SamuelBLupowitz
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Posts posted by SamuelBLupowitz
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I grew up with Pixar's first burst into the cinematic canon. I was five or six years old when "Toy Story" hit theaters, when a fully-CGI film was something new and exciting rather than the go-to, cheaper way to make an animated kids' movie. I've kept up intermittently over the years -- I came to some of their mid-period favorites, like "Up" and "Finding Nemo," kind of late, because I had aged out of automatically seeing Disney movies -- but their films I've seen recently have just proven that they're still the best in the business when it comes to character, story, animation, and message.
I loved both Inside Out and Coco, and this one was a total slam dunk for me. I loved the jazz element, obviously, but the synthesizer-driven "great beyond" music that scores the rest of the film, by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, is also gorgeous. I know this film was made prior to the pandemic, but my wife and I were caught off guard by how perfect it was for a time when the collective existential angst and despair has been so high. An instant favorite.
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Now that's sweet!Merry Christmas all.I just got my 770 converted to 11-pin and this is my first audition of the Legend organ through a solid-state Leslie.
I'm gonna toss in a non-Christmas tune (though the spirit of it is holiday appropriate) -- I couldn't resist doing a quick mix of the song "A Promised Land" from my upcoming solo record, after my buddy finished the "choir" overdubs I wanted to round out the Hammond-and-vocal-only arrangement. The rest of the record, as you'll see at the end, will feature me on many of the instruments, which is something I've wanted to do for a long time, but didn't have the time or opportunity to until the pandemic hit. I've been focused on my bands for the last few years and I'm excited to put out some solo work for the first time since 2015.
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I think I might be getting the glockenspiel I asked for as a semi-afterthought a few weeks ago... it's funny, seems like an odd and specific piece of kit, as the Brits say, but I've been finding myself wanting one for overdubs often enough that I thought it would be fun to have the real thing anytime I want to get my Springsteen on in the studio.
I got my wife the multi-guitar rack she's been wanting for awhile so we don't have a bunch of easy-to-knock-over guitar stands all over the place, and FedEx dropped off a GIANT box that said "HERCULES GUITAR STAND" by the front door, which you could read from our living room window (and outer space, probably). You can bet I ran out there to grab it and frantically wrap it...
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In a world where Jimi Hendrix didn't die at 27...band of vaxxers -
I GOT A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH YOU PEOPLE.Looking forward to the "airing of grievances" by the Festivus Pole 𤪠-
Oh The Hobbit films are excruciating, no argument from me there. Goes to show you -- I didn't even think about them when CEB brought up Jackson adapting Tolkien! I never even bothered seeing the third one; I thought I'd give them another try after a recent viewing of the LotR triology and barely made it through the first film that time. I know we're drifting OT here, but the flim criticI hope Peter Jackson is more true to the Beatles than he was to Tolkien.You're the only person I've ever heard give his adaptation the thumbs down
Ehm...have you seen The Hobbit trilogy?
, if you're into that sort of thing. It's interesting to put together the pieces of why they turned out the way they did.But I grew up with Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, and my wife and I usually watch them at least once a year. She's run the gauntlet of watching all three extended editions in a single day, back before we met... I've never quite managed that feat. I have a nasty habit of falling asleep during the second half of The Two Towers, despite the excitement of Helm's Deep.
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Hey, even John Lennon couldn't really sing the low notes in the verses. Part of the charm!
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I hope Peter Jackson is more true to the Beatles than he was to Tolkien.
You're the only person I've ever heard give his adaptation the thumbs down, but I guess since my McCartney III thread also brought out someone calling The Beatles overrated, I'm two for two! :wink:
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There's a number 4 as well, which is this: For nearly the entirety of their career, they were ahead of the zeitgeist. . . . They did this by constantly going with the "what if" that others weren't thinking of or were considering but rejecting, or were trying but not turning into commercial success. . . . So if, in 2020, you are looking to The Beatles for your sound, you are already not looking to The Beatles for your sound.
A great insight. It's true, by the time the rest of the culture had caught on to, for instance, Sgt. Pepper, and started putting out their big, colorful, psychedelic records... the Beatles had already moved on to their rootsy, gritty album with the all-white cover. Few other bands offer such a grand musical journey over such a short recording career.
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I haven't been too focused on the news about this project, though I've been mildly interested. Saw the original Let It Be film once, and yeah, it's kind of a bummer. Now, though... this little montage has me excited and even moved.
Among the great little moments: A close-up of Billy Preston's hands playing the end of the Get Back Rhodes solo. Enjoy.
