SamuelBLupowitz

I think as keyboard players, we have a head start as far as understanding harmony and how basslines work in relation to chords and melodies. In my playing, there's definitely been a feedback loop, though. A few years back my wife and I played a trio show on the road in NYC; the instrumentation was just vocals, drums, and keys, and I leaned pretty hard on organ in that arrangement. I remember a very touching compliment from a friend of my wife's who came to the show, a professional musical theater pianist with far greater technical skill and sight-reading chops than me. He was so impressed that my left-hand bass actually sounded like a bass. I'm sure the first-four-out drawbar setting helped, but I think it's more about how I played than the tone. I'm not the world's greatest left-hand bass player, and I think I'd often be better served by playing more simply than I would when both of my bands are occupied by a bass; my instinct is to go all James Jamerson over everything. But years of listening to, and practicing, that role in a band has definitely given me a leg up in that setting.

The first gig offer that came on the table for one of my bands, maybe a month ago, was a backyard wedding ("barbecue themed," they said; I didn't realize that was a "theme" but hey, maybe they had a grill-shaped cake topper). Since it was just as people were starting to step out from quarantine a bit and none of my bandmates had seen each other, we were feeling conflicted over "don't want to get sick" and "want to play a gig" -- because unlike playing a festival or something run by professionals, people who throw together events and decide they want some live music at the last minute (the wedding date was August 1st) they tend not to think basic logistics, like adequate power, and shelter from inclement weather. And a wedding, well, no matter how much the band is "socially distanced" from the audience, how long into the four- or five-hour affair will it be before hammered groomsmen are yelling a foot from the guitarist's face? After a little bit of hesitant back and forth on the band text thread, our trumpet player figured out the wise course of action. "Ask them what their budget for music is," he said. "I bet that's the last you hear from them." He should have put money on that bet. :wink:

Bass is my other main axe; I would have called myself a much more serious bassist than keyboard player for many years, until I started getting more and more keys gigs about ten years ago. I picked up the drums early on, then mostly dropped them (outside of middle/high school concert and marching band) once I started playing bass in bands, and now I'm trying to get some chops back since I have room and privacy to set up my kit in the new house.

Outdoor only (or indoor livestreams without a physical audience), and even then it depends on the commitment of the venue/event organizers to maintaining the guidelines set by the health department. None of my regular projects are ready to gig right now -- still too many folks who want to abstain from crowds due to high-risk partners, which is totally understandable -- so everything I've agreed to is for guest appearances and side projects at this point.

All right friends, buckle your seat belts. Short version: pending a diagnosis from my tech, this is happening. I'm so psyched. Longer, more measured version: Prepare yourself, because it looks disgusting. I've attached two photos, and included a few more at this link. There is a lot of accumulated filth to be seen, but it's not as bad as it looks. The A100 and the 147 have been very literally collecting dust for maybe 20 years. I'm glad I wasn't planning on trying to start it up, because there are layers of dust and cobwebs coating the exterior and the electronics, since the cabinets have been wide open for the two decades it's been in this attic space. The bright side of that is it was easy to peek around inside, and since they haven't been particularly dark and secluded spaces, it doesn't look like anything other than the spider architects have been taking up residence; there were no droppings in sight. That said, I dropped a bunch of cedar mothballs in and around the interiors to sit while I figure out logistics for transport, just in case. My buddy was wishing he had brought his shop vac, but other than light cleaning and sweeping out, I want to be careful about getting into the electronics so that we don't mess anything up before the tech can see what's what. So yeah, it looks gross, but a lot of it wiped right off with a brush; a little wood cleaner will do some wonders on the cabinet, and a light natural cleaner or even a damp cloth should get the stickier grime off the keys. I will probably do a little of that before moving it (my tech does charge by the hour, after all...). The tech will have a tougher time dealing with it on the wires and components. Two or three keys are drooping a bit, or a little sticky, and some of the drawbars squeak when moved, but everything still moves and plays, including the knobs, tabs, and preset keys (physically I mean; again, didn't power it up) so hopefully those components just need some TLC. One of the tubes had a bent connector and was hanging out of the socket slightly; I removed it since it seemed like an accident waiting to happen. There's a speed-change switch mounted underneath the lower manual, around middle C, pointing towards the floor, which I guess makes sense since the thing was going in and out of clubs all the time and Neal didn't want to have to take a normal half-moon on and off. I'll either get used to it or figure something else out. The 147 was connected with a Leslie cable; I didn't think to check for a line in/out installed until I got back and saw Dave Doerfler's comment (the one photo I took of that with my phone is of course out of focus... there's a reason I stick to auditory art instead of visual). Neal wasn't the original owner of this rig, so there may have been some mods done before he got it. But if it's just the 6-pin cable for now, I will be perfectly happy just using the A100 through the Leslie for awhile. I can keep an eye out for a Leslie/Trek II/Speakeasy preamp down the line to plug other things in if I like, and use my Motion Sound for that stuff in the meantime. That's putting the cart before the horse at this point. Also present: bass pedals and bench (with the original service manual inside!). The bass pedals lifted right up and out as intended for transport. Still need to check if the tone generator is locked... there was no cell service out there for me to double-check a diagram, and today was mostly about moving the piles of junk obstructing the gear, clearing a path, and making sure everything was accounted for. Speaking of making a path: the stairs these need to go down are narrow, as you can see in one of the attached photos. I had envisioned one person on each of the four corners of the organ to move it, but I don't know if that will be physically possible. Neal said he moved it up there one step at a time with two people, and it wasn't too bad. He had moved the 147 up the stairs by himself. I'm hoping that going down will be similar... once it's down the stairs and around the corner, it's mostly a straight shot to the driveway. I measured just in case, but sadly, the A100 will not fit in my CRV. Fortunately, my friends with a trailer are very appreciative that I learned their tunes and sat in with them at their outdoor gig the other night, so they volunteered to help me cart the rig to and from the tech ("No gas money needed. How about you track a song in the studio with the Hammond someday though? Deal???"). How will I ever meet all these demands placed upon me? [wink] But yeah, it's going to be quite a project for both me and (especially) my tech, but again, if he can get it running and clean up some of the internal detritus -- and there aren't too many issues with the components from sitting in the grime for so long -- it will be worth the time and money. I'm hoping he doesn't get in there and discover that a bunch of things are totally shot, but again, I'm trying to be optimistic that this baby will finally get the love and care it deserves under my watch. I'll keep all y'all posted!

