AROIOS

this...can"t stand 'esoteric' artists trying so hard to be hip it hurts...hipness is a disease. Brad Meldhau"s version of 'smell"s like teen spirit' sounds not even in the same galaxy as the original on any level...not sure what he was thinking calling it that...just call it your own tune, but of course, nobody would ever buy the record, or check it out other than the 0.001% of the record buying population who like to show people how clever they are via their musical tastes. (FYI I am a huge, huge Brad fan, he may be my favourite jazz pianist of all time, but I never understood why he just did not call his pop takes original tunes, on some of them he does not even try to play the melody.) Viewing hip reharms and outside playing as somehow being of a 'higher' level of musical ability is a questionable assertion. Playing an instrumental that sticks exactly to the melody is no joke, try it and post your efforts if you think it"s so easy. Once you get reharmonization and outside playing, it is actually considerably easier to do an outside version of a pop tune than it is to do a convincing take that stays true to the original. Here is a master doing a masterful take that stays true to the original: I totally understand where you are coming from Mike. Here's such a re-harmonization atrocity I can't stand myself: [video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRAOBtnnCi4

Yes, Dirty Loop is the first thing that came to my mind too when I saw this video. They share a lot in common regarding that Jazz Funk vibe you pointed out. Jonah Nilsson is one heck of a singer and Tim has a killer horn section. I would love to see a collaboration between these two groups, I'm glad you enjoyed Tim and the Band's performance Reezekeys. And yes, they are all Nashville session cats. I've always thought we can only assembly a team like this in LA or NY. They blew away my ignorant assumption that Nashville is all Country.

I look at it simply as folks with chops following a Jazz tradition of rearranging/re-harmonizing popular songs. After all, that's how a large part of the "Jazz Standards" repertoire came to be. With that said, the 1920's to 1950's Pop songs covered by later Jazz musicians often had gorgeous melodies written by excellent composers like Jerome Kern and Erroll Garner. Melodies like "Misty" and "Over the Rainbow" can very well stand on their own even without lush, jazzy harmony. So I agree with your point on the "futility" of modern Jazz(y) musicians covering brain-dead melodies. 2 of the 3 melodies Tim covered on his YT channel are indeed such garbage and I really wish he had released versions without melodies. Amen Brother.

A lovely conversation between the fabulous musician and producer Urs and the living legend Jay. [video:youtube]

I understand where you're coming from regarding the vocal part. It doesn't do Kim's voice justice even remotely. Personally I would have preferred an instrumental version if only to avoid the brain-dead melody and lyrics. Yes, Swift's new album is not bad. But the irony is that kind of production would have never launched her career. Similarly, Lady Gaga had to depend on loads of brain-dead crap to break out, then surprise us with her Jazzy side once she no longer needs media attention or pandering to her brain-dead fans.

You know what else is a Jerry Hey session? (You've been duckrolled) Cheers, Mike I'll choose this over 99.9% of the Po(o)p music out there today, even if only just for Jerry's horns.

TW's retarded melody is an insult to Kim's voice. But today's Po(o)p music can reach much deeper levels of brain-death than TW.

This video is from a while back, it's most likely the same as the one you mentioned.

Glad you enjoyed it too, stoken6. The horns are indeed fabulous, I could have easily mistaken them for a Jerry Hey session in blind listening.

I'm sad to hear that. Best wishes on Tim's recovery.

I totally understand where you're coming from and loved Robbie Buchanan's more rounded TX816 EP sound partly because of that. But there's also success in sound design by going the opposite direction, as Roland and Eric Persing demonstrated with another wildly popular FM EP sound on the JD-800: Crystal Rhodes. Walter Afanasieff used that patch on pretty much every album he produced in the early to mid 90's.

Just came across this smoking hot session, what an amazing arrangement and tightly-knit band. I still have to hold my nose from the stench of the original brain-dead melody. But wow, Tim and his team did a fine job covering that load of crap. They remind me of the very talented Dirty Loops, although DL often takes it a bit too far for my taste. [video:youtube]

I came across Scott's music back in the late 90's when he was demo'ing for Roland. To my untrained ears, he's got all the coolest sounding keyboard tricks and then some. Compared to other more recognized players in Smooth Jazz like Brian Culbertson, Scott balances the commercial nature of Smooth Jazz and musicality (yeah, I know purists are gonna sneer over that) better. Some of his tunes are quite popular among piano players in South Korea, like this one: It reminds me so much of a very tasteful demo tune installed on a lot of Yamaha keyboards: I wouldn't be surprised at all if Scott turned out to be the author of this tune (Yamaha named it "Take Off"). I actually prefer it over Scott's "Water Balloons". Scott tried a bit too hard either to spice it up or to distinguish it from the Yamaha demo tune, which came at the cost of the balance between density of concepts and musicality. Btw, another Scott (Tibbs) that frequently demo'ed for Roland is also a very tasty player. I wish he had more exposure and recognition that he deserved too.

