AROIOS

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.

No worries, Jr. Deluxe, I'm not gonna get fired up by an honest opinion from a brother. But what you said about "the old ways are the best ways" (for music education) is still just that, an honest opinion. And I've seen enough evidence contradicting that to know there are better ways.

Haha, I feel bad for the nerdy classmate of yours. It sounds like he would have fared better in law/accounting.

I tend to think this is the problem. As the OP said, I've seen it here, I've seen it countless places, people who say, "you have to learn to play piano this way" referring to the classic/classical pedagogy. I'm not saying that's wrong for people who want to do that, but for someone who just wants to play some pop tunes it's a real turn off. The reason lots of people play guitar is that you can show someone a handful of chords (literally!) and then they can bang out a bunch of tunes with some simple chord charts. Yes, mastering the instrument is another matter altogether, but for most people, they can have fun and play. You rarely, if ever, see that when it comes to playing keys. "Here's E, A, and B, now you can play a million blues tunes." I often see some video title talking about making you a better keyboard player and instead of showing you some things a keyboard player might play in a tune to sound interesting, it's finger exercises. C'mon man! To the OP, you might want to look at stuff Mark Harrison has produced, like his Blues Piano book, The Pop Piano Book, and others he's published with Hal Leonard Books. Yes, snobbery is part of human nature and teaching well is a talent bestowed upon a limited few. I'm into technology and there are tons of similar snobs in tech. When we're stuck trying to learn a programming language or some physics concept, there are always those who shout out loudly: "RTFM/RTFB" (short for Read The F*** Manual/Book). Then after stumbling around with a half-assed understanding and self-doubt for a few decades, you come across a clear, right-to-the-point explanation from someone with enough empathy and insight to break the knowledge down and reveal the inner connections. It's usually at that moment we realize just how bad our textbooks/teachers/schools are in general. I've had enough of this type of observation and experience to know intuitively now that when someone says something along the lines of: "you just have to work harder at it", "you'll understand it later", "this is THE way to learn it"... Chances are they simply suck at explaining/teaching. Thanks for recommending Mark Harrison's books, Bone. I came across his R&B book over a decade ago, will give his other books a shot.

Yup, that scantness is exactly what I've been struggling with for years.

The lack of "structured pedagogy then seminar" is exactly my struggle with keyboard learning materials.

Yes, we can get a lot of mileage out of listening and transcribing. But often times the sophistication of the material is beyond the learners' comprehension. Being able to transcribe a progression down to the notes doesn't necessarily mean I understand why it works or how I can apply it to new materials, not to mention how exactly to finger it "properly". That's why learning is a process and sometimes you only learn the part you're ready to learn and further along as you grow you revisit and understand more. Just getting answers doesn't mean your ready to understand either. Fingerings are a interesting topic being I came from guitar and now learning piano. At first it was learn all the classical fingers for scales and broken chords, then you start playing and start working out your own fingering. Then now I'm studying piano from Jazz teacher and you ask about fingerings and 98% of the time they won't answer or flat out tell you to work it out. At first that's frustrating, but I know I've learn so much more from having to workout fingerings on my own. All our hands are different so in the long run we need to learn what our own hands are capable of and any issues we might have and how to find workarounds. Bottom line I'm not totally against books and etc, but too many people are not putting the work in and always trying to buy an answer. When you buy answers the only person really learn is the person who took the time to figure the stuff out and wrote it out. Those paying to learn are learning nearly as much. Sometime having to try, and try, and try again to figure some thing out is the best teacher. I totally understand what you're saying. Practice usually leads theory and system in the development of music styles. But we've had Funk/R&B/Gospel for decades now that it would make sense for someone to have systemized and curated the theories and techniques on these genres, just like what academia did with Jazz. Just based on the feedback from folks of this forum on Youtube bread crumbs, we know there's also a commercial interest in systemized/curated contents beyond "tricks/licks".

I have a couple of DVDs from this site. I think it's good stuff https://gospelmusicians.com/instructional-videos/ Yes, Jamal is great. I've subscribed to his YT channel for a long time.

Yes, we can get a lot of mileage out of listening and transcribing. But often times the sophistication of the material is beyond the learners' comprehension. Being able to transcribe a progression down to the notes doesn't necessarily mean I understand why it works or how I can apply it to new materials, not to mention how exactly to finger it "properly".

Agreed there is a lack of keyboard tutorials in this genre. I made a thread a few weeks ago about a few short YT tutorials by Matt Johnson of Jamiroquai, and people expressed appreciation for something as short and limited as that. There seems to be an increase in web-based tutorials lately -- there has been a decent amount of discussion here on courses by Herbie Hancock, Tony Monaco, Lachy Doley, and I think Joey D -- but still far from the volume of materials for other instruments. I'm sure others will offer more thoughtful explanations but I'll throw out two factors. First, I'm pretty sure the demand is lower. Millions of guitar players out there, and pretty much anybody who buys an electric guitar is interested in playing popular music of the last 70 years (Rock, R&B, Blues, Funk, Jazz, etc.). Fewer keyboard players by comparison, and their interests may not be on contemporary music -- some just want to play classical. Second, building on your (positive) stereotype, the keyboard players I know are the most resourceful people amongst the gigging musicians I know. In other words, perhaps the publishers don't handfeed material to keyboard players because they (we?) are the type of people who know how to (and prefer to?) figure it out on our own. What a nice coincidence, I came across Matt Johnson's YT channel two days ago and was immediately grateful for the bread crumbs he handed out. But as you said, they are still just bread crumbs, what I (and I'm sure I'm not alone on this) am looking for is a systematic approach, kinda like how Mark Levine did with his books on Jazz. And I totally agree with you on the lack of keyboard courses as a result of disparity of commercial interests between guitar and keyboard learners.

I get what you are saying. But in-person learning resources are usually limited for people away from, well, those in-person learning resources. For example, for a city with as much conventional "resources" as HongKong, I've witnessed a dramatic improvement in musicianship and proficiency among young players, because of the proliferation of Youtube tutorials. If a major metropolitan area like Hongkong can benefit so much from Youtube bread crumbs, imagine how sorely lacking learning resources have been for the less developed parts of the world.

Yes, "disjointed" is the perfect word to describe the situation. And I have similar observation on keyboard players tending to be the most musically literate among band members.

For guitar players of any style, there has always been a plethora of excellent tutorials. From 80's REH to today's JamTrackCentral and TruFire, it's extremely easy to find a great course put out by a great player. To a lesser degree, that abundance of learning materials still holds true for the drummers and bassists. But for the most sophisticated role (I'll get tons of flak for saying that outside of this forum) in the band, the keyboard player doesn't get the same amount of love from publishers. Yes, there are tons of classical and purist jazz stuff out there, but there seems to be a sorely lacking of R&B, Gospel, Funk materials. Why is that?

I'm glad you also hear the connection between the two tunes, brother 16251. This exact YT video you posted was actually what reminded me of Michael's tune this morning and prompted me to open this post. I appreciate your tastes but, I'm sorry I have a different opinion and why I posted I Love You Porky. Keith's music is the highest form of creative music. Answer me, my love is not. I totally understand where you are coming from. Even Michael himself discusses on his website how Keith profoundly influenced his take on music.