SamuelBLupowitz
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Posts posted by SamuelBLupowitz
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Personally, I find adding keys to a song that doesn't have keys on the original recording to be one of my favorite challenges. I've done many of the things that have been mentioned on this thread (but seriously, no keys on Whole Lotta Love?! There's that whole freak-out middle section where you can make every weird, cacophonous sound imaginable!), and Benmont Tench was one of the first guys to turn me on to the power of guitar-style voicings on the organ to add a little grandeur.
For that particular Soundgarden song you mentioned, I can totally hear some atmospheric, Rami Jaffee-style 90s Hammond licks on the intro and pads behind the solo, and some simple electric piano chords behind the main verse riff. Just some footballs and maybe an occasional fill or riff double. Honestly, Rami Jaffee is a great person to look to for this kind of gig -- aside from his iconic time in the Wallflowers, I think about how well he gets paid to stand up there with the Foo Fighters and be inaudible 90% of the time...
Since it's appropriate to this discussion, I'm going to share the not-for-public-consumption video evidence of the time my little soul-rock band covered Metallica's Master of Puppets for a Halloween show. I did, in fact, run my Wurlitzer through a Big Muff. At one point, a coked-out audience member tried to take the mic away from my wife. It was pretty silly, but it was fun.
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16 minutes ago, Floyd Tatum said:
I wonder who was the first male rock musician or singer to do the androgynous thing? I'm thinking maybe Mick Jagger? Possibly the Beatles because of the "hair like a girl" thing, but I don't think that's what they were going for. . . . Was their someone before him?
Little Richard, baby!
There's a whole historical/racial/social context for that, but probably outside the scope of what should be discussed on this forum.
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Had a pleasant surprise this week when my primary project's festival set from June showed up (mostly) in full on YouTube:
Sound mix gets a little funny (not sure if it's a board mix or camera audio, but there is not a lot of information below, like, 120 Hz), and there are some very silly video editing choices (plus the overall "VHS" look of the whole thing, which I find quite endearing, actually). And of course there are a handful of sour harmonies and flubs here and there that I wouldn't have chosen to Officially Release myself. But it's always nice to unexpectedly watch your own performance and go "hey, we're a really good band!" He even got the majority of our 25-minute mini-rock-opera, "At the Festival," which we performed in full.
I've got this three-board rig pretty well dialed in at this point -- the Yamaha CP88 for Wurli, grand piano, and a little bit of clav; Mojo XT for Hammond; and Korg Prologue 8 for all things synth. My talkbox tube was AWOL (this was my third set of four that afteroon and it just wound up in the wrong case), so I make do with a straightahead synth solo. Anyway, I hope y'all enjoy!
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I actually covered Heat Above backing up a local female vocalist a couple of years ago. I will say the experience, for me, is improved by having a less testosterone-laden voice singing it. 😉 A couple of tricky little rhythmic things in the instrumental transitions, too! Cool tune, fun keys parts.
The Led Zeppelin aesthetic is strong with this band, especially on the earliest material where their Management or their People or whoever decided to really lean into it, which wound up being very polarizing. But I try to put myself in the position of what my music would have sounded like and how I would have presented myself if *I* had gotten a major-label record contract when I was 15. It would have been pretty derivative, too. And I would have been trying to sing a lot higher than I had any right to, just to show off. Fortunately for me (and for everyone else), I had more time to develop before anyone heard any of my recordings.
Another note on their Zeppelin imitation: props to their keyboard player, who is also their bass player, covering the low end on the organ pedals (even on the studio recording -- my bass player buddy and I had a long discussion about whether or not there was an actual bass guitar part when we covered it for the aforementioned singer). Even with simple parts, that takes some woodshedding.
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I remember the point in my 20s when I realized I didn't have to tolerate playing with bad drummers anymore; that I'd rather not take a gig than play with someone I'd have to fight all night long (I feel this way as a keyboard player but it goes double when I'm playing bass).
I've played bass, on and off, with a particular local singer-songwriter for over a decade; most of the rest of his band is a rotating cast. Plenty of nice guys came through the drum chair, but they were always strong in certain grooves and weak in others. Some fresh blood came in and I was all set to move from bass to keys until we played with the new drummer one time and I insisted I keep playing bass so I could finally do the job without having to struggle to keep the pocket.
Anyway. A great drummer is nothing to take for granted. The really good ones make you play better, or at least sound like you're better than you are. And a subpar guy can make the best collection of pros sound amateur. I've been lucky enough to play with some incredible musicians behind the kit.
That said, I would walk through fire to play with any one of the people on @SteveNathan's list...