Yeah, after their tickets started selling the band decided to hire the local production company to do sound and lights so we weren"t running our own sound. One of the silver linings of Covid times is that since nobody can travel, you get the a-listers when you make the call, and they are thrilled to be working to put on a show for anybody. In addition to the pretty lights, it was a beautiful thing hearing the guitarist balanced perfectly with my keys in my IEMs so we could go all Keith-and-Ronnie during the jammier sections.

Going over to check out the organ later this morning. Very excited. My guitarist"s father (the owner) will be there with us, which eases my mind a bit, since he carted the thing around to gigs in the 70s. Apparently it"s going to be quite a project to clean the space out enough to move it... ah well, doing the lord"s work. Again, this is just a fact-finding mission before any actual moving occurs. Some tidbits I missed: apparently I misread the original message about the type of Leslie he has. It is not a 122, but a 147. Wowee. Also, the A100 has the bass pedals. Expect pictures soon.

I also just played my first gig since March. My wife and I are rounding out the 'quarantine lineup' of a local touring band (not touring right now) that I played keys for from 2015-16. They organized a limited, ticketed show in the giant backyard of the married singer and guitarist. It was a blast, and very emotional. Also great to finally have a band rehearsal in the home studio (albeit with all the doors and windows open for ventilation, but folks got tested the week prior so we felt safe about it). It"s very funny how much more perplexing load-in/load-out and setup/teardown are when you haven"t been doing it regularly. 'Oh right, I need a cable for that. Did I bring enough cables? Usually they"re all in my bag. Did I put them in my bag? Man I"m glad I live ten minutes from the venue.'

Update on yesterday"s gig using an iPad-based synth setup. All things considered, it went well. Like I said, the gig mostly relied on Hammond (my Mojo) and Wurlitzer (a Wurlitzer), but a bunch of the songs had simple but crucial synth parts. I mostly used Model D for mono synths and pads as it"s the best sounding and most reliable synth app I have â Volt and OB-Xd have too many issues with MIDI and/or CPU management, and Synth One is great but doesn"t have the je ne sais quois for me. I used Roli Noise for a few patches that I wanted more MPE expression, like some Peter Gabriel flute action, and my beloved Funk VoxBox Bass patch. Noise has no MIDI compatibility, so I have to wrap it in AUM to change patches and parameters with Keystage. I used Keystage as a wrapper for midi control and set list management. Keystage is definitely what makes using these apps in a gig setting possible. I only have two gripes, one minor and one major. The minor one: when I try to use the app"s very handy XY control surface to control parameters in model D on certain patches, I get crazy zippering, to the point that it"s essentially unusable. The major gripe (not entirely a problem with the app itself): my AirTurn pedal that I use to move through patches in Mainstage is really a Bluetooth keyboard and doesn"t send midi messages, so it didn"t work with Keystage. Which meant that every time a new song or section came up, I had to use a hand to stab at the iPad and hope I got the button. Keystage also gives you an alert message in set list mode to confirm that you definitely want to load the next song in the set; forgetting about that or not hitting 'ok' just right led to some close shaves starting certain tunes. Sound check was smooth; during the set, Noise was unresponsive off the bat (No Peter Gabriel flute) and had to reload AUM to get it working. The biggest frustration happened during the final song, which has a calliope-like synth hook in the outro I had been looking forward to unleashing â somehow, Model D transposed the patch up a fourth (!). I"ve had that happen to me when using that app with the Seaboard and Mainstage; I think it has something to do with the seaboard pitch bend messages not returning to zero, but I couldn"t get it back to center during the song and had to play the part on the other organ manual, which didn"t have quite the same effect. It was a bummer and I"d like to figure out how to stop it from happening in the future. All things considered, though, I"m glad I gave it a go; I have a few more gigs with this band while they"re off the road this summer so I"ll keep building on this rig. I"m glad I decided to try this out, because my MacBook died the day before the gig; if I"d been planning on using Mainstage I"d have been SOL. And even when things don"t go as planned, I could always rely on a talkbox solo to make the band and the audience happy... Also, MAN it was good to play in front of people again.