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"Captain, my sensors indicate a subtle difference between a 12/8 triplet feel, and the rhythmic attribute that humans of the 20th century dubbed 'swing.'"
"Excellent, Mr. Data. Make it so."
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Thanks for the feedback, all. I'll give it a little oil and let it settle for awhile before I try again.
It's been much colder here the last few days, but the studio stays pretty toasty with the heat on. I'm looking forward to when we can get some separate climate control for the room to help regulate all these instruments better, but that's gonna be an investment for another year...
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Hey folks, been having an issue where my A100's tone generator makes a gnarly grinding sound once it starts spinning. It also seems to be taking longer than usual to get going after I flip the Start switch. This has happened to me once or twice in the past few months and it always goes away; usually I just have to try to start it up a second time. But this has been an issue every time I've tried for the last few hours, and the grinding is nasty enough that I don't want to just push through it -- I'm afraid of damaging something.
I thought maybe a little more Hammond oil would help, but wanted to check here first. Can post an audio/video clip if that's helpful. Thanks!
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Paul and Elvis Costello co-wrote many of the songs on the Flowers in the Dirt record, and there are some standouts from the era. "This One" and "My Brave Face" are also on the live "Tripping the Live Fantastic" collection from his 1989/90 world tour, and those are superior to the studio versions.On the flip side, this product of the Partnership That Almost Was, is a big entry in the win column IMO:Apparently the two of them didn't get along very well, though...
Anyway, dig Hamish Stewart of Average White Band fame on guitar and background vocals!
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Wanted to chime in that I listened to the whole record, and really enjoyed it. There's nothing on it that I'd single out as a Timeless McCartney Classic (like "Maybe I'm Amazed" or even "Coming Up"), but it's a fun, beautiful, interesting exploration of sonic textures, melodies, and an artist controlling and layering his voice (figuratively and litereally) late in his life. Some of the lyrics achieve his frequent compelling, 60s-born impressionistic affect, and others are more in his, er, nursery rhyme vein. I'm thinking specifically of "Lavatory Lil" for the latter, but that one at least has a cool rock 'n' roll arrangement. Highlights for me are "Slidin'" and "Deep Deep Feeling."
It makes me understand his whole "I didn't think I was making an album, I was just having fun" spiel a little better; Paul loves to downplay his intense creative commitment in the interest of seeming low-key and not a Lifelong Music Legend, but I think this record is similar to the first McCartney in its aesthetic of Playing Around in the Home Studio rather than Making a Bulletproof Collection of Songs. And god, that bass sound still hits me in just the right spot.
Oh, and since this is a keyboard forum, after all, some Mellotron shows up here and there... pretty sure the one he owns is the one that used to live in Abbey Road, which he played on Strawberry Fields Forever among other well-known tracks.
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Steve's really settling into the "friendly, elderly English chaplain" role nicely, isn't he? I do like to imagine that after the fade, as he finishes the Bach, he and an unseen band burst into "Glad."
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Ebony and Ivory was with Stevie Wonder ... you're understandably confusing his collaborations with virtuoso R&B artists with results far less than the sum of their parts!Or Ebony and Ivory.I think he paid the price for that abomination. Around that time MJ got the idea to to buy up the Beatles publishing. MJ probably would have not got the idea if they never met.
Semi-related, any time my wife or I hear something we think is factually suspect, we sing out "I don't beliiieeeve it!" just like Paul does at the end of "The Girl is Mine." I've long felt that it is a true testament to Thriller's monumental stature that it can remain one of the greatest albums of all time and still have a song that devastatingly bad on it.
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Here, I'll toss in something lesser known that I really like. Aside from the aforementioned Anderson and Laboriel, this song (this whole record) has some really tasty, funky Hammond and Wurlitzer playing by Gabe Dixon, who opted out of joining the road band to focus on his Ben Folds-esque solo work... coming back around, he's been in the keyboard chair for Tedeschi Trucks Band since we lost Kofi Burbridge last year. There's some now-dated production aesthetic that takes me right back to the late 90s/early aughts, but there's a timelessness to the live band vibe -- the performances sound downright spontaneous at times, and that's one of the things that gives the Driving Rain record so much personality to me. Hard for me to believe it's nearly 20 years ago that I got it as a gift at the holidays!
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I'm off work Christmas through New Years, so I'd love to hop in, since I keep missing them! Both holidays fall on Fridays, so maybe we should aim for the Saturday/Sunday after? I could jump on one midweek as well, but I'm not sure how that works for other folks.
