kaptainkeys

The theory and LH bass knowledge about passing tones and intervals that I had before was very helpful, as was youtube and the many videos I've watched about learning bass. I started out pretty simple but I'm slowly building up my skills, dexterity, and speed. I also enjoy learning the instrument and that it opens me up to playing with more people.

Been playing keys now for almost a decade, had a gig a few months ago (I've been playing this gig for years now on keys; myself and the other musicians have like 3 days to arrange and rehearse a whole bunch of songs and then we play for like 5000 people) where the people who hired the band were new this year and hired 3 keys players, 5 guitar players, and no bass player, so I decided to learn bass in 3 days for this show (one of the guitarists switched to drums and the rest of them refused to play bass), and since mid-January I've been playing a a number of gigs as a bassist. Luckily my theory knowledge and LH bass skills from piano were good enough to get me through the first few gigs I played, and now I have more bass gigs than keys gigs on my calendar in the coming months, since there are tons of keys players in my area and only a few decent bass players. Am I enjoying my time as a bassist? Yeah, but between bass gigs and the production stuff I've been doing, my PC4 is sadly gathering dust in the corner of my basement.

Why not go with more of workstation type board that has velocity curves? I like a lighter action as well because I split my time between AP/EP and a lot of hammond and synth sounds and using the velocity curves on my Kurzweil PC4 has left me satisfied with the weight of the action.

I've seen all three of the shows you mentioned above, I felt both the NYC and Cirque shows were fantastic (the musical did a really good job balancing the story with the music and using each part to tell the story of the other), but the show at the Tropicana was kind of disappointing. They only played fragments of the songs and the band was half tracks: no bass player at all and a lot of the more involved (in terms of playing and programming) keyboard parts were also from tracks.

Both the user multis and the user programs are stored in their respective user banks

I haven't been around for a while (life, as per usual got in the way) and I'm starting to get back into playing gigs and the like (and hopefully I'll be more active around here as well) As part of this, I'm playing a Peter Gabriel Tribute at a private event next weekend and so I dusted off my PC4 and programmed some patches for it and they all worked fine until it came time for rehearsal with the band. About half the songs in the set are more acoustic so I'll be using the grand piano at the venue for those (Solsbury Hill, In Your Eyes, Here Comes the Flood, Red Rain) but the rest of the songs have a lot of programming going on on my end. Last night at the rehearsal almost all of the multis I set up had patches missing in some way that made them unplayable and it was rather embarrassing for me as it seemed like I had come unprepared (at least it didn't happen at the gig). The issue was that when I would load up a multi, only some of the zones would play, and going into the edit screen and trying to change programs did not remedy the problem. The majority of the programs in the multis are modified factory presets that are not being used by any other multis. I went through and made sure that the expression pedal was disabled on all the zones where I didn't want it and that all of them were being routed through the main stereo outputs and I had nothing. Can anyone who is better with this board help me? I really don't want to have to reprogram any multis as I have a busy week at work ahead of me and I don't exactly have money laying around to go out and buy a whole other board right now. Thanks and happy to be back, KaptainKeys

Nice rig, what are those silver bars holding up the CK?

Surprised no one has mentioned Joseph Williams of Toto. Just in the last 13 years since he rejoined the band his voice has become much stronger (although they have started doing some more songs a half step down) due to working with an operatic vocal coach to prevent against losing his voice like he did back in the 80s.

Where's the keytar? 😂

The last few gigs I've done have all been sitting gigs (mainly jazz and dinner music stuff) but at home the way I have my 'rig' (if you can call a PC4 on a stand a rig) set up is with a Z stand at a height that is comfortable for both sitting on a drum throne at its highest height and standing, and then I can alternate between the two depending on the song's feel and required footwork. If it is an upbeat rocker where the most I need is some sustain pedal, you can bet that I will be standing, but if it is a slow ballad where I'm doing organ swells or fading in strings with the expression pedal, I'm sitting. The only major exception to the slow=sitting/fast=standing rule is when I'm playing clav stuff with a wah I'll sit (mainly on songs where there aren't keys parts in the original so I'm doubling up rhythm guitar parts and using the wah for some extra flavor) or if I'm singing too, then I'll stand unless the footwork is impossible standing.