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4 minutes ago, Delaware Dave said:
I would highly doubt that anyone is going to say "hey, they're doing the Lee Moses version of Day Tripper, how come the keyboard player used a hammond rather than a Vox organ?".
Sure, of course not. I don't see trying to nail a specific recorded sound as something you do for the audience at all; it's something you do for the development of your ear, and your own personal satisfaction. I see it as the same reason @Josh Paxton advocates for learning to play "Superstition" as close to how Stevie did it as possible. Sure, you can just sort of fake it, or adapt the part to your own style, and people will still recognize and dig it. But getting inside of another musician's approach leads to discovery and additional tools in your toolbox, even if what you take away from it is "wow, I hate it and definitely would never play it that way myself."
TL;DR: Knowledge is Good.
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9 hours ago, bill5 said:
I don't advocate piracy, but stuff like this softens my viewpoint on it as the system is only encouraging it.
I grew up in the era of Napster and "you wouldn't download a car;" the implication being that pirating music and films harm their creators by keeping them from making a living from their art.
Now the same people who made those ads are doing their best to avoid compensating creators and performers for their work, hence, the SAG-AFTRA and Writer's Guild strikes (if only songwriters and musicians were that organized). So, it was never really about taking care of the people who actually *make* things, was it?
Art, culture, and history is far more important to humanity than the bank balance of the people who own, control, and fund the systems of distribution with little to no regard for the work or its creators. I have no problem robbing the robber barons. The trick is building a system that actually works for the creators and their audiences. Certainly this is within the realm of our collective imaginations and execution... but if it can't make some already rich people richer, it's tough to get off the ground under the current circumstance. I think the desire and the talent is there in our society, if we can manage to kick some old habits and ways of thinking to the curb.
On a side note, I am happy to know a few professional archivists/librarians who find ways to preserve film, television, etc that otherwise might be lost to time. They deserve a shareholder bonus! 😉
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Agreed with all of the above re: Day Tripper and the transistor organ.
Reach Out sounds like it could be a Hammond with the vibrato on and a really shouty drawbar setting, can't tell if there's any spin on the Leslie or not. It seems a bit fuller than the organ on the other track, but it definitely sounds like what I do when I'm trying to get my Hammond to sound more like a transistor organ, if we're doing a Doors cover or something like that.
There are definitely some sharper ears for that sort of thing than me on the forum, though, just wanted to make sure we addressed the first part of your question.
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On 8/29/2023 at 12:22 PM, Old No7 said:
That guy in the bed will be gone in a day or two anyway.
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My doctor put me on Vitamin D a little over a year ago after noticing my levels were extremely low. She added the caveat: "the medical community has no idea what anyone's vitamin D should like like, or when we should check on it, or where it should actually be. I could tell you if you were a post menopausal Caucasian woman how much higher yours should be. But you're not, so I'm going to have you take this much and we'll check again in a year." She then told me a very funny story which I will do my best to paraphrase here:
"Before Covid, Vitamin D was the new, trendy thing that medical researchers were into. I know of a doctor -- probably from some cold, miserable, northeastern industrial town -- who actually got research funding to go live in a beach community for two years and use surfers as a baseline for the extremes of how much vitamin D a person should have. They figured, they're out in the sun all the time, that should tell us something. But the levels were STILL all over the place." So it established nothing, other than that if you're good enough at writing grant proposals, you can move to a beach community for two years on an institutional dime.
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On 6/8/2019 at 7:36 AM, psionic11 said:
My drummer's main gig is with bagpipe band Off Kilter. Their kitsch is Celtic flavored rock covers and originals. They do several annual outdoor gatherings here in Central Florida.
Oh wow, I don't know if he would have been their drummer 15 years ago, but a buddy and I caught one of their sets at a Disney park on a trip our senior year of high school and had a great time, bought their CD and everything. Nice bunch of dudes. Glad to hear they're still kicking.
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17 hours ago, stoken6 said:
Great playing, and I see the mixer is maintaining the (dis)honoured tradition of having keys too low in the mix.
Cheers, Mike.
Indeed, though in his defense, that band is loud AF and I think the camera being that close to the stage is getting more stage volume than house mix, since the mains are off to the sides (you can hear the lead vocal not quite cutting as loud as it should either). Since I’m running direct (and the talkbox goes through the vocal mic), everything from the stage is drums and guitars.
I’m still happier running direct than lugging an amp!-
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1 hour ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:
the aforementioned Rocky Mountain Way cover (of which there is unfortunately no video)
Spoke too soon! A friend got a little bit of the tune so I thought I'd share.
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11 hours ago, Iconoclast said:
I was window shopping talk boxes and came across this demo on the Sweetwater site. It's not Rocky Mountain Way, but it sure looks more credible than I would have thought.
