SamuelBLupowitz

February 15

Hey @nursers, weren't you the one I just saw on Facebook saying you hadn't known until very recently that there was a dislike button on the forum? Excuse ME for leaving my clavinet in my home studio instead of carrying it case-less into crowded bars anymore.

February 14

On 2/9/2024 at 5:30 PM, ProfD said:

IMO, not really. For the most part, music consumption is generational.

It's very similar to our parents and grandparents not really digging *our* music. It's a generational cycle.😁😎

I'd argue though -- it doesn't *have* to be, and while our favorites may remain for years and years, and we may have less time to absorb new music, that doesn't mean we have to become the resentful, arrogant voice represented by that article shared by the OP.

The music I grew up with was largely made by my parents' generation, though not all of what connected with me was to my parents' taste (they loved Elton John, Billy Joel, and the Beatles, though they never got obsessive about them the way I did; Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix didn't really do it for them). I hear new music of all kinds regularly that blows me away. I think as artists, and especially those of us who grew up under the shadow of a "damn kids today don't know what's good for them" mentality, we have a responsibility to be more open-minded than those who came before us.

February 14

I've managed to get pretty good deals on all my "expensive" boards, so every one I own cost me, individually, less than $2K. I'm pretty sure my Wurlitzer would sell for more than I bought it for in 2015, and my clav being a sort of "permanent loan/inheritance" situation, well, that's probably the most expensive thing I've taken out to a gig based on its actual resale value (though it mostly stays in my studio at this point).

But pretty much anything I take out these days, I wouldn't exactly have the money to replace just sitting there in my bank account, so, as others have noted, 1) expensive is relative and 2) it's always a bit of a risk to leave the comfort of your home, but sometimes ships must leave their harbors!

February 7

30 minutes ago, cphollis said:

First off, what's keeping your band from using IEMs? It's 2024, and you can't convince me that anyone "needs" an old-fashioned floor wedge. They sound MUCH better, they're MUCH cheaper and they are MUCH lighter! Also, much easier on everyone's ears. It's worth weaning yourselves off of stage monitors.

I use IEMs, as do some of my bandmates in certain projects. But we have a lot of different combinations of musicians come through our studio to rehearse, so the extra setup isn't always practical or possible.

Also, my wife teaches voice lessons in our studio, and for certain clients, she likes to have a microphone set up (particularly for those that are gigging musicians who do a lot of amplified singing). So having PA reinforcement in the room is something we want to have available to us.

If a tower array is a good fit for that in a medium-sized studio space with mics pointing in various directions, I'm open to it. Good to hear that your experience with one onstage has been good.

February 7

On 5/22/2023 at 8:59 PM, Stephen Fortner said:

Well, I’ll be damned. I thought even my old Electro 2 did the 1' drawbar cancel with percussion active but I could be having a Mandela effect memory. As of firmware 0.98, yeah, there’s no menu item I can find that toggles this. In practice I don’t think it would affect my playing at all, but from an authenticity standpoint, it’s a weird and presumably easily fixable omission.

There is definitely a setting you can toggle for this on my Electro 4D. Just double-checked the manual to make sure. "Perc 9 Drawbar Cancel" is option 8 on the B3 menu on that board.

February 7

Well folks, the 12-year-old Samson travel PA I've been carting around to small gigs and using as a rehearsal PA forever has finally given up the ghost. It's time for an upgrade.

I'm looking for something that can function as monitors for band rehearsals in my home studio, as well as to serve as a PA for small to medium gigs. We have a few mixers (analog and digital) lying around, so I thought powered speakers would be the most flexible option. Some 12-inch Mackies (or similar powered speakers with two channels and the option to stereo link) would definitely be a step up from what we have, and that seems to be a good compromise of weight/portability and enough power to amplify vocals, keys, and acoustic guitar over a drum set and guitar amps in a relatively small studio space, or in a small venue without a house PA.