Anything that Robbie Buchanan played keyboard on after 1983, which by itself is already a huge list of Pop/Bolero/Smooth Jazz songs. Luckily, Robbie did an excellent job compiling the list of tunes he had a hand in creating: https://robbiebuchanan.com/discography/ Robbie was so prolific that his famous TX816 sound is instantly recognizable and remains a staple in Pop history. Keyboardist around the world have been searching for Robbie's secret sauce for decades, the closest programming (that's an understatement, it's a sonic exact match) I've heard comes from Urs Wiesendanger and Audio Lounge: https://soundcloud.com/user-825056984/sets/rhodes-affair-demo. Technically, Robbie layers 2 to 4 modules on his TX816 (and occasionally adds an MKS-20 or a Rhodes). But we can simply consider that equivalent to a few DX7s, so his sound still fits your quest for "DX7 e-piano sound". Hope that's helpful, I'm looking forward to your new contents.

You rock, David! I totally dig what you are teaching and subscribed immediately.

Thanks for the recommendation, Rally. I happened to have come across Matt's tutorial videos a few days ago as well. You are right, he's a great instructor.

This is the first one I got. I probably would have gotten more out of it if I knew the songs that the chord progressions were intended for, as he seems to assume the audience for these DVDs go to churches similar to his, and thus are familiar with the songs. Still, it was a nice quick start to some cool chord progressions. https://gospelmusicians.com/instructional-videos/ You're welcome and good luck! Yes, the Gospel instructors assume the audience's familiarity with the tunes in the same way Jazz folks do with the Jazz standards. I'm sure there's a similar catching up on the repertoire for folks moving from Classical/Pop to Jazz too.

For brothers/sisters with a similar interest in the Soul genres, here's what I just came across: https://hearandplay.infusionsoft.app/app/storeFront/showProductDetail?productId=408 Mike Bereal and Jason White are the real deal. Between the collection above and Jamal's tutorials on GospelMusicians.com, I'm gonna have a lot of fun learning for sure. Thanks again to every brother who beared with my ignorance/impatience and shared your generous insights, experience and recommendations. You guys are awesome.

You said you looked at the Gospel Musician stuff before. Did you get the Tritone Xtravaganza DVD? I thought was it was a fairly accessible approach. Most of what i've learned of this stuff is from chord-melody arrangements for guitar. I'm still on the learn by playing/hearing stage - not quite on the fully memorized formulae stage. Yes, I came across Jamal's DVD promotions a couple of years ago. I was intimidated by his level of proficiency and must have subconciously felt I need a lot of "padding" before getting ready for his materials. Now that two brothers here have recommended it, I'm gonna take a leap of faith and give it a shot. Thank you GovernorSilver.

With respect, you are high. There are a zillion times more materials for every aspect of Keyboard available to us than ever before. Un fortunately there is a very great deal of needlessly complicated pedogogery at the same time. So you must take the time to sift and find the gems. For gospel: It does not get any better than this. That little tome would save a lot of hours of trying to "soak it in", and it's never been easier to slow down and learn stuff note by note, like every great player did sometime. But chops don't grow without alot of nuture. Play play play. Few "real" people understand how much time it takes to learn a motor skill. Instead they say, "Oh, I'm just not musically talented". Playing is essentially a sport. Thinking only gets you so far, and is not even a pre-requisite to virtuosity. Thanks for the recommendation Uhoh7, I'm gonna check Kurt's material out. In terms of "needlessly complicated pedagogy", can you offer a few examples, so I can avoid falling into their dark traps?

Case in point: Here's a progression I came up with noodling around this evening. Other than the tritone substitution, I have no idea how or why it works, it just sounded "right" to me. Every time this happens with other people's music, the engineer in me gets itchy to find out the "scientific explanation" or at least a generalized rule for it. For better or worse, the Jazz people are quite good at it. Heck, they even have a name for sh*t that's "wrong" but sounds "right". They call it "Playing Outside". Link - BluJazPel

Thanks a lot for sharing those sage advice, Gruesome MC. There are many nuggets of gold in what you said. "Commercial artists aren't interested in making instructional books or videos on their playing techniques. That's giving away their livelihood." That makes a lot of sense. On the other hand, I wonder why so many top guitar/bass/drum players don't seem to be too concerned with spilling the beans on putting out master classes. My guess is that's due to the larger amount of learners and players on those instruments.

Analog synth filters are not perfect. Filters are classed between Butterworth, Chebyshev, Bessel, Elliptical, etc. All have their pros and cons. Butterworth are the most common with their maximally flat passband and are optimal for fidelity and minimal phase distortion. Chebyshev have steeper roll-off near the cutoff frequency which is better for spectral modification (IE synthesizers), but at the expense of flat passband and fidelity. ... Thanks for sharing this wealth of knowledge on filters, Gruesome MC. The ever-increasing level of "realism" in terms of modeling physical circuits begs the question(s): 1) How close is close "enough" musically? We can model all the idiosyncrasies of a circuit but not all of them are musically pleasing. 2) How much deviation/"creativity" should we allow in the modeling process? As mentioned above, not all parts of a circuit's idiosyncrasies are musically pleasing. Should the developer take the liberty of "fixing" the bad sounding parts? For the vast majority of non-synth-enthusiasts, it would seem like we've already reached perfection. As there have been many online blind tests in which people can't reliably tell the hardware apart from their software simulations.

Thanks for the recommendations, GovernorSilver. I immediately loved Nahre's open-mindedness and her methodical approach on non-Classical music, not to mention her good taste on harmony.