Yes, that's the one I own. It's a solid box and way less complicated than the old-school "needs an amplifier head to drive it" style. I usually use it with a synth, but the aforementioned Rocky Mountain Way cover (of which there is unfortunately no video) was on a gig where I just had piano and organ, so I made do.
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17 hours ago, Stokely said:
Way less than $300, 3 of the 4 singers in our band use Sennheiser e935s. These are great mics. The e835 isn't bad, these add more "air" and clarity to the sound. I noticed the difference right away when I upgraded.
My wife is an incredibly skilled, dynamic vocalist with a very warm, rich voice, and 58s accent the warmth to the point of muddiness and lose the sparkle on top. She's tried a few different live mics, but her recent acquisition of an e935 is the first time she's ever felt truly satisfied about what's coming through the monitors when she's singing with a band.
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I just played keys on a cover of this song in a rock band I gig with from time to time -- I actually took the talkbox solo myself, so the way I approached the section was to play an overdriven Wurli patch which I split in parallel to the talkbox. Start off with the filtered groove part, then copped the guitar lines after establishing it. Not exactly like the record, but the audience loved it.
So I guess what I'm saying is "one-up your guitar player and get a talkbox." 🤣
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All right, I've been looking forward to sharing this one.
https://mandygoldman.bandcamp.com/album/balance-of-the-trade
My wife's debut solo album is available now on Bandcamp, a real labor of love, and I'm so proud of her. I contribute significantly as a sideman on keys and bass, but this is her baby, and I'm so excited for people to finally hear her gorgeous singing and songwriting.
Official release on all major streaming platforms forthcoming; I'll drop a reminder when it's on Spotify and such. And if you're around central New York this weekend, there will be a release show at Deep Dive in Ithaca on Sunday the 13th at 7pm.
I hope you enjoy!
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This is an interesting suggestion! I think you're right that this would end up being higher value, and certainly make the works more widely accessible. But it might be a hard sell -- as a consumer, my kneejerk reaction is that the idea of having to constantly assent to little transactions sounds *incredibly* annoying. Not as frustrating as the big-picture of subscribing to multiple services with increasing amounts of ads and higher cost for gradually worse versions of the original product, but, more frequent. I think I'd probably take it, ultimately, but one of the big apparent conveniences that the current streaming model offers over the Legal Download model of my teen years is the set-it-and-forget-it aspect of the transaction. It's not "do I want to pay for this particular TV show/album, or save it for something else?" It's "now I have access to all of this as much as I want this month and I don't have to think about it anymore!" It's way more of a dopamine hit, and way less stress (because having to think about your bank account is stressful!) than a la carte would be.
Zooming out, though, I think the real problems with streaming platforms stem from, simply, greed. They make enough to pay the creators better, these six different corporations don't HAVE to all be in competition with each other, years of creative work doesn't have to be shuffled into the abyss just for tax writeoff purposes. The power of the technology means we could have a magnificent, accessible digital library of television, film, and recorded music for all of humanity. And everyone still gets paid for their contribution to creating the work and maintaining the interface.
But resolving those issues would involve some larger *ahem* structural overhauls on a government/social level, so... it's not like I see my approach being implemented as an alternative to the current model at this moment...
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On 8/5/2023 at 10:03 AM, Delaware Dave said:
who cares ....
I mean, I wouldn't say no to Freddie Mercury's piano if I were the kind of person who could afford to buy music legends' instruments.
Which, I'm not. I'm not that kind of person.
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My condolences, friend. The weather has really been disconcerting and disruptive to my outdoor gigs this summer, between the erratic thunderstorms and the wildfire smoke. I played a big outdoor show opening for a Moderately Famous Band earlier this month; pro stage, crew, production, the whole bit. Showers forecasted for close to set time. What was not in the forecast was a torrential thunderstorm that kicked in right as we were starting to soundcheck (hours before it was predicted), blowing over tents, drenching the stage, calling the whole event into question. We were able to get a lot of our equipment covered and/or out of the way, and things cleared up in time for the show to go on less than half an hour later than scheduled, but I was drying out cases (for once wishing I had heavier road cases instead of padded soft ones) and accessories for a couple of days afterward.
The bandleader, already anxious about the show going well (because he has had a LOT of weather-related issues with gigs this summer, which has been translating as "lots of lost income and damaged gear"), was exclaiming to no one in particular, "how did none of the weather reports see this coming AT ALL?" An older gentleman on the crew leaned over and said "well, the temperature and moisture in the atmosphere are very different than they were even ten years ago. They just can't predict these intense storms anymore."
So much to look forward to as a gigging musician! Anyway, this is one reason I have a whole-house industrial dehumidifier installed in my home.
