Docbop

Being I spent most my life as a guitar and bass player changing preamp tubes is just part of finding your sound. I've put higher gain tubes in bass amps for more bite and lower gain ones in amp I used for Jazz. Tube amps are interesting beasts in tube, transformer, capacitor, and speaker changes and change the personality of the amp. Then the tube added for reverb and vibrato adds a touch of gain. Or like the Deluxe Reverb the Normal channel sounds better at least to me because it doesn't have that "bright" capacitor on the second channel. Many Deluxe Reverb users clip one leg of that capasitor to get rid of the Bright sound. That the nice thing about playing guitar is you find a nice guitar and amp and then you experiment and tweak it to be exactly like you want. Acoustic pianists with $$$ get to do that getting the action changed, but with digital keyboards they are what they are and if you don't like it you buy another brand or model.

Most the tube bass amps traditionally the company takes a guitar amp that had the wattage they wanted then remove reverb and-or tremolo and then change the tone stack to hit frequencies better for bass. Like the old Fender Bassman that is so popular is a Fender Bandmaster changed like I described. Ampeg did the same and others. So really same amp with a slightly different tone stack. Even some SS amps the guitar amp heads they modded the same way.

The last tube amp I had I think would be a good amp for Wurlie. Fender does these Special Run amps now and then and I had a Special Run 65 Princeton reissue with a 12" speaker, it was great sounding amp.

Well it seems your saying lot of keyboard and a LOT of bass so here's one of Scott Storch's famous tracks on keyboard.

I can't imagine wanting a different sound on stage than what FOH is amplifying to the room. Sure in a session you know what your playing is probably going to be changed by the producer, engineer, or artist, but you're a hired gun that what the job is, but live what I'm sending via mic or line should only be tweaked in order to make sure it gets to all corners of the venue.

My Nord S3 mainly use the Studio Grand 2 a very useable sound for recording and live. If I want some phat solo sound on the S3 then the White Grand. Then on my recording computer I have Keyscape and so many great AP and EP sounds to choose from.

I think it was one of the Rolling Stones who got knocked out at the Hollywood Bowl from a ground zap. Back in the day there was a small reflection pond in front of the stage at the bowl. A bunch of Stones fans got into the pond and splashing around and water got on the stage. One of the Stone was in some water and went to sing and ZAP and knocked out. After that the Bowl started draining the pond before rock shows. But since those days amps have 3-prong power cords and ground reverse switches. I've gotten a couple good shocks over the years and learn the right what to test ground is with the back of your hand, not trying to touch a mic with your finger tips. Using the back of you hand the natural move if shocked pulls your hand away, if touching with finger tips the natural move makes the hand want to close over the mic.

Usually want stands to be stealth so idea of painting or wrapping a stand seems odd to me. Working in media for a church and filming services we usually wanted to cover the keyboard to hide all the cords connected and also work as a modesty panel for women on keyboards. Being part of Media there was a lot of "pipe and drape" materials from set designs for changing the stage look or for special events. The drape material is very slick and flexible cloth and always drapes nicely. So we'd cut piece that would cover back and two sides of the keyboard and go down to the floor. Then just used a couple pieces of black gaffers tape cover everything except the top and keyboard side. Also covering that much no cords were seen no need to worry about cable management. The drape material comes in a lots of colors so if you want to be colorful easy way to do it. That drape material was also light so we had a huge piece of it we covered our FOH mixing console with to keep the dust off when not in use and another we covered our grand piano with.

Nord doesn't have a great reputation from what I seen when it comes to service, they pawn it off on their distributors.

Gig pants also double as part of the job interview clothes along with my one shirt and tie. Working as a computer SysAdmin had to have the BS job interview clothes even though going to be interviewed by a bunch of people in jeans and t-shirts.

Nord has added a little variety in their sample in the last couple years with the Felt piano, a new upright, and a couple more Rhodes. The Rhodes were interesting the other okay. I've had my Nord Stage about two years now and I find in general most the sound are boring and of limited use especially for performance. The earlier Nord sounds are kind of dull sounding not a lot of clarity. The later sounds have a little more definition but they all are way too fat. Fat is good if doing solo, duo, trio work, but if playing in a band or recording fat is bad unless doing solo, duo, or trio. I find I have to have low end rolled off as a standard setting. I listen the Nord Artist sound package and some good sounds so I get into what are they doing and there are layers of synth and effects to make the Rhodes and other sounds good. To me Nord needs to do a whole revamp of their sounds library with focus on sounds for live use, so sound more open AP sound, most sound like very close mic'd. Definitely way better Wurlitzer sounds. So a balance of their sounds gear to solo... playing and sounds for live.

