isn't what they intended, but I'm very unclear on what the actual crime would be. Finding a loophole they hadn't guarded against yet? More power to him...

    • Thanks 1

    "The Bands and the Fans Were Fake. The $10 Million Was Real"

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    2 hours ago, cedar said:

    Nevertheless, there is zero question that the conduct being alleged constitutes a real, criminal fraud...Through various methods, he pretended to the streaming services that real people were streaming his music, which was not true.

    I don't follow this distinction. It was a real person--him. I've never had to prove I'm a person to stream a song, and have uploaded lots of songs where the only assertion I had to make was that there were no other copyright claimants. 

    I also don't see how he took money intended for anyone else. Streaming pays you, it doesn't compare you to others and slice up a set pie proportionately.

    Stories like this hit people in their "AI spot," but IMO he out-crooked the crooks and I'm here for it. I hope he skates. 

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

    Piano teachers: resources for middle school students with high interest/low follow-through

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    There is actually some scholarship around ADHDer's having trouble entraining, which is what keeping rhythm is. Just being able to count correctly (even if not with a steady pulse) is fine for those kids. Once it's internalized, and not in the realm of executive function or working memory, they usually start to settle in.

    The biggest thing with ADHD kids is to give a concrete procedure and task--a checklist, the amount of time to spend on each thing, a very, very specific endeavor for each day or each practice. Also, the executive function stuff can mean that the place they do the worst is in the real-time lesson--all the mosquitoes start to fly (internally) and they spiral. So part of the job is to shift your view of what lessons will be, and view them more as coachings or prep-sessions for how to approach their tasks.

    Finally, I am a huge proponent of shifting our understanding of lessons from a process to an opportunity. When kids play soccer, it's perfectly fine if that practice is their only hour of soccer that week, and all the coach cares about is that they end practice an hour better than they began it. I strongly encourage teachers to take the same view. Music WILL serve the student well, even an hour a week. Of course they'll improve faster if they practice, but they will still improve if they don't. For some kids, the effects of feeling like they're failing are far worse than the "cost" of not really practicing but still getting exposed to music every week.

     

    • Like 3

    Who Knew?

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    44 minutes ago, David Emm said:

     

    He sounds like he's just a couple of weeks of practice away from being up to a club gig. If you had asked me to name a comic actor who had decent piano skills, he wouldn't have been on the list, but there's the proof. Not bad at all. Huh. 

    I think he's one of those guys who started as a musician and ended up famous for something else. He was Steely Dan's first drummer, if I'm remembering that trivia bit correctly. 

    Poll: keyboard with the best stock sounds

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    14 minutes ago, Baldwin Funster said:

    Only one mention of Roland on this thread and it was negative. It seems that few or none of the respondants use much synth sounds. 

    To quote Arte Johnson " very intetesting".....

    I can't speak for others, but to me Roland's strength is in the upfeaturing of its boards so they offer a bit of everything for everyone. Their sounds haven't changed since the 1980's--12,000 saws, some swirly pads, and three of those jazz "doh" patches. 

    I do think some of their pre-fab EPs are nice, though in no danger of ever being confused with the "real" thing. 

     

    • Like 1
    • Haha 2

    "I Love Your Smile" chord theory

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    3 hours ago, CyberGene said:

    Theory is for explaining things, not for creating them 🙂 We all speak our native languages without knowing the grammar. 

     

    Not to pour nerd all over this, but in fact we speak our native languages precisely because we do know the grammar. The internalization of that grammar is what it means to speak a native language. Otherwise you would just pour words and sounds out in random order, with random inflection, and hope that some of them stuck.

     

    What we don't always know are labels or names we've given that grammar after the fact.

     

    Music theory is similar. We do know it, even the most curmudgeonly "just play music, college boy" types out there. We are using and calling on it every millisecond that we are playing. We are not just pouring sounds out in random order, at random pitches, even those in between our Western half steps. We are fundamentally deploying the "grammar" of our local musical traditions.

     

    What we're not doing is thinking of the names of these things in advance. We are using them to speak a native language, and others can use those names to figure out what's so great about how some of us might speak, later. 