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16 hours ago, Stokely said:
re: the homophobia (and applies to political views)...I try not to learn too much about artists and authors whose work I really like. I tend to stay away from documentaries and the like for that reason. I should probably be better at keeping the two separate but I let one affect the other, so my solution is that of the fabled ostrich
It's tricky! And I don't want to dwell on the social issues/politics on this forum and keep things light and gear-oriented, but I did want to offer my perspective that for me, learning about what makes my favorite (and less favorite) artists tick, the positive and the negative, helps provide insight to me about what makes the art happen. Human beings are full of hope and flaws and inconsistencies, and I find all of that very compelling. John Bonham was apparently a very kind, caring, loving family man as well as, at times, an out-of-control monster. There are countless stories of bad behavior and ego and self-destruction violence from people who also have reputations of being full of integrity and commitment and kindness. The demands of being a touring artist (or public creative figure of any kind) in our society don't necessary bring out the best in people, and I find the underlying humanity that produces the art to be a fascinating element of a complex picture.
Of course, sometimes I just want to dance to Billie Jean and not think too hard about any of that other stuff. It's allowed!
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My younger brother was a huge Styx fan in his teens, so I wound up listening to them a lot sort of by proxy. Some great, great songs, terrific vocals, and killer arrangements, especially once Tommy Shaw came on board after the first four records. Years ago, I read bassist Chuck Panozzo's memoir, and he was diplomatic but firm about the falling out between Dennis DeYoung and the rest of the band in the 90s. While Chuck didn't point any specific fingers, he made clear that there was an atmosphere of homophobia within the band that kept him closeted for many years (I've always wondered if the quiet drummer in Almost Famous was a reference to this). I'm sure that was commonplace in many rock bands of the period, but it's an interesting facet of a band that seemed to straddle a line between "all-American arena band" in the vein of Boston or REO Speedwagon, and "over-the-top theatrical rock act" a la Elton or Queen or even ELP. It seems like Dennis, increasingly to the rest of the band's chagrin, was the driving force between the theatrical side.
All that's to say, very cool to learn more about the gear that Dennis used to craft all those layered keyboard arrangements! That Fooling Yourself lead line is probably one of my earliest inklings that synthesizers could be more than just a boring, mushy pad underpinning my favorite 60s and 70s artists as they dragged themselves through the 80s.
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I have a Morley wah pedal (actually a "distortion wah volume") that the drummer in my high school band bought me as a gift when he got an unexpected bonus at work. I have gotten a ton of use out of it over the years, beyond its initial "I wanna be Cliff Burton" application as a bass player (though I have played in a couple of bands where I've paired it with a Big Muff, and boy does it make the Metallica happen).
The little bit of grit the wah alone gives makes it awesome on clavinet; I love a snarly, bitey wah tone for that. I've messed around with flange on the clav as well, and even a Digitech Polara reverb pedal with some out there "shimmer" and "reverse" effects. I've used phaser pedals on my Wurlitzer, and even used the fuzz on that once -- not a ton of definition, but great for a really over-the-top sonic punch in the face.
And of course, if anything can be sent through a Leslie, it will be sent through a Leslie. That is, of course, even more unwieldy than an effects pedal, but it's one of the fun parts of having a home studio.
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I'm going to re-share this from a similar thread over at the Keyboard Corner, because I just love telling this story.
My #1 "surprisingly good" show was Weird Al Yankovic. I'd been a casual fan for years (because what's not to like about Weird Al?) but not a diehard or anything. But the summer of 2010, I was home on break from college, and the local newspaper was doing a mail-in sweepstakes for free tickets to see Weird Al at the theater downtown. First prize was two front row tickets and a meet-and-greet. Second prize was two second row tickets and a meet-and-greet; this went all the way back to about the tenth row. I thought to myself, "how many people who read the newspaper in Reading, PA are going to actually bother to mail in for tickets to a Weird Al concert?"
So I wound up in the fifth or sixth row with a buddy, and let me tell you: I never would have gone to that show if I had to buy the tickets, but after seeing Al once, I will go see him any time he comes around. He sings like an angel, he plays the hell out of the accordion, his band is absolute fire, and they put on SUCH a performance (costumes! acrobatics! video screens!). After the show, we did get a quick hello and photo op with Al, who is very polite but very quiet and shy. My friend did wind up talking shop with Al's longtime guitarist, Jim West, for about half an hour. What a great night!
Greta van Fleet
in The Keyboard Corner
Posted
David Bowie's dead, so you can't take it up with him about how "straight" Mick Jagger actually is...
Coincidentally, happy Bisexuality Awareness Week to all who celebrate. 🦄