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Look at all those knobs!
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Paul McCartney released McCartney III today, a record he's been working on in lockdown as a spiritual successor to his 1970 and 1980 entirely-solo albums. The debut video release, which I've posted below, shows him playing a harpsichord of some kind, plus a Minimoog, piano, and sampled brass, on top of all the vocals, guitars, bass, and drums. He also did a fun interview with Chris Rock as part of the album drop (always nice to have some less-standard interview questions, since Macca, bless him, has a tendency to ebulliently tell the same stories over and over again), in which he plays a segment of one of the other tunes on the grand piano in his studio.
I've been both excited and apprehensive about the new record. Paul is probably #1 on my list of musicians who have influenced and inspired me, but I think even his most devoted fans would admit that his solo output is a little uneven. He's still capable of the great songwriting and recording genius he developed in the Beatles, but his penchant for writing throwaway lyrics and lightweight music can get a little out of hand without a creative partner willing to push back. His early solo stuff and Wings material definitely runs into that problem, and I find some of his 80s stuff unlistenable. But I thought he had an amazing later-career run from about 1997 to 2007, starting right after the Beatles Anthology with Flaming Pie, through his return to touring and the formation of his excellent, long-running live band with Abe Laboriel, Jr. and Rusty Anderson on Driving Rain, then the sparse, Nigel Godrich-produced Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, and the ambitious soundscapes of Memory Almost Full. Of course, those records coincide with my discovery of the Beatles and ensuing teenage years, so that might have something to do with my high opinion of that era...
At any rate, what I've heard from the new record hasn't blown me away, but it's still a pleasure to hear a master in action. In a year full of tragic loss, I'd rather a world with too much Paul McCartney than not enough.
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I fooled around with the free demo for a little while before I bit the bullet on Stage. My use case is opposite of the OP's; I wanted a more lifelike, responsive piano sound for my live rig without emptying my bank account on a new DP. Being something of a purist, I almost never record anything other than a real acoustic piano anymore (though I'm thinking about crafting something ethereal in Pianoteq for one of the solo projects I'm working on).
Anyway, I love it, and it loves my penchant for percussive key-smashing, nuanced sustain pedal work, and slightly-less-than-perfect tuning and resonance. The Yamaha YC5 Rock Piano is my primary for my band playing, and the Steinway is lovely as well when you need a fuller, richer sound.
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I've also been lucky with my 200. I gigged it pretty heavily for the five years between acquiring it and the pandemic, and I only had a reed go on me once.
Of course, when it did, it was in the middle of a run of several big gigs in a short span (I was lucky my tech likes me). It started to go during the first of two sets on July 4th... I remember we were covering Young Americans by Bowie, and the reed that was starting to go was the C above middle C... most of the piano part on that song involves hammering that octave while moving inner voicings, so that was SOUR!
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Zeppelin has been in my top eschelon of favorite artists since I was a young teen. John Paul Jones in particular has been one of my greatest inspirations, as a bassist, keyboard player, and person who enjoys covering as many parts as possible with four limbs and my voice. I've always enjoyed them above other hard rock bands because they swung -- Bonham and Jones both had a deep knowledge and appreciation for American R&B music (with Jones getting a lot of jobs as a British James Jamerson imitator in his session days), and it gives the band a groove that it might not otherwise have to propel Page's sludgy guitar and Plant's wailing. I think this is what a lot of the Zeppelin disciples who came in their wake didn't understand -- they got the power but not the pocket, and it's consequently much less compelling to me.
So, when I heard about this reunion concert back in 2007, when I was still in high school, I was desperate for anything I could find from it. It took another five years or so for the professional recording to come out, but I was blown away by how excellent a performance it was, especially compared to previous attempts to get the band back together with someone filling in on drums (Live Aid was pretty messy, to the point where their performance isn't on the official concert release, and I've heard the Atlantic Records anniversary show from the 90s was dreadful). I know there are some fixes in post, but watching the concert is a real treat nonetheless. I think Robert Plant's voice was the biggest surprise -- he managed to lose none of his impact while approaching the material with the knowledge of and experience with his instrument as an older man, rather than the shrieking onslaught of his 20s. I think Kashmir in particular is a highlight of the show.
Anyway, John Paul Jones is known to do a lot of his own programming, so whatever sounds are coming from the Oasys and the X-50 are likely not stock patches, and he almost certainly tweaked or fully synthesized them himself.
A match made in heaven- Rhodes and Moog.
in The Keyboard Corner
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