AROIOS

Thanks for sharing this amazing interview. What a lovely space he has in the attic! It's heart-wrenching to hear (and see) Andy recount the fire damage. The brief demo of his workflow in Cubase and Halion is a great endorsement of Steinberg.

Small nit: A given mode (and a given scale) often has a unique sound, which can be heard in many of the chords derived from that mode/scale. Ionian has a "centered" quality defined by the major third from the root. Aeolian has a "sad" quality defined by the minor third from the root. Lydian has an ethereal quality defined by the major third and a tritone from the root. Dorian also has an ethereal quality defined by the minor third from the root and a tritone above that (kind of a "minor Lydian sound"). Mixolydian has an "untamed/unresting" quality because of the dominant 7 from the root. If we expand our scope beyond the Diatonic scale, modes in Melodic Minor and Harmonic Major/Minor scales are even more flavorful. To say they "mean nothing" in isolation would be an understatement.

Common Tones + Voice Leading will offer all the power you need to handle situations like this. A -> A/G (G Lydian) is the one of the most common progressions in Pop. There are 6 common tones between A ionian and G lydian. You don't have to do any more work, the transition is already as smooth as it gets.

It seems to be a feature of many "serious" jazz recordings, along with terrible recording/mixing quality. In contrast, I don't recall ONE Pop Jazz recording that's out of tune.

Yup, the volume, sample selection and mixing technique are all off. The original featured a typical 80's gated-verb big snare (1:25 below). Speaking of 80's big snare (Robert "Mutt" Lange style), it's a signature sound in 80's Pop and Rock styles. Yet I've never seen (heard) any arranger boards do it right.

Thanks for the info, pjd. You are the man when it comes to anything related to arranger boards.

Yup, I didn't have much complain about the main acoustic snare on my MOTIFs. And yes, I have yet to hear a "record-ready" drum kit on any keyboard I've touched. Even some of the 90's AKAI/Roland sample libraries sound better with a bit of tweaking in DAW.

I think you're hearing the TR-808 snare in the verse of that tune. The "sh*t" snare I mentioned strikes at 3:35 and is definitely an acoustic type. And yes, there are usually well over a dozen different drum kits in these arranger boards. Ironically. I never had much complain about those kits other than "Standard Kit1", which is arguably the most used kit on an arranger board. Even from a marketing perspective, any manufacturer with half of a brain would make it, and especially its snare, sound as good as they can, if only for a good first impression. But nope, not the case with the pro-PSRs and Tyroses. It never bothered me back in the days coz the S700 costs only $1000. My ears got spoiled by all these excellent $50 drum libraries over the years, to the point where I hear a 90's-Rompler-quality snare on a $4000 board, I can't help but go WTH. 😆 First World Problems, I know, I know.

Snares are one of those sounds where character of the original sample(s) matters a lot ( on a second thought, what kind of acoustic sounds aren't? 😆). There's only so much tuning, EQing and compressing we can do, before it starts to sound like ass. I used to swap the snare in recordings from my PSR-S700 well over a decade ago. It's a breeze with DAWs, but would be a PITA in live situations, if even possible.

Ok, just heard a redeeming snare at 10:00 in Martin Harris' demo, there's hope:

For the last 20 years, the acoustic snares on Yamaha's pro-PSR and Tyros lineups have always sounded like hitting a HomeDepot utility bucket with a spoon. Unfortunately, that tradition carried on to the Genos 2. Jump to 3:34 of the first video below and you'll hear a snare that sounds like your average early 90's garage band on a 4-track recorder. This is in such drastic contrast with the excellent Sweet! and SA1/2 sounds on these boards. It has always felt to me that acoustic snares were never budgeted for and ended up being sampled in someone's bathroom in 10 minutes. What the heck? Snare is arguably the single most important sound in Pop and Rock arrangements. And Yamaha, the maker of great real drums and e-drums, can't get it right on their multi-thousand dollar flagships for over 20 years?

The Vaporwave kids got good taste and a sense of humor. They often spin cheesy-but-tasty oldies into a dope-as-fxxx psychedelic treat.

I'm also a big fan of rootless voicing. Usually the more ambiguous it is functionally, the more dope it sounds.

Was watching UK keyboardist Andre Louis playing with some KORG plugins earlier on YT, and this combi caught my ears. Had to find it on my TRITON EX and share it. It's called "Where Are You?" PAD - TritonEX, Where Are You.mp3

Eric pulled off some magic with that tiny ROM. "Soundtrack" still brings me chills to this day. 😃 Speaking of laying D-50 with TX, this song has D-50 and DX7 written all over it.

My pleasure, CHarrell. Ivan Lins is truly one of a kind. His approach to harmony has always been a great source of inspiration.

You were right David. I just came across the "Fanta Bell" sample in my Super-JV, and checking old user manuals confirmed that the sample was also in the "non-Super" JVs (JV80, 90, 1000 etc). Roland dulled it with a thick layer of other samples in their ROM patches to the point where the body and punch of the U-20 "Fanta Bell" was all gone. Turning off those extra layers brought the patch much closer to the U-20 version.

His arrangement and synth programming on Ivan Lins' "Love Dance" was nothing short of being magical. Lots of musicians tried to cover the song but none ever came close.

DroptopBroham had a point. Pop Jazz was a slippery slope. A lot, if not most of the 70s~90s Pop Jazz guys became unbearably boring ("smooth") after the mid 90's, even by Pop/Urban standards.

His short stint with the Rippingtons weren't shabby either. Even his early solo albums were way over-bashed by the "cool kids". They were mostly standard e-Funk and R&B stuff that weren't any cheesier than the Top 40s of the day. Kenny G did become overly saccharine, even by Pop standards, after Walter Afanasieff took over his production. But then, the Breathless album was still a pleasant Pop album, and Walter/G played my favorite version of "Winter Wonderland". Here's a Preston Glass production for G. I simply don't trust the taste of anyone who calls this "cheese":

It's possible but will be a PITA to recreate the "Magic Marimba" combi/perf on the TX-802 though (the prominent percussive sequence in WetWetWet's "Sweet Surrender"). Yamaha did some clever programming there with random octave and patch assignment.

Here's my favorite tune from the same concert. This is sonic paradise.

All that live "jazzy" stuff sprinkled on top of a horrible arrangement, is just lipstick on a pig. Miles' greatness needs no words, and the original song was excellent. Why he chose to do this garbage, repeatedly, is beyond me.

Funny how the Pop Jazz hating "cool" kids never picked on this utter piece of garbage of a cover

Larry Williams is an under-appreciated multi-instrumentalist. Dude was an important part of the West Coast sound. And Seawind's influence on WestCoast AOR is as prominent as The Time on R&B.