We did see a good deal locally on some lightly used Behringer powered speakers with stands, but they're 15-inchers, and with each one weighing close to 40 pounds, we're concerned that the size and weight would be a little more than we want for what we need.

Alternately, my wife's Sweetwater guy recommended one of the EV Evolve tower systems, and that would be in our budget. He swore by it for its portability and for use as a rehearsal/small gig PA for his indie rock band. I'm a tad skeptical, though -- while it's a different brand, a small local venue has this style in-house, and I feel like it sounds a little muddy, and I'm concerned about feedback putting this in the corner of a studio instead of strategically-placed wedges. Plus, you'd need an entire second unit to run in stereo, and being a keyboard player, that irks me a bit (no need to get into that debate, of course...). That said, the portability, small footprint, and the built-in, app-controlled multichannel mixer is appealing, so I'm not ruling it out before I do some research.

So I thought I'd check with the forum for thoughts, feedback, and recommendations -- speakers you like, different styles you've used, experience you might have had in this situation. Our budget isn't massive but up to about $1500 is doable, and again, my ideal situation is something that will be equally useful in both a rehearsal and gigging situation (not looking for studio monitors here).

Thanks, friends!

February 7

Every now and then folks on this forum DO have insider info that the rest of us don't! Consider me watching this thread.

February 6

2 minutes ago, HammondDave said:

Always thought that Stills was an under appreciated Hammond player. Aling with bis famous solo on Love the One You’re With, he pkayed Hammond on mist of the CSU albums. “Questions” has always been a favorite…

Here is one of my favorite live video performances from many decades ago on the Tom Jones Show.

https://fb.watch/q2a2aH9dkV/?mibextid=v7YzmG

I really enjoy Stills's Hammond playing on Wooden Ships (though when I've covered it in the past I've based my performance just as much on Mike Finnigan's approach). He also played some killer bass on tracks like Suite: Judy Blue Eyes. An incredibly talented singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist.

February 2

32 minutes ago, Shamanzarek said:

A former bandmate who played on the same circuit with Billy when he was with The Hassles in the 60s told me that back then Billy sang with with a bleating vibrato that reminded him of a sheep. Maybe that was his true voice and he was able to change his singing style in later years.

I think something that critics have lambasted him for, but I find to be one of his immense talents, is that he is an incredible vocal mimic. If you ever hear early live bootlegs, he was prone to busting into bits of Joe Cocker and Bruce Springsteen songs with impressions that would turn anybody's head. I think in some ways, people find his genre explorations jarring because he can't help but sing his Ray Charles-inspired songs like Ray Charles, his Beatlesque numbers like John Lennon, his Tumbleweedy tunes like early Elton. But his voice has always been an incredible instrument for its versatility.

You can hear some traces of the "singer-songwriter vibrato" on Piano Man and Streetlife Serenade, but it's most pronounced on the Cold Spring Harbor record, which Billy himself has largely disavowed for his lack of control over the process (and, depending on who you ask, a mastering issue that pitched up the whole thing). Still, if you want to hear young Billy Joel doing his best Paul McCartney impression and figuring his style out, it's a fascinating record with some truly great songs, like "She's Got a Way" and "Everybody Loves You Now."

February 1

7 minutes ago, Montunoman 2 said:

I wonder why Liberty Divito isn’t in drums?

Oh, Billy and Liberty had a falling out in the early 2000s over some business/money stuff (and disagreements over certain members of the band, if the gossip I hear is correct). Lib hasn't played with him for more than 20 years at this point; it's been Chuck Burgi on drums in his touring band since the Buy My Box Set tour in 2006. A shame; Liberty was a huge part of Billy's sound, and the longest-serving member of his band up until that point (the only holdover from the old band when Billy cleaned house in the 80s).

February 1

59 minutes ago, BluMunk said:

Interesting... is this a first time for Joel writing a song with 3 other people?