Dang, that is one purdy piece of wood! Even though I'm not a guitar player (I want to learn though) I've always liked all the different super strat style guitars out there.

Looks like it would work if your keyboards are at line level and are using balanced cables (like TRS 1/4" or XLR), it likely will not replace your DI box if you are using unbalanced TS cables. Also check if it has a transformer inside, if not, your sound guy may inadvertently send phantom power into your boards which would not be ideal and could damage some stuff. Part of the DI box is the fact that it has a transformer inside.

It's plugged into the SW1 jack, it works as it is supposed to in program mode and on all multis but one. Not sure why, I might end up just redoing it from scratch.

Seem to be having a problem with my PC4, I'm only hearing effects in multi mode when the sustain pedal is being pushed down, anyone know why? I'm trying to figure it out before I start taking it on gigs. Thanks in advance.

I'm a huge Toto fan and this is definitely one of my favorite songs on Turn Back. They are definitely not for show! Steve Porcaro used to take his Polyfusion systems out on the road and would patch stuff between songs on stage. You can hear him using it with an early sequencer on the title track on Turn Back. It was shot during rehearsals for the Turn Back tour if I remember correctly.

I'm setting up for a session today and using the setup I described above minus the room mic. I've always gotten good results with it, and having the hat mic is useful in the mixing stage for balancing it versus the snare if I need it. I get why most people don't always mic the hi hat, but this is the way I learned how to do it and I know what to expect, so that is why I do it.

My typical arrangement is close mic'ing kick (AKG D12), snare (good ol' 57), toms (audix I5s), and hihat (AKG P170) with a pair of overheads (also P170s) and maybe a mono room mic (either a 414 or an sE 4400), recorded into pro tools through clean mic pres. (these are the mics available to me at my school studio, I don't have drum mics at home yet) What about you guys?

Speaking about tracking bass, I did some of that this morning. While I am definitely not Jaco Pastorius (or anywhere near his level, I started teaching myself to play like a month ago) I just plugged the bass into a DI box right into the desk into Pro Tools, nothing fancy, and it sounded great.

Yeah I don't use amp sims or effects until mixing time

Yeah that seems like it might be a bit of an issue. Doesn't help either that the latest mac drivers are for el capitan either. Thanks for the help.

Yeah in my school we've got a copy of Amplitube 4 (I think the free version). While the amps aren't exactly amazing they certainly do the job for both bass and guitar in a mix context, the only really big con of Amplitube is how much DSP it uses up. I've had issues when running double tracked rhythm parts plus bass and lead guitar plus EQ and compression and reverbs and delays on other tracks too.

The main studio I work in is in my school where our live room doubles as a classroom and a band practice space, so it is often in use when I need to record. When I record bass (either when I'm playing it or somebody else is) I just go direct into a DI box into the snake in our control room into the interface and throw on an amp sim when I get to the mixing stage (if even I need it).

I'm currently a Windows user and I will be likely upgrading my laptop in the near future. While my current laptop doesn't have thunderbolt or firewire, limiting me to USB interfaces, I'm looking at getting a Windows laptop that has thunderbolt as my next computer. One of the main studios that I work in (in my school) is running some older hardware: a 2013 27 inch iMac and a Tascam DM-4800 as the interface, using the firewire expansion card. The Mac is connected to the Tascam using a thunderbolt 2 to firewire adapter giving us 24 mic pres and 32 channels in and out total. I would love to be able to connect my computer directly to the Tascam, rather than have to record on the mac in the studio (it is quite lacking in terms of DSP power) and transfer the Pro Tools session to my own computer via a USB flash drive. While I have no qualms with MacOS, I'm more comfortable on Windows and I would rather not pay Apple prices for a new computer, so I want to know if I can connect firewire interfaces to a windows computer via a thunderbolt to firewire adapter and expect it to work without too much issue. Do any of you guys have experience with this?

Use the channel buttons to the left of the screen to cycle between quick access banks, I don't remember the key command to save the current patch into a quick access bank, but that is how you edit them, you basically just override whatever patch is in there already (doesn't delete the program or multi, because the quick access banks are just a shortcut, just puts the new patch into whatever slot you select).

I think we need to throw Richard Page and Mark King into the mix... 🤣