Docbop

Being in L.A. they had access to the people who worked on most the MJ albums the musicians, writers, ones that did the sound design, and worked with MJ from the demos in his home to the finished tracks. Hope maybe they will do a cast album of the show I love to hear it.

One nice thing from my time in computer world is we would need to ship servers from one location to another. We could contact the manufacturer and buy a new box and packaging materials so we had exactly what the server was shipped include the foam inserts. Be nice if keyboard companies would sell their boxes and packing materials for shipping keyboards still in production.

I have a pair of T7V 7 inch studio monitors I like a lot the high end is very easy on the ear when listening for long periods of time and reasonably priced. Before the Adam's I had Yamaha HS monitors they make 5", 7", and 8" sizes. The 7's and 8's sound good but the 5's have nasty midrange bump. A lot of people like the KRK Rokit monitors and I've used them in the past for just listening not for recording. The reason many like them that makes them bad for recording is they have a really hyped up bottom end. Some do use them for recording but you have to constantly remind yourself the low end isn't what people on other monitors are going to hear. I really like the Adam's GC usually has them setup so you can go and listen to them along with others.

A $1000 price increase that's tall. https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/NordGrand2--nord-grand-2-88-key-stage-keyboard

Bobby Sparks and his clav with a whammy bar does some great solos with Snarky Puppy and others.

Just start inviting people over to your bordello and they will understand the red piano plus you can brush up on your Fats Waller tunes. Could have some really cool parties once the word gets out.

Gonna be a lot Nord Electro players upset they were really hoping for a new NE7.

That depends on your eyes, when I was still working doing ProTools I worked on a 24" iMac and it was fine. I had a laptop and that was on the small size for a DAW. Now in my 70's and decided to get back into recording and learn Ableton Live and on my 14" really hard for me to read and don't get a lot on screen. But I have my 27" iMac and Ableton on that is good. I am looking to either get a monitor for my laptop so I have two screens or sell my 14" laptop and get a 16" so things will be bigger and easier on my eyes. So it's all about what you'll be comfortable with. Like my last job before retiring I was working as an SysAdmin for a website at one point I ended up with a large desk and four 27" monitors for my two computers. I loved it, but my boss wasn't as happy and I was back to two monitors boo.

Most TVs and monitors support VESA system for mounting. VESA is a standard mounting brackets, or monitor arms like you're talking about and it connects to a VESA bracket for the TV or monitor. So you just need to check the monitor you buy to see if it supports VESA mounting.

Kustoms looked cool, but seemed like bass players were the only people I saw using them. I never knew a guitar player with one, and didn't even know they made a keyboard.

Sunday night groove time.....

The Jazz musicians hated the codification of Jazz from the early days and especially in the 60's when Jazz schools started. Even today many don't like it. Today many go to Jazz school, but it's partially because of the lack of places to play but they mainly go to make contacts and try to get their first really pro level sideman gigs. From all my years working in and being around Jazz education the big names that came out of the schools were the people who only went to polish their skills not to learn the skills. As the old saying goes about Berklee.... If you graduated you probably weren't that good. The really good musicians that went to Berklee left after about two years because they left because they picked up good gigs.

Yup I get the same feeling only time I read about artists I remember is from "<fill in the blank> has passed" articles. I know some compared to me younger artist from working at the church. Many of the congregation were big names in Hip Hop and R&B and my coworker in Media department was DJ for two name artists so he opened me up to a lot of artists of his generation. But even those who were big in the 90's would be considered old now. Dam time flies fast.

Some small stuff for a portable Ableton setup, a Shure SM57 the do anything workhorse, mic & boom stand, and for a small portable audio interface a SSL 2. That should be me started on this new path I on.

I've been shopping to setup a audio desk in another room of my apartment so been checking out desk. If you want a keyboard tray under the desk your options are limited. Also need to check if the tray will fit your keyboard some the opening isn't that tall so many boards won't fit and finding ones for 88 key controller are even harder. For myself I'm thinking of just getting a keyboard stand and just put it next to the desk and have a small MIDI controller to won't take much deskspace. Some are making their own setup with two drawer units like the Ikea Alex drawers and then buy just a desktop or just a sheet of plywood cut to size you want. Then some places sell keyboard tray you can attach to a desktop. A lot of way to go buying drawers and a finish desktop. Link to Ikea Alex: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/alex-series-47147/

From what I've learned from a site on Apple silicon for audio Logic and Ableton both only use the performance cores of the CPU. So the Apple silicon chips that have more performance cores really lend themselves to doing audio. I recently got back into audio, but learning Ableton Live for something different. I bought a used Macbook Pro M1 Max before the M3's came out because of the number of performance cores. Since the M3's are aren't that big a step up from the M1 and M2 used MacBooks Pros are disappearing fast.