I think it is, and also an unusual (but not unprecedented) move for him to work without any of his touring musicians. That was a big sticking point for him early in his career, and caused him to reject producers as established as James William Guercio and Sir George Martin. But he shook up his band a lot for the Storm Front album in 1989, and aquiesced to working with Danny Kortchmar's chosen players for a lot of The River of Dreams. At this point in his ongoing "I'm just going to play from the same catalog of songs that came out between 1973 and 1993" performing career, I admire him trying new things, regardless of the outcome. It can be exciting to hear an established artist get uncomfortable, though in this case the result does have most of the marks of a Billy Joel Ballad.

I had seen elsewhere that the Parisi guys were involved with this; they were heavily endorsing ROLI products and the Seaboard in particular for awhile.

I wonder if this is a Billy Joel-led project, or if the track had some other history before he got involved. I am curious what inspired him to put out a song now. Though he is wrapping up his extended residency at Madison Square Garden, so maybe he was looking for something new?

February 1

1 hour ago, David R said:

The vocals in the first verse, before they get buried in the mix, remind me of Tumbleweed Connection-era Elton. It’s nice to hear Billy singing honestly, and not doing one of his impressions.

My wife also was hearing early Elton in the vocal, which is cool because a lot of the vocals way back on Piano Man remind me of Tumbleweed Connection (I know Billy spent a long time trying to shake the Elton comparisons, to moderate, but not total, success).

The only thing really getting under my skin with the production is the vocal. His performance is great, there's just this warbly thing going on (someone leaving the pitch correction plugin on at slightly too high a level in mixing?) that I hear a LOT on older male rockers' vocals from the past 10 or 15 years (certainly Mick's vocals on the new Stones stuff, and Paul McCartney's more recent output), and it drives me insane. I'm not sure what the goal is there. It didn't make Leon Russell sound better on The Union back in 2010, sort of feels like making sure the pitch was 100% spot on misses the point of his style.

That gripe aside, I'm definitely curious about the writing process and how much of it was collaboration, and who else played on the track. I'm certainly interested what brought this on, and if there will be more. I owe so much of my musical upbringing to Billy Joel, and I'm thrilled that he felt motivated to write and release something new, since that's been an exceedingly rare treat since 1993.

February 1

16 hours ago, Adan said:

I have infinite respect for Medeski, and I would also suspect he said that tongue in cheek.

That may be so, but he's also known to be a little bit of an intense, cantankerous purist, so who can say, really! It's a different climate economically than the early days of MMW when they'd load the B3 and Leslie out of the van and the stairs into the club themselves -- and I don't imagine he does much moving Hammonds around on his own at this stage of his career...

January 31

Assuming you are starting totally from scratch, here's the first, most important lesson I had to learn to start understanding how to make this stuff work:

MIDI Out - from the device sending a message to another device -- "play this note," "switch to this patch," "open the filter."

MIDI In - for the device that is *receiving* a MIDI signal and reacting to it -- a patch change, a parameter adjustment, audio output.

Some of you might laugh, but when I started hooking up my bass pedals to control a digital organ or synth, it took me awhile to get a grip on how to connect the cable between the two! "well if the sound is coming OUT of the synth, then I need to put the MIDI into the ... no wait, that's not right ..."

January 31

My Wurlitzer 200 is one of my prized possessions. I stopped taking it to gigs for the most part after the pandemic (both to save my back and because I now have a home studio I can keep it set up in), but man, truly nothing like the real thing -- the feel, the sound, the response. Maintenance is kind of a pain though, I admit. I'd be fascinated by a Vintage Vibe-style contemporary electromechanical piano that's more reed-y than tine-y. I imagine the market would be more for mid- to upper-level touring and recording artists (and of course home use by affluent folks), than those of us carting our own gear to gigs. That seems to be how Vintage Vibe gets by, what with Stevie Wonder, Esperanza Spaulding, and John Ginty touring with their pianos and clav copies.

