AROIOS
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Posts posted by AROIOS
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For folks interested in Sax patches, YAMAHA has some decent sax sound on their arranger boards.
The "Sweet! Tenor Sax" patch I used in the two quick demos below sounded amazing when they first came out almost 30 years ago. The TYROS line have added some beautiful "Super Articulation" sax sounds since. -
Founder/CEO Mr. Stefano Lucato is an excellent composer too. I love this demo tune he wrote. Brings me right back to late 70's/early 80's when this type of orchestral Sophisti-Pop was much more common.
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Audio Modeling (formerly named Sample Modeling) has been on my radar for a while. The expressiveness of their instruments is simply incredible. And what a nice coincidence to have a room full of amazing Italian music nerds!
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49 minutes ago, Jim Alfredson said:
Stumbled across this video of ToP on Don Kirschner's Rock Concert. I won't link to the exact time because it's worth watching the whole thing, but Chester takes a nasty organ solo (while kicking bass) that's so funky, it's illegal in 48 states.
They've put out a lot of great tunes, but I've always found their signature machine-gun straight 16th bass notes the least Funky thing imaginable.-
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6 hours ago, Threadslayer said:
Pretty impressive technically - particularly rhythmically - but just out of curiosity, what would you call this type of music? Progressive jazz/rock/funk fusion?
Definitely not easy listening music...
Avant-garde-
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On 2/13/2024 at 1:04 PM, Tusker said:
Love Louis Cole but this one sounds like a contrived attempt at mixing Stevie Wonder's gravy with Moonchild's wine.
Both are uniquely rich and strong, but I'd rather enjoy them separately.
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6 hours ago, D. Gauss said:
From IMO, one of the, if not THE best pianist that ever lived. Mr. James Booker. Dr. John described Booker as "the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced."
Excellent Blues, but his time is sandpaper to my crude ears. Sounds like my DAW when the OS hits 110% load, I feel bad for the folks who ever tried to dance to this. -
6 hours ago, kpl1228 said:
...We are now the Tony Bennett-loving parents who can't figure out why our kids listen to the Rolling Stones. same generational time frame, same generation gap. The Super Bowl halftime show, for example. Was any of that geared toward the over-40 crowd? Tried to keep an open mind, but the older Alicia Keys (43) was the link to the distant past, and certainly Usher was seen as older too. That was nostalgic music one generation removed, and I'm one more generation past that one...
I love Debussy, Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Steely Dan, Duke, Yes, Parliament, The Struts... equally.
And I've always found it idiotic to divide music by periods and generations. A Cmaj9 is a Cmaj9, whether it's played on a harp, Rhodes, or a Strat; a shuffle is a shuffle, whether it's played on an axatse, a set of Ludwig, or a TR-808.
Folks who base their musical consumption on "timeliness" of a tune, are one of the biggest reasons so much annoying/idiotic noise fill our air, while tons of great music become neglected and forgotten. -
5 hours ago, Bill H. said:
...I'm kind of embarrassed to admit it, but Calm Down was in my car's playlist last summer...
Nothing to feel embarrassed about, brother. Music is a very personal experience. Don't ever let my (or anyone's) snarky comments hold you back from enjoying what you like.-
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3 hours ago, BluesB3 said:
...The night after we heard the Beatles on Sullivan we knew that era of 1,4,5 and 1,6-,4,5 Rock'n'Roll was over. No more faking it. We had to step up our game learning the solos, harmonies, and changes from needle drops on the LP's...
Jazz aside, weren't Easy Listening (as a genre) way more sophisticated in harmonies and changes than what Beatles brought to the table?
Edit: Never mind. I soon realized that Easy Listening was much less relevant to your particular situation playing in a rock&roll band at the time. -
5 hours ago, David Emm said:
It was a standard for me over many years. I'd buy superior German and Japanese imports of things and include a blank cassette for the first play. When people speak fondly of vinyl's sound, I immediately think of surface noise, skips and the 6" of dust under my bed. Sorry, but I don't see the glamour and mysticism of a music delivery system so grotty, you can grow plants in the grooves after a while.
The vinyl revival and iPhone fetish are a big part of why I don't trust the average consumer's eyes, ears (or brain) at all. 😃 -
7 hours ago, Bill H. said:
...When you have something like Calm Down with minimal production and promotion which simmered in Northern Africa for a months, gradually made it's way into the world through social media, grabbed Selena Gomez by the coattails, and became the #6 single in the US for the year 2023... the chances of anything like that happening under the old system is dramatically less as well...
Looked it up out of curiosity, what a disappointment. If that's the kind of shit "the old system" has suppressed, thank God, it can stay in Sahara for all I care. 😆 -
11 hours ago, CyberGene said:
... So, is the Zenology Pro (or no Pro) having all the patches from the XV-5080? ...
