Magpel

Thanks fellows, illuminating!

Hey there, this guitarist's Covid and beyond project has been to deepen my lifelong relationship with piano--technique, independence, harmony, and beyond. Have to say it has been a great and challenging experience. I've been playing out on keys for over a year now (only originals though; I don't see ever myself as likely to be someone else's keys person...). Samples available upon request, lol. Anyway, it became apparent to me pretty early that being fluent in parallel thirds and sixths in both hands is a pretty important thing. For thirds, Hanon was a good start and though different keys present different challenges for these aging joints, the Hanon approach of having one thumb-and-forefinger third per scale makes sense to me. regarding sixths, my body tells me thumb and pinkie all the time is not the way. I experiment with with other ways but can't see to find a fundamental principal of employing the ring finger (and sometimes forefinger). Is there a general principle out there? A soft rule?

After a couple of years of hefty spending to get a live laptop-brained keyboard rig together as well as updating my acoustic guitar live gear as I move from full band to "chamber duo and trio" gigging, I content myself now with sale-season plugins these days. That has included a deeper dive into the Arturia catalog. I had a bad taste in my mouth with that quirky digital titan, mostly because Analog Lab can be such a frustrating ADVERTISEMENT for their instruments. It SHOULD be amazing--a preset player, yes, but with as many as 14 controller parameters per sound, and yet far too often the heavy handed effects are baked in, or deal-breaking envelope times are fixed. BUT...I picked up their Solina and their Continental for a current songwriting project in which those retro sounds are on-topic and I am delighted with both. I don't care how historically accurate they are--they sound wonderful, they reamp beautifully, and furthermore they simply smoke anything in NI's not-terrible Retro Machines sample set. They are so much more vivid sounding. Then I picked up MiniFreak V and I am ultra delighted with that as well. meanwhile, my upgrade cost on the whole V Collection has not budged... Also, NI all but bullied me into upgrade Komplete, so now I am on a deep dive into Massive X and I see all the reasons for the love and the hate it receives. Super 8 is a pretty sweet little VA! The Play Series sets have not really impressed me, nor did my run through with Form make me think it was going to do much damage here. I haven't even installed Noire yet 'cause I am taking my time with this--savoring it I guess.

I love practically all of it, so that's just how it goes, but I would "start people off" on the Scandanavian Quartet records of the, the mid '70s solo stuff, and the standards trio with Peacock and DeJohnette--across the decades, some of his most lucid playing. I love how he often chooses to solo monophonically, something that I have seen one of my favorite current players, Dan Tepfer, do as well. Now my judgment of classical pianists is probably exactly as ignorant as my judging of Olympic gymnasts, BUT...Keith has done a lot of classical. I believe his Bach is pretty well regarded (and often on harpsicord, right?) but it was his pass of Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues that got me into that incredible work, though I was later corrected for regarding Keith's recording of it highly... And if ALL that fails for you, there is always his insane singer-songwriter record, the name of which escapes me at the moment.

Thanks, That would certInly do it, and it looks like you can use two of those brackets, for lack of the proper term, and not all four. Little pricey though! The single-pole utility platforms look like they would work for the MiniLab but def not for the Hydrasynth Explorer. You’d think with so many ultra small and minikey controllers and synths out there these days, there’d be a more robust variety of second tier stands for them (in my case, I’ll be sitting to play the 61-key unit and standing and playing guitar when I want access to the mini board.)

I’m looking for a extension tier for a standard X-style keyboard stand that will be narrow enough to hold one of two very small keyboards—either the Hydrasynth Explorer or—even smaller—an Arturia Minilab mkII—barely more than a foot wide and less than a foot deep. This is for live use. I have an extension tier in my studio that works great but it will not adjust narrow enough to support either of these keyboards without using a custom platform of some kind, which I’d like to avoid. In my mind, I’m seeing a single-pole attachment that mounts to just one of the ends of an X-stand and then has an adjustable platform on top. I leafed through the Sweetwater offerings and did see a few things that almost looked the part, typically called utility platforms, etc. But I’d better thought I’d query the experience here. Thanks

RIP! I ridiculed him mercilessly as a younger music snob. Now I enjoy it. Nowhere near the complete 180 that Phillip Glass enjoyed in my tastes—from loathe to love—but all part of my increasing receptivity to what I consider ”state” music. Not music of the State, lol, but music intended to produce and support particular states of mind and body…kinda into it now. Young me is outraged. Mr. Winston did his thing as he understood it and had a great career.

Thanks for all the guidance. I’d say at this point, my wisest move would be to get a decent barebones stereo DI with thru, but…I honestly have no idea whether stereo DIs sum to mono if only the left output is connected, like so much other gear. Time to do a little manual reading before I click buy.

It would be crazy for me to opine on quality and likeness—just wanted to say that if you are interested in the Waterfall, UAD is finally having a sale that looks at least somewhat like the sales of other plugin developers, lol,as UAD really hastens this transition to native, and if you are a user you probably have a coupon to add in, bringing it to down to about 50 bucks for the Waterfall this month. Incidentally I am actually quite enjoying the demo of UAD’s Opal wavetable/morphing synth. Overlaps with a few things I have, like DS Thorn, but I’m thinking Opal sounds richer overall.

Thanks, I figured. So this leads me to another bottomless question about the advisability of keeping it in stereo or summing to mono...I will do a search. While I am hardly a newb to performing, I am a complete newb to playing keys live and really know very little of standard practices and wisdom.

As a guitarist and songwriter/composer who loves to write and arrange on keys, the Roland U20 was my intro to digital, sequencing, multitimbrality, and all that good stuff--paired with an Alesis MMT-8. I will always have fondness for that rig, not for the way it sounded (though it was the piano sample that steered me to the U20, over the M1 and a Kawai unit the store had in that day) but just because of where it took me--unlocked the arranger in me in a way that my Yamaha 4 track had not. When I decided to teach myself the basics of synthesis, I started, for God's sake, on a Korg Z1. Lol. But I worked my way to the bottom of that damn thing--the pretty crappy VA, and the physical models that ranged from laughable to strangely awesome. Parted with it a few years ago, with no real regrets but nostalgia whenever I see one or hear it mentioned here. Early sofysynths played a huge part in my knowledge of synthesis--even though I'm 60, I'm a guitarist. Keys were not part of my past except my dad's baby grand and a Vox Continental that lived in the house for while. A softsynth I really used to grok the basics of subtractive (and used on a ton of music) was the old rgc:audio Pentagon 1, a synth with fixed modulations but so so many thoughtful touches. man I really appreciated that synth and that company. I did graduate to his Z3Ta but by that time the doors had been blown off the softsynth world. Anyone know what became of Rene? I know he went to work for Cakewalk and rgc disppaeared, like Camel to Apple. NOW...the completely exasperating and amazing Moog Matriarch. A sound that never fails to delight me; behavior that never fails to bedevil me.

I’m not seeing any thru outputs on the Radial AV2. Am I missing something?

All right, sticking with the external out on the MacBook. Thanks!

Hey! I'm 10 days a way from breaking out a laptop based keyboard rig at a live show for the first time. In rehearsal, I've been using the external headphone out on the MacBook. My needs are a dead simple--Keyscape and a couple of synths on a MacBook in Mainstage, out to the house system. Those of you who use Laptops that AREN'T part of massively complicated MIDI rigs, what are your recommendations for a good sounding, road worthy compact stereo interface? I don't need 5-pin MIDI on or any digital I/O necessarily. Thanks.

Oh, also Man in the High Castle.