Add me to the Mike Finnegan Appreciation Club. When my band started covering Wooden Ships, I modeled the Hammond part after a live version from his tenure in CSN, down to the guitar/organ dueling solos at the end. He"s one of the players that made me really want to get a dual manual organ, after watching how he"d integrate both manuals of the B3 into his solos. Doesn"t he play on a track on Electric Ladyland too?

So here"s a fun thing that"s happening now that I have a dedicated music space: friends reaching out to see if I can hang onto fun toys they don"t currently have room for. A drummer friend texted me last week, asking if I"d be interested in holding onto his grandfather"s 'Gibson organ from the mid-sixties' for a year or so until he has a place for it. He sent me a picture of the case, and that gave me enough to go on to figure out it was probably a Gibson G-101 combo organ. I was correct. He brought it over yesterday, and it"s in amazing shape â seems to be fully functional, down to the expression pedal with pitch-bending side switch. It"s a super cool piece of history and I will enjoy having it available and finding uses for it in recording projects. Combo organs aren"t normally so much my bag, but having the real thing around is irresistible. I also feel I have an obligation to set my Rhodes Piano Bass on it and learn some Doors songs.

That makes three of us.

All the more reason NOT to try to start it there. A simple problem might become an expensive one. . . . The impulse to fire would be in the case I am buying one "as is" and I don't want to overpay. But that's not in play here. That"s what I needed to hear. Thank you. I"ll take some pictures when I scope it out this weekend to share with y"all, and I"ll be patient and start figuring out how I"m going to get it serviced!

I own a headset mic, and it would be the fix for a number of my performance frustrations, but it just doesn't do it for me. There's something about the look that doesn't work for me -- I think it's sort of like a keytar, in that it's an effective solution to an age-old problem that comes out looking either retro, sci-fi/futuristic/high tech, or kitchy depending on the setting. Any and all of those things work for some folks, but none of them really suit my general stage presentation. Particularly when I'm singing lead, it feels weird not to have something to sing into (even Peter Gabriel will use a dummy handheld or boom mic when he has a headset mic on, and I'd say his musical style lends itself more to that sort of thing). It's kind of my loss, though, because it would really help with my L-configuration of keyboards and my talkbox...

I went with SampleWiz. It's nowhere near as powerful as Samplr, but I find the interface fun and relatively easy to get around. I really should give Samplr another try, though... Can any of you folks recommend a sample player/pad app that runs as AUV3 or at least inter-app audio, can MIDI learn, run background audio, and allows you to load your own samples? Not necessarily looking to do a ton of on-the-fly manipulation, but some of my projects involve some dialogue samples and such that I trigger from Mainstage on my MacBook rig (usually triggered by a patch change or a bass pedal note or something), so I'd love to have that functionality available to me on iOS. Maybe Samplr will do the trick, but it's definitely more than I necessarily need (though I'm not averse to playing with it, certainly...). I've looked into a few sample pad-style apps, but a lot of them don't play well with others.

This was wild, and a treat to read. Shared it with another prog fan/keyboard player I know, and we both really zoomed in on this excerpt: I love that through all the excess, he kept a sense of humor and mostly just wanted to make outrageous music with his old buddies.

