Steve in VA

I took up piano again around 2016 after not having played since childhood. I found the "Learn and Master Piano w/ Will Barrow" DVD set to be very helpful. I can actually play these days! I think they still sell it on Amazon.

UPDATE: 72 hours later, my Kronos is healed! I found an authorized Korg tech a couple hours drive away who was able to take it in the same day. It seems to have been a spring that was not properly seated under the one key. He reassembled it and tightened everything up. So for the price of a few hours of my life driving and a couple tanks of gas, all is good once again. Thanks again for the responses.

Thanks for the responses. I have until November on the warranty but will start the warranty process tomorrow. I hate to be without my Kronos, but I do have a Korg D1 and a slew of virtual instruments for the interim.

Question for anyone with experience getting warranty service. I got a Korg Kronos 2-61 back in November. One of the keys started making a rattle/clicking sound when pressed or released. It still functions fine, but is annoying. Other than the one key, the keybed is dead quiet. I am in the middle of my 1-year warranty period. Is this a reasonable thing to have fixed under warranty or am I being too nit-picky? Also, how does warranty service work. Do you just directly call one of the nearby service centers and coordinate with them? Thanks!

I have V-Collection 7 and was offered an upgrade price of $149, which I accepted. The Vocoder alone is worth the price. Lots of fun!

From "Bette Davis Eyes": "She's ferocious. And she knows just what it takes to make a crow blush". Much more impressive than making a "pro" blush. And this: "All I want to do when I wake up in the morning is see your ass. Rosanna, Rosanna..."

Korg Kronos 2 61-key Titanium Limited Edition ($500 off).

Wow, I saw Van Halen on the OU812 tour in October, 1988 in Richmond, VA. I was the ripe old age of 16 at the time. Great show.

And it's great! There is an "I'll Wait" patch too. Now, does anyone know where I can find good tabs for those songs? Seriously, this VST seems well worth the $49 to me. Lots of fun.

My Yamaha U1 and CP88 seem to be a perfect fit for me.

I thought I would chime in since I was in about the same spot as you 3-4 years ago. I tackled Linus and Lucy as one of my first songs because no one ever told me it was considered hard! I eventually learned the entire song, one bar at a time, by slowing down the recording with MusicSpeedChanger on my phone. I also found that playing to a metronome or drum beat helped. There is a pretty good (but not quite perfect) transcription that is free on MuseScore. It's only been within the past year or so that I can finally play the song with nuance and "feel". It always seemed to be lacking something I could not quite put my finger on. Just remember to "slow it down and break it down" and you'll get it! Also, I found it helpful to work on BOTH hands at the same time, but only a few notes at a time.

I just got a CP88 and am loading 1.31 right now. It appears to have been released today.

I have not had this problem with my XPS 15. Unless the fan cuts on, it is dead silent.

I have a 2017 XPS 15 (9560 model) that I use for similar purposes. I have optimized it to its limits: 32 GB RAM and 2TB Samsung EVO NVME SSD. On RAM, 32 GB should be more than enough unless you create enormous projects with huge amounts of sample-based instruments. You can always upgrade the RAM later if you need to. RAM usually only gets cheaper over time. Regarding SSD storage, if you get a fast NVME SSD such as the Samsung EVO 970, they provide more than enough throughput for everything. No need for separate drives or partitions. One common issue with Dell laptops (and many others) is DPC latency, which means system drivers may consume more CPU time than they are supposed to and can cause audio drop-outs despite all your optimization efforts. I was able to tame these problems by keeping WI-FI disabled when doing audio, turning off bluetooth, and disabling all unnecessary Windows services. I also have a totally separate boot partition for audio, since applications such as MS Office tend to wake up and do things at random times and wreak havok on audio. Despite the challenges, I do like the laptop and the fact that it cost about half of a MacBook with similar specs.I also use it for work.

This book is awesome! I got it for Christmas and am reading it cover-to-cover. I'm about through with the Wurlitzer chapter. You can also incorporate this book into your workout routine, since it's such a heavy beast!

To put the prices in perspective, I just built a PC with Intel i9 9900k (8 core), 64GB of RAM, 2TB Samsung SSD (NVME - fast!), dead-silent case, and a motherboard with Thunderbolt support for about $2,000 and change. And it rocks!

Just a quick update on my problem a while back of lower VST volumes in GP3 vs. Studio One: It turns out my controller was sending all MIDI messages on two channels simultaneously. GP and Studio One apparently handle this situation differently, resulting in volume differences. Once I eliminated the duplicate MIDI, the problem went away. So yes, it was user error. (Provided the update on the off chance anyone ever encounters something similar.)

Spitfire BBC Symphony Orchestra plug-in. Wowsa! It took 52 hours to download the 500+ GB of samples.

Gorilla was my first amp - in 1986. Sounded pretty bad but good enough for a beginner at the time. I remember the "Tube Stack" dial!

1. Ringo Starr and Friends (Colin Hay, Steve Lukather, etc.) 2. FloydFest, featuring Brandi Carlisle, Kasey Musgraves, String Cheese Incident, Lukas Nelson, and many others 3. Pat Metheny (front row!) 4. Steve Vai, Yngwee Malmsteen, Nuno Bettencourt, Zakk Wilde, and friends 5. Some dude from Long Island who calls himself a piano man and gripes about having to cut his songs down to 3:05

In my case, I have found Windows TB performance to be half-baked even on a laptop that has it integrated into the motherboard: Dell XPS 15 9560. I have used two TB interfaces, Apollo Twin - which performed on par with a cheap USB interface latency-wise, and the Presonus Quantum 2, which was worse. In both cases, I was using a well-optimized machine with updated drivers. After switching to the Babyface PRO USB 2.0, latency and stability performance is stellar. Sometimes proven technology is just a better choice.

Thanks for the suggestions. As best I can tell, all Keyscape settings are the same in both GP3 and Studio One, but I will keep looking. I get lower volumes using other VSTs also, but Keyscape sounds the most dramatically different. This problem seems to have developed recently, possibly when I did a software update of GP3 a while back. I will check their forums also for any hints.

This is a question for any users of GigPerformer 3. I have noticed than when I create a new .gig file and add a VST (Keyscape in particular), the sound levels are significantly lower and the timbre sounds not quite the same as when I load the same plug in into Studio One. In both cases, I am not altering any volume levels on input or output. Sample rate is set to 44.1k and my interface (Babyface Pro) is set to 64 samples. So no differences in configuration that I can tell. Any ideas why I would get different results in GP3 vs Studio One?

It looks good, but causes the vertical scroll bars to be invisible (blacked out) on my Chrome/Windows 10. The other dark mode, "UBBT70 - Dark" does not have this problem and has better contrast, to my eyes.

MODO Drums?