Yes, Coltrane especially his later years are not something to jump into you need to start early and get your ears to grow to understand his later years. One of my favorite Coltrane albums is Ballads. He was in his later years, but decided to do a couple albums that were simpler. The Ballads album is a education in phrasing melodies.

I listen to it a little and not something I'm in a rush to load. I could hear using it for some film composing type work, but not something I hear for a gig unless as part of layering sounds. It's like the softness is an effect, now that would be cool to have as an effect that give that type of soft sound but is adjustment as to amount and how quick it affects the sound.

There are some portable monitors thin so they can be put in a backpack, but the ones I've seen are not that big. The biggest I saw listed when I searched was 17".

Anthony Marinelli was the synth programmer for Quincy Jones and worked on the Michael Jackson and other artists. There is a whole series of video by Anthony on others that worked on the Thriller sessions I found interesting. The link is below. Stories In the Room link

D&B are one of my all time favorite bands. So lucky to of worked with Bobby Whitlock, Jim Price, James Gordon (keyboards in the later days, and hang some with Kenny Gradney in the studio. Then getting to be around Bonnie post D&B in the studio. For my friends and I D&B was a major part of our music education listening to them.

Same reason I'm SO SO thankful that my father convinced my mother to move from the state I was born in to California when I was a little kid. I rarely tell people where I was born because of all the stereotypes about the state and the people in it. Which my mom had twelve siblings who had big families so I've seen or heard about life back there and I'd say most the stereotypes are true. So I understand about stereotypes even being basically a Californian I hear lots of stereotypes from when I was moving around the country a lot.

For me being I played guitar and bass for 60+ years before deciding to come to piano probably a bit different take. One wish I had started to play much earlier in life. Actually I did in college but my $%@$^%$^ *&$%#% piano teacher who all the students felt she had a dildo named Chopin. She really screwed me up and I didn't want anything to do with piano after that. Today I'd still probably still make guitar/bass my main instrument but like to play piano for educational value. How would change how I've been trying to learn piano and think I would approach learning it more like I did guitar and bass. More along the lines that Victor Wooten talks about. If I was to do a course I'd probably do Suzuki Method. I'm also very aware this is what I think would work for me and maybe not for the average person.

In my college days I worked a morning gig in a grocery store as a box boy that what they called it then, it gave me the rest of the day and night for school, bands, and audio gigs. I remember one day I was in the checkstand and over the muszac system I heard the sound of 101 Strings play Evil Ways by Santana. I started laughing and people were looking at me like I was crazy, but hearing all those violin sawing away playing that riff was hilarious. I also weirded out people whenever I had to go out and collect the shopping carts or leave the checkstand I would sing funky bass lines as I worked. Had to make the job interesting.

You go through Columbia House catalog and don't buy the biggest selling album in the history of Jazz, the album that was the gateway for many to get into Jazz the Columbia records album Kind of Blue by Miles Davis??? Working in a record store whenever someone said I want to get into Jazz that's the album we sold. Good parents start their kids young listening to KOB. Oh for those coming in wanting to get into Classical we'd ask piano or orchestra. If they said piano sold the Horowitz Moonlight Sonata, if orchestra Copland Rodeo since they will recognize some many of the melodies from being used in commercials and TV. Sometime if we knew the person was a rock fan we'd sell them Wendy Carlos Switch On Bach or Heavy Rock fan Holtz The Planets and tell them to crank up volume for Mars.

Your close to Barry Harris world of 6 on the 5th of the tritone sub. So that would be the BH Min6Dim scale from the 5th of the tritone. So that would be C# Melodic Minor with the added b6 in non-BH terms. The old Jazz cats I've hung with would just call what you did a Pitch Collection and not worry about a theoretical name.

You can have Justin too.

Since I'm trying to learn Ableton Live I went and bought a Akai MPK Mini to get some pads and control knobs.

Hate anything that involves the word Metal or Shredding, can't stand it so would never play it. Not a fan of what people call Prog don't hate it like Metal just it never did anything for me. I sold a ton of Genesis, Tull and Pink Floyd when working in the record store so I heard it a lot, never did anything for me. Well exception Pink Floyd Darkside of Moon and The Wall the recording quality was amazing so I listen to it for the audio. Country as a guitar player I enjoyed playing Country and all the cool pedal steel and trick licks, but if not making money playing it I don't listen to Country. Then the real Popish Pop like Abba and so on boring. So light your flamethrowers and have at it.