Yes, it does have all of XV-5080's samples and patches.
That said, some of the patches won't sound the same as they do on JV and XV, because of changes in effect routing design. Any JV/XV patches that have significant differences among EFX send levels at the element/partial/layer level will likely sound different on Integra-7, Zenology and most newer Roland romplers.
If you're nerdy enough to dig into the details, here's my ranting about it a while ago.
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Love the first song, thanks for the share. It sounds like John Mayer joining with Squeeze.
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On 2/10/2024 at 7:00 PM, Ivan May said:
The music industry turned to poo after Elvis died in 1977. There, I said it!
I blame it on Max Martin and the Backstreet Boys. 😃-
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For those of us who aren't oblivious to the decline of popular music (not to be conflated with the business/industry), what they discussed about certainly isn't limited to just Rock.
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1 hour ago, Geoff Grace said:
...I don’t know a lot of Gen Z’ers, but the ones I know don’t pay much attention to today’s hits...
I'm glad to hear that. Unfortunately, most of the GenZ/Millenials I come across have boring tastes. It's not their fault at all, just a result of what they've been conditioned with from early on.
1 hour ago, Geoff Grace said:...Back in the ’70s, a music history professor of mine lamented that we students had missed most of the advances in Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, and Form, and that all that was left for us to explore was Timbre. His words have proved to be mostly true...
He deserves a big hug from me. Even on a forum like ours, lots of folks just don't or choose not to see it.-
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On 2/9/2024 at 7:46 AM, Dave Bryce said:
I’m having an odd situation occur. Hoping I can get some help/suggestions from y’all.
I’m not really playing in a band right now so I don’t really have any tunes to learn or practice, and I’m not working on any recording projects. Consequently, when I sit down to play keyboards or pick up a guitar, I’m having difficulty choosing what to play. I don’t feel like doing scales or exercises, and I’m not really inspired to sit and improvise (which is what I usually do when I sit down to play with no immediate goals). I’ve even tried working with newer instruments to try and learn more about them…but I’m having trouble coming up with material to play while I’m exploring.
Is this a problem any of you come across? If so, what do you do to move past it?
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Photography, reading, computer programming, gardening, crafting/tickering... These have all been excellent for recharging my musical brain.-
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On 2/9/2024 at 1:34 PM, Geoff Grace said:
...if we’re missing out on any good music that Gen Z is enamored with...
First we'll have to define "music that Gen Z is enamored with". If that's measured by Top 40 charts, then NOPE.
Music is about 1) Melody; 2) Harmony; 3) Rhythm; 4) Timbre (or sound design). Those who love non-instrumental music might add 5) Lyrics, which is really more Literary than Music per se.
I'm a sucker for 2) harmony. And there has been zero advancement but plenty of regression in this area of the "music GenZ is enamored with".
Rhythm-wise, 1/32 notes in HipHop and Dilla's "drunk swing" beat pushed the envelope, bu it's been mostly stagnant since the mid 90's.
Melodies, again, stagnant since the mid 90's.
Timbre, this is where most of the progress is. There have been some interesting sound design and mixing ideas in the past 20 years.
BTW, folks who make claims like "you love what you grew up with" are blind to the fact that so many listeners love music that came out way before they were born.
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On 2/8/2024 at 10:18 PM, CyberGene said:
All these XV/JV modules and similar synths can be recreated in perfect (and tiny sized) iOS apps. I’m wondering why Roland are absent from the mobile world. I know they are about their Roland Cloud subscription but it can also be done on iOS if desired.
Better yet, a Linux app I can run on a Raspberry Pi. I couldn't care less about supporting walled POSIX gardens like iOS and Android.
But for the manufacturers, these type of decisions are ultimately about money, Roland and Korg obviously have very different cash forecast models about mobile revenues. Maybe one day Roland has a new CEO, and hipsters will be air-playing virtual Jupiter-8s in Vision Pro and Oculus Rift. -
23 hours ago, TJ Cornish said:
I did a quick Google to figure out what you are hinting at - appears to be this: https://sector101.co.uk/sr-jv-romulator.html
Looks very fun!! The only SR-JV-capable board I still own is an XP-80 and it's just holding down some floor in the spare bedroom, so this is not probably a project for me, but it's great engineering and I'm glad to see people playing around!
Yup, you found it!-
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2 hours ago, David Emm said:
You're all making me sigh for my XP-30. Next to the D-50, its my Roland MVP. I had a serious relationship with my JUNO-1, but the XP-30 featured treasure troves like the Orchestral card built-in. I swapped it with a friend who had a huge jones for it. I relented to gain a Mirage rack, a nice box of pedals and a second DW8000. I lightly hated the loss, but I was branching out to include samplers and he was a far better player who needed some power above his organ or piano. It felt righteous, so I'm not sorry in the usual sense. Fast forward, I have a D-50 in my Mac now, so what goes around sometimes comes back with a ZOOOOM!