I'm always struck by songs with interpretations so iconic, even the songwriter has to capitulate to playing it that way. This song is the most obvious example (I'm pretty sure I remember reading about Mason getting cranky with Paul Shaffer for doing this arrangement instead of the original at Traffic's Rock Hall induction, but maybe that was Winwood) but I know there are others. Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower (hey, Dave Mason's present there too, isn't he?) might qualify, insofar as Bob Dylan sticks to any arrangement of anything. Fun performance, great lineup... but for the next one, maybe they could ease off the Melodyne? They're old rockers. It's weirder when everything has that shimmery, pitch-corrected gloss than if they just left it alone or tweaked one or two problem notes. I really dig that CP88 (plus that pretty ripping piano solo from McDonald; I always forget that on top of his iconic voice he can really play, beyond typical singer-songwriter piano). If I were in the market for a new stage piano this would continue to sell me on it. Of course, given Eric's observation above ... maybe he's controlling a VST with MIDI-over-Bluetooth.

I don't think I'd ever heard this tune, but so many things about it really do just scream "mid-70s," with the mix of prog and arena rock, the instrument tones, the vocal harmony breakdowns... even those dry drums that seemed to be required in any studio that Zeppelin wasn't in during that decade. Thanks for the share, I loved it.

Man, I love steel guitar (pedal or otherwise)... anything with a slide, honestly. One of these days I'll learn. For now the $10 Yonac Steel Guitar app on my iPad gets me by when I need a laugh.

My wife and I had talked very seriously about moving to NYC for a couple of years after college, and you are describing one of several reasons we ultimately decided against it.

Agree with Ed here if you are not going to try to turn it on until after it has been moved Very helpful. So with all this info, here's what I'm looking for feedback on: should I see if it's in working order after oiling so I can consider the option of taking it straight to my place (after letting it sit with mothballs for a few days), or should I plan on taking it to my tech regardless, and make all the necessary arrangements? When I go this weekend to inspect it, I am very tempted to oil and try to power the organ on before moving it (assuming it doesn't look like there are major animal problems), just to see what sounds come out and if I need to make taking it to a tech the first priority. But from what I'm hearing from a few of you, it makes more sense to be patient, move it, and perhaps take it to my tech before anything else (or at least take the time to do a thorough once-over before powering it up). I'm pretty sure once I see the stairs I'll want to hire movers to handle them, but if I need to transport the organ and the Leslie out to my tech and back once it's on solid ground, I can probably call in some favors to help load it and drive it (I have a few musician friends with vans for precisely this purpose, and at least one of you fine forum folks has offered to lend me dollies). My tech is reasonable and the money is really not a major concern for me in this instance, given that I'm not paying anything for the rig. But in an ideal world, I oil it, it powers up at the house, we find a time to move it in in a week or two, and everything's hunky dory. We're not in an ideal world, and given the pandemic circumstances, if I can avoid finding two occasions to rent/borrow a van and a stout friend or two, I will. Fortunately, the upshot of everything other than an absolute worst case scenario is that I get an A100 and a 122 for mad cheap, so if I have to deal with some extra logistics, it will be worth it. But if the organ can take one trip instead of three, I'd gladly accept that, of course.

Okay, well, my guitarist and I are going to head over sometime this coming weekend to check out the situation with the A100 and 122, see if they're currently able to power on, put some mothballs inside, etc. Assuming all is manageable, we'll figure out if we want to get some ROKs and a couple of extra friends, or just hire some movers to get the A100 down the stairs and transport it to my place. Might take the Leslie right away, if possible; I can always leave it in our garage with mothballs in it before bringing it into the studio. But I'll see how I feel about it when we get there. I don't want to get too carried away... Trying to keep my expectations measured as far as things needing to be serviced and other potential challenges, but I'm in semi-disbelief and seriously excited that I might soon have a vintage Hammond and Leslie in my home. I've wanted that since I was a teenager. Since it'll be a few days before I can get in there and take a look, any other tips or things I should be ready for? There are a lot of good pointers on dB's thread about acquiring his A100 and I've been reading through them. I can check and see if the tone generator is locked down when I get there and have the appropriate tools... should I make sure I have some oil ready to go, perhaps? Is there any danger in trying to start them up where they are if they've been sitting unused for a few years? Thanks everyone for your input. It's been very helpful! Love this forum.

As someone who has watched a lot of Billy Joel concerts and interviews, I didn"t doubt that was him for a second. He"s known to show up at random in non-celebrity situations, sort of like Bill Murray but not as comfortable with the fact that he"s an eccentric famous person. He"s always wanted people to see him as One of Them like Springsteen.

I'm still considering paying some stout fellows so as to avoid a flesh wound.

By the way, other interested parties, these are the two best threads I've found on these issues: dB's A100 moving thread - https://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/2875163/1 Moving a Leslie 122 - https://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/1811611/Re_Transporting_a_Leslie_122 But your personal responses to my situation are helpful and getting me excited. Gotta make sure my wife is down with the Hammond before I get too carried away.