Barry was very opinionated and in general didn't like Jazz after 1960. Also I won't say the names but he didn't have good things to say about some legendary Jazz pianists. So Barry mainly is Bebop and Great American Songbook, but his concepts are the fundamentals for Jazz musicians not just pianists to learn. As for modern players David Berkman and others I've heard teach Barry's concepts and get into how others use Barry's Borrowing technique and sounds in their music. The thing about Barry's concepts is how many great musician have attended Barry's workshops and don't mention it, it kind of slips out in interviews and in conversations. Barry is someone who has influenced a lot of musicians.

Part of trying to get into Barry's concepts is knowing the basics of his scales. David Baker who first called them Bebop scales, but Barry hated that name and he calls them Major 6 Diminished, Minor 6 Diminished and so on. The basic scale i.e. Maj6Dim is the four notes of the Ma6 chords combined with its Diminished chord. So in C C E G A and D F Ab B so something like a CMa7 Barry would say your playing the CMaj but borrowing the B from the diminished scale. That's quick and dirty explanation for a big topic to understand before moving forward. Also and it can be confusing watching Barry videos he talks about the scale and harmony use and linear as separate subject, but all those videos of him you don't always know which way he's talking about the Barry concepts. Then if around the Barry world for awhile you see that most of the things he's talks about and is about looking at tiny little movements within a song not the whole song. As some call it "Isolate and explore". I would say the best two people's Youtubes to watch who spend a lot of time in the Barry workshop are Issac Raz and Chris Parks. Chis Parks YouTube channel is called "Things I learned from Barry Harris". Chris has many videos and still making them. Issac Raz start making videos about Barry during the pandemic, but hasn't made much since then. So I would recommend checking their videos out.

I never heard of this guy before but this interview and studio tour was really interesting to me. I was really blown away at the end when he gets into his new DAW he's using for his HUGE 900 track film project. Then at the very end of the video Christian Henson pops in and say all this is being run on a M2 Macbook Pro.

The Kronos now Nautilus is only one that calls itself a workstation, or as I've heard people comment...it's a complete recording studio inside of a keyboard. Yamaha Montage and Roland Fantom both call themselves synthesizers not workstations.

I was around Steely Dan's sessions back then and remember when they got asked to leave The Village and they ended up going to Cherokee studios. Cherokee was new then and needed a big artist to use the studio to help attract business. Dan took advantage of that and had a new very expensive monitor system put in that after a couple days said they didn't like and to have it removed. Then Cherokee had just bought a new white Steinway grand piano. Fagen start putting his cigarettes out on the lid of the piano. So Dan was looking for another studio to work in

I remember seeing The Who in concert back in the days they tore up their gear. I twas interesting that the roadies came out and sweep the stage for parts so they reused to build another guitar. What I heard is Pete Townsend the guitars he destroys the bodies made of plywood so they weren't good guitars. Now that night when Keith Moon kicked his drums appart and his bass drum pedal flew up and then bounced on his floor tom out into the audience. The pedal landed in front of the couple next to me and the boyfriend grabbed the pedal, then he told his girlfriend to shove it up her dress. Then Keith Moon's drum roadie came out walking in front of us looking for the pedal. No one said a thing, so that couple ended up with a expensive souvenir of seeing The Who. The weird one was when The Who was on the Smothers Brothers TV show and they were to tear up their gear. Keith Moon was on a high riser so the road crew decided to rig an explosive devices and smoke bomb. So when The Who played on the TV show you see the explosion and Keith Moon flies off backwards from the drum riser. The audience loved it. Ends up Keith Moon actually did get blown off the riser it was only suppose to be a bang and smoke. It did screw up Keith back and the roadie that used too much explosive was fired. Now myself the first band I was in we used to end our shows playing The End by the Doors and knocki our gear around and making as much noise as we could. Somehow we got to play the AfterHours show at the Hullabaloo club in Hollywood. The Hullabaloo had a big revolving stage so one band could be playing while other sets up. We we do our show include tearing our gear up. Our drummer figured it was big gig for us really when crazy and somehow he kicked his drums and they went flying like they exploded. They start to revolve the stage and our mic cords were tangled up in drums and they had to stop rotating the stage and our poor singer had to untangle the mic cables in front of the audience. We look over to the side and see the Stage Manager and he looks really ticked off. Finally stage rotates and the stage manager comes running over we thought we'll never play here again. The stage just yells why the hell did you tell me you were going to do that, it was great!!!! So your not mad. no I want to guys to play again in a couple weeks.

A newer approach is the Akai MPC Key 61 which is like a Ableton, Maschine or Push but has a keyboard too so you have both worlds at your disposal. The video below Derrick runs the band for a church doing similar approach with his Kronos, Montage, and Roland sequencing on those. He does it the all the parts so if a bass player or other musician doesn't show up he can then just punch up that part and keep the music going. He seems to really like the Akai MPC Key 61 from other videos he's done on it.

I had to go to hospital last week for a procedure and they started requiring masks again as soon as you come through the door. Talking to the nurse in recovery she said the number of Covid cases is starting to rise again so that's why the masks.

Well I'd say Vintage Vibe, but they only make kind of keyboard. So to be three I'll go Yamaha and request a YC88, I think it's a U1 their full size upright, and one of their mixers.