I loved my XP-30 too. With excellent synth action, aftertouch, 3 built-in SR-JV cards and over 1000 sounds, it was a very well rounded song_writing/home_studio power tool. Roland made a great decision to package the "Session" card with it and the JV-1010. -
I've had several JVs and a XV-5080 and a 5050 but never a 3080. IIRC, XV-3080s' had 32KHz samples, just like the JVs. JD-990 and XV-5080/5050 have 44KHz samples.
As a result, JVs and 3080s can produce frequencies up to 16KHz, more than enough for our older ears, but missing some of the ethereal fairy dust young folks might catch.
Many have suspected that this is the reason the JVs and 3080s sounded warmer.
On the other hand, Eric Persing mentioned once that Roland did some "hyping" on the analog output of the 5080s, as well as their S-760 samplers. Korg did similar tricks on their TRITON STUDIOs (2nd gen in the family). A lot of people loved that kind of "hyped" sound. I remember preferring the slightly more "Hi-Fi" sound of my 5080 over my JVs on the same patches 20 years ago.
Nowadays, with the plethora of saturation/exciter plugins out there, we can easily do our own "hyping". Those tiny sonic differences among models and sample sets within the same product family had stopped triggering my GAS/GIS long time ago. Even a JV-1010 has a DAC chip with flatter frequency response and wider dynamic range than what those early 90's samples could ever ask for.
Once my attention shifted towards programming and re-programming patches, I got so much more fun out of these boxes. The core Super-JV software architecture Roland designed and coupled with their 90's state-of-the-art hardware remains largely unchanged even til today. Other than polyphony (which we can easily double given how cheap these boxes are), the only upgrade the JVs/XVs need is the ROM capacity. And even that can be solved with 3rd party "Pseudo" SR-JV expansion cards today. (Shhhh... don't let Roland hear that)
Enjoy your XV, Eric. I'm sure it'll complement your Nord well.
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20 hours ago, CyberGene said:
There's this Bulgarian song from my youth, I think it was released in the early 90-s, kind of cheesy but I loved it at the time
The chords are pretty obvious:
Intro:
Fm7 Eb/G Abmaj7 Bbsus Cmaj7
Cm7/9 Gm7/9 Cm7/9 Gm7/9
Then it starts in what to me sounds like a tonal centre of Cm:
Cm7/9 Gm7/9 Cm7/9 Gm7/9 Bb F Eb Bb F Eb Bb G7sus G7 (2x) - well, somehow the F sounds like a dominant and the Eb like a sub-dominant, so, well, maybe it's in Bb after all and not in Cm?
Then after the second repeat the final two chords are G7sus G7 which should be a modulation to Cm after all, because the following chords are pretty much Cm (or Eb) sounding:
Fm7 Ab Cm Bb Ab Eb Bb Fm Ab Cm Bb Ab Eb G7sus G7 and it seems like this is firm Cm but it starts again from the first section above which is Cm7/9 but is that a tonic or is it the ii chord in the Bb 😀
It's a bit vague and I still don't know what is happening. I'm usually pretty good with stuff like theory and these things but it eludes me this time. I'd say it modulates between the two keys and because they have a lot of overlaps, it creates vagueness but I'm not really sure. The Cm7/9 chords really sound stable and tonic-y, only for it to go left.
The intro is in Eb, the move at the end of the intro from Bb9sus to C is a very common 80's technique to modulate the key center 3 steps down (the relative minor becomes the new major tonal center). The arranger's decision to immediately move from C back to Cm in the verse, feels like a wasted opportunity for me.
The verse modulates between Cm and Eb, then moves one step up to Dbm at the end.
Bb - F and Fm7 - Ab are simply V - II and IIm7 - IV in Eb. You can add a b7 to the F, making it an II7, and it'll still sound legit.
These types of progressions were extremely common in old school Pop. No need to over-analyze them.-
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Chester Thompson with ToP showing how it's done...
in The Keyboard Corner
Posted
Our tastes on harmony align pretty well and I suspect you ran across some of the more boring Funk tracks like the one OP posted.
Funk as a genre can be pretty diverse, ranging from James Brown to Parliament to Chaka Khan to Janet Jackson to Red Hot Chili Peppers. And they sound vastly different in 1)melody, 2) harmony and 3) timbre/instrumentation.
The only common thread among all types of Funk music is 4) rhythm. Funk is one of the most interesting innovations in rhythm in the 20th century. Popular music would have been so boring if we didn't have the influences from Funk.
This tune shows the more melodic and harmonically rich side of Funk, I would be surprised if you find it equally boring. 👇