Interested to see where this goes!

January 31

13 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

Unpopular opinion I guess, but I hated that show. It was so mannered. It was like Seinfeld meets Golden Girls meets some random radio drama from the 1940s.

For me, as someone who got into the show 20 years after it aired, I feel like the self-importance and pomposity of Frasier and Niles is usually the butt of the joke -- their attempts at social climbing and self-aggrandizement pretty much always blow up in their faces. Though I will say, as a former English major, I'm a sucker for an arcane literary joke, and the show is full of those. Definitely less about the minutiae of everyday life than Seinfeld, which was also impeccably written, but with fewer quips about Chaucer, midcentury American theater ("Well, I wish you had lent her your Tennessee Williams biography. She wouldn't have kept forgetting his name and calling him Indiana Jones") and expensive wine.

Like all 90s sitcoms, there are some ideas and moments that have aged poorly, but it generally does pretty well compared to its peers -- it's much less homophobic than, say, Friends. And the writing is almost always stellar and erudite, like playwriting (which, if we're going to keep picking on Friends even though nobody asked, that's definitely not something you can say for that show, either).

17 hours ago, K K said:

Also, it is worth mentioning that the actor playing Niles plays piano very well. When you see him play piano in several episodes either at Frasier's or in his own fancy apartment in the show, it is actually real playing.

I love the moments when they get David Hyde Pierce to play the piano. Kelsey Grammer is always very obviously miming, but by a few seasons in they start looking for excuses for Niles to play instead of Frasier. I sang the praises of David Hyde Pierce in a previous post in this thread, but I think it's worth mentioning again how key his immense talent was to the success of the show. His physical comedy is magic (never better displayed than in the nearly-dialogue-less opening segment of the "Three Valentines" episode), and as a stage actor who has done everything from Spamalot to Sondheim, he brings a certain groundedness and finesse to a character that could otherwise be overly cartoonish, or a pale rehash of his onscreen brother.

13 hours ago, Polychrest said:

Revisiting episodes of Frasier revives one of the more challenging pub questions faced by men of a certain age: Daphne or Roz?

Listen, she might be close to my mother's age, but Peri Gilpin can still get it. 😉

January 30

Just now, CyberGene said:

Although I’m not a huge fan of the show (but the wife is mad about it and has been binge watching it every free minute for the last weeks) I watched that episode the other day since it was music related and when he said that line I laughed a lot 😀 I believe many on this forum would agree with it, right!

There's another episode where Frasier and Niles help Martin finish a song he wrote for Frank Sinatra. Season 3. Might enjoy that one as well!

January 30

54 minutes ago, K K said:

This episode is the source of one of the most quotable lines in the entire show: "if less is more, imagine how much more more would be!"

I think about that in the recording studio ... all the time.

January 30

I didn't grow up in a Frasier household (my dad was more into Seinfeld) but my wife brought a love of that show into our marriage and now it's one of my go-to comfort shows. At its best -- and it stays pretty consistently funny even through the later seasons -- it's old-school, door-slamming farce, a 22-minute Neil Simon play every episode.

Haven't been able to bring myself to watch the recent revival (let's be honest, I'm not in it for Kelsey Grammer; David Hyde Pierce *made* that show) but you can bet I'll be watching the 1996 comedy of errors "Look Before You Leap" on February 29th this year.

Oh yeah, and the swanky jazz score is pretty cool too.

January 29

Wow and the keyboard section is the tip of the iceberg. I guess if you're going to have two bass players, they might as well be John Entwistle and Stanley Clarke.

January 25

As someone who did a whole lot of movable-do solfege in college, I appreciated Mary having a Phrygian lamb there!

For real, some people get down on movable do, but those four years of sight singing helped train my ear and hear pitch relationships contextually SO much better than pure interval training ever did. My biggest leap forward in "hearing what I want to play before I play it" in my musical education.