    • Like 3

    "I Love Your Smile" chord theory

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    26 minutes ago, NewImprov said:

    I'm sure it happened because it sounded good. And it does! The more "normal" progression would be Gm7 to some sort of C, either a m7 or some altered dominant, to set up the Fm7. The Dm pulls the ear towards expecting an F major, so the Fm7 kinda hits hard every time, even though they repeat the progression a bunch of times.

    When you frame it that way, a very "in the mode" explanation for OP's query would be that this is simply I II ii V7, with subs on the I and II (Gm and Dm). 

    • Like 2

    Changing patches quickly

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    21 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

    Though I'm not sure I see any advantage to using the 5 "Live" spots for this approach, as opposed to just using the first bank of 5 Programs...?

    Two reasons. One is that "Live" lives as a layer on top of all the banks. So if you drop (say) synth solo patches onto Page A, they are there waiting for you just to "unLive" to use--one click. If you put those main patches in one bank/page and solo patches in another, you have to do a bunch of clicking to get back and forth. 

    The other is that Live preserves a snapshot of however the sound is left whenever you use it. So if I want (say) upright piano on a particular gig instead of an expensive grand, if you use Page A for that, you either have to change it to the piano you want and either save it the new way, or make the changes anew each time you go back to the sound. If you decide this song is going to have some delay on the Wurly, and then you click away to take a solo on another another instrument, "Live" lets you resume playing the same Wurly without having to stop mid-song to save the patch over your existing Wurly patch.

     

    Same with organ; the patch is a preset, the "Live" is a snapshot.

     

    I find it way more versatile and nimble to make those "Live" options.

    • Like 1

    Changing patches quickly

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Stokely said:



    I didn't know about the alpha song list on the NS3....that might just do the trick.   I was going to likely have an alpha list on an ipad app if I used one....or I guess you mean just do it via the Nord Sound manager, same difference in the end.

    I already use Song Mode for certain songs that have parts different enough that I use different patches...bought a little two-button passive footswitch for 19 bucks (from Hotone) that works like a champ to move up or down through a song.   

     

    Hit Shift and spin the main selection dial on the NS3. You'll see "ABC" as one of the options for how to list the patches. You select it just under the screen. That's a very fast way to call up sounds quickly, as long as you name them something you are able to find on the fly! Plus, if you leave it selected, your patches are automatically served to you in alphabetical order. 

     

    You could also take some time and organize patches by page--so, say, A is EPs, B and C are 80's, D and E are modern pop, and so on. Then set your forward and backward arrows to advance by page. That way you're never more than a couple of arrow clicks away from at least the "family" of patches you need.

     

    There is another option to turn the Live buttons into direct input by number, so if you are in Page D and want sound 31, you hit the 3rd and 1st Live buttons and that's 31. I find this way easier than spinning the dial and hoping to go one patch at a time, particularly since our hands end up in the way of the screen half the time. 

     

     You can set up some "Songs" in song mode to contain all the songs any band is likely to call. You don't even need them in order, you can do the same "Shift/spin" move you used to choose ABC and you can see the patches in each song.

    I use the "Live" slots for 80% or more of all the playing I do. On the NS3, Live 1 was the Piano I've worked the hardest on making sound right, Live 2 was Wurly, 3 was FM piano for 80's tunes, 4 was a Clav I've got where I like it, and 5 was freelance. Each one of those patches had organ volume-faded on the Mod Wheel, so Wheel Down was the keys, Wheel up the organ. Organ is always in "Live" mode too so the drawbars are always where it looks like they are and it's the same organ from patch to patch. Then in Bank A were a few different synth leads I liked for solos. This way I was never more than one click from what I need.

     

    NS4 has changed this completely, those faders change the entire relationship with the board. 

    • Like 2

    Changing patches quickly

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    NS3 will let you view/scroll patches alphabetically, if that would help...?

     

    I believe you can also view your patches alphabetically in the Nord Sound Manager. It's not pretty, but in that case you could always print out the alphabetical list, or screenshot it. Then as a global setting you can choose "Page" for how the Nord's arrows navigate and also choose the option that lets you type the patch numbers directly using the Live numbers. I had mine set that way and it was a massive time-saver. 

    Beyond that, the ForScore/GigPerformer/Mainstage option is the most direct. It does mean always having a tablet or laptop with you, though, unless you use your phone for it. 

    • Like 1
×
×
  • Create New...