January 24

15 hours ago, ProfD said:

The Motion Sound was made for that type of gig situation where there is no PA system and two smaller amps won't cut it.

OTOH, if a PA is provided and/or load in/out is fast or stage space is limited, it's better to use in-ears or smaller amps.

It's all about using the right tool for the job or in this case....right gear for the gig. Have a blast with that organ trio mayne.😎

The advantage of an instrumental three-piece is that it's easier to book in smaller venues that don't have the sound and stage infrastructure that some of my larger projects need to make it worthwhile.

The disadvantage of an instrumental three-piece is that so far I've been playing a lot of smaller venues that don't have the sound and stage infrastructure that some of my larger projects need to make it worthwhile! Hauling the amp is still easier than a mixer, mains, speaker stands, a bunch of mics and mic stands, and monitor wedges, I suppose. But the one actual club show we've played so far has been easier to load in, set up, and get levels, that's for sure. Baby steps!

January 23

31 minutes ago, stoken6 said:

Can you fit castors to it to make moving easier?

Not out of the question if it comes to it, and if I wind up using it often again, I may do that. With this amp it's not even so much the weight but the size and bulk of it. Trickier for loading in the car, maneuvering down narrow stairways, etc. If I need to I can carry it by one handle, but good luck fitting through a door that way!

The specs say it weighs 70 pounds but it's never felt that heavy to me, at least not the way the weight is distributed. Just harder to slide into the back of the car than the Two Amp Solution.

January 23

Thought some of y'all would find this Plight of the Gigging Musician relatable.

I got a used Motion Sound KBR-3D around 2018 so that I could run my clones through a real spinny thing (and still have stereo inputs for my other boards without having to ask for multiple lines or, god forbid, bring additional amps). It served me well onstage and even in some Leslie-less studio situations. But my eventual move to in-ear monitors, plus a post-pandemic desire to lighten my load-in/load-out, left the amp sidelined to a corner of my studio (where I now have a real Leslie 147 when I want to move air). I got the sim on my Mojo dialed in to a place where it sounded great in the in-ears and PA speakers, so why not just run everything direct on gigs and save my back? I still had my SpaceStation when I wanted quick stereo amplification for a rehearsal or vocals-only-in-the-PA gig, and that's a lot less cumbersome. So I started thinking about selling the Motion Sound.

When I started gigging in earnest with my organ trio last fall, I wasn't using the in-ears, especially since we were playing more breweries and small venues without house PAs. Still, I was getting by with the SpaceStation and my little 10" Line 6 bass amp from 2008. Yeah, two amps, but both pretty small and easy to transport. But I was struggling with a lack of focus and punch in the bass synth patches, and a shrillness in the organ I wasn't entirely happy with.

So for our gig this past weekend, I thought "what the hell, I'll run through the Motion Sound to see if it makes it any different, and if not, I'll know for sure I don't need to keep it."

You know how that story ends. Even not using the "Leslie" part of the amp and running the sim and the bass synth into the stereo inputs, there was my full, beautiful organ sound and a synth that was thumping more like a dirty old p-bass than I had been able to dial in previously.

Hooray, but also, I guess I'm back to lugging a big hefty amp around for these gigs! At least it's only one of them now, and I can leave it at home when there's a PA with subs at the venue... so it can continue to take up space in my studio rather than my wallet. Life is tough. 😉

January 22

Shame the video isn't on YouTube anymore -- find it if you can -- but this is the audio of the same performance. Kofi Burbridge's playing on this Stevie Wonder cover was a game changer for me when I first heard it in college. He does the Stevie rhythmic funk clav thing, but he also goes beyond that and makes the instrument sing like a second guitar (complementing Derek Trucks brilliantly) in a way I hadn't heard previously. It really shaped my approach to playing clavinet. The whole performance is worth listening to, but Kofi's solo creeps in around 3:30.

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