CHarrell

January 30

For some reason I saw that as a Casio product and got really excited. One of my best friends has a CZ101 that he got in a flea market like 10 years ago for nothing, and we both love that stupid little thing so much.

January 30

4 hours ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:

Oh yeah, and the swanky jazz score is pretty cool too.

That reminds me of an interview with Wayne Shorter a while back: there was a sizeable chunk of musicians who were not happy with Ken Burns' Jazz documentary, out of the belief that it presented a somewhat conservative, backwards-looking view of the art form, in large part due to the influence of Wynton Marsalis.

After the documentary, the producer dude behind all those shows like Two and a Half Men, Big Bang Theory, etc. came up to Wayne at a party and said something like, "Yeah man, shame about that documentary! We gotta keep jazz fresh and alive."

Wayne's response: "Then why don't you have hip music on your shows?"

January 30

Bit of a tangent, but I've encountered several musicians in my life (older musicians), who have told me that keys don't matter because they're all the same (meaning you can take a tune like Reincarnation of a Lovebird in F# minor and take it up to G minor as it's seen in the Real Book with no difference at all in feeling).

It absolutely blows my mind that there are people who genuinely believe this....unless of course they're trying to avoid having to remember all the pesky accidentals.

Other note: when I'm writing music and creating parts for players, I always consider ease of readability as foremost, as some others have said. So if I have a tune in F#m and I'm giving it to an alto sax player (Eb transposing), even though it'd technically transpose to D#min, I'll go through and enharmonically change everything to Ebmin, because I think that's way easier to read.

January 30

2 minutes ago, SMcD said:

How does one tell when a synth is designed in a manly way?

ARE YOU READY FOR THE RAW DRIPPING TESTOSTERONE OF TWO OSCILLATORS WITH SIMPLE WAVEFORMS???? THE SHEER POWER OF A LOW-PASS FILTER????? NO YOU'RE NOT, BECAUSE THIS IS AN INSTRUMENT FOR MEN, MANLY, HULKING, MEN!!!! A HIGH PASS FILTER???? YOU WANT A HIGH PASS FILTER???? WHY, FOR THOSE GIRLY HIGH-PITCHED FREQUENCIES???? A SUB OSCILLATOR??? WE'VE ONLY GOT DOMINANT OSCILLATORS ON HERE!!!!!

January 29

8 minutes ago, Josh Paxton said:

Oh, and my biggest unanswered question: why bring up Stanley Clarke and then give everyone a solo but him, including the other bass player??

He technically had a solo spot but he decided to keep it down to earth, same with the first dude on organ.

January 28

So the Kurzweil KaP1 and its stripped down KaE1 have an "H1 Ivory" keybed. Any idea on what that is?

January 27

2 hours ago, Pianoman JC said:

Sounds great and you can’t beat the price

I wrote an e-mail to them asking if they could pay me to use it, and I haven't gotten a response. 😡

January 25

2 hours ago, Paul Woodward said:

With modern computer systems the horsepower needed is completely within reach and won’t cost a fortun

Right here I believe he's referring to the system requirements of a computer to run ESP (8GB RAM).

I admit, I was initially skeptical: why buy hardware sounds on a computer when you have access to what most likely be far more capable plugins and libraries? But as time has gone on, and I've scoured the Internet for all kinds of solutions (where am I gonna get my clav? Does it have the effects I need built in? If not, where am I gonna find those effects? etc.), having a reliable, fat bank of modern sounds (around 10 GB apparently), hardware-limited or no, with a reliable bank of what I'd presume is VRM effects.......it's an appealing thought.

January 25

Yeah I wanna say non MMers are gonna have to wait til later this year for the VST to drop.

January 25

I'm not able to watch the video at the moment and unless I'm missing something, I'm not seeing a breakdown on the website: what's the difference between the SE and the X SE?

January 23

On 1/22/2024 at 9:16 AM, LeesKeys said:

I agree Tom. I ended up buying the 88. I was unsure how I would like the key bed for acoustic piano, but honestly, after playing it a while and further tweaking the curve within Pianoteq, I think it works about as well as any semi-weighted keyboard can. The unit seems very well built yet lightweight. Haven't played out with it yet, but I have a jam session coming up with friends this weekend and I think I'll take it. My usual gigging setup includes an SL73 on the bottom and a Roland A49 on the top tier; I'm considering replacing the Roland with a GXP61 to give me more keys and allow more key range with splits. We'll see.

I actually did a whole musical with the LX+88 back in 2018, I used it for everything from the synth and orchestral sounds the book called for, to exposed acoustic piano passages (I used NI Grandeur for the record), including a dizzying take on Puttin' on the Ritz, and a sensitive ballad duet with a singer onstage. I didn't know anything about velocity curves or anything like that back then, I just played default everything on the hardware and software side. I thought it worked really well for the most part! It was too light for those piano parts, I was struggling for control, but maybe velocity tweaking would've greatly helped that.

However, between a year and a half and two years of using it, the mod wheel started to get screwy and stutter up the MIDI performance, which was really weird. Don't know if that was an isolated occurrence with my specific keyboard, or if it was (is) anything more widespread.

January 23

That'd be hilarious if Nord starting sourcing Korg for keyboards, especially its NH or whatever action. Then you'd really know how much the Swedish know how to game the profit margins!

January 23

4 hours ago, Old No7 said:

sold off my RD-88, but +1 to those tips -- as that's just what I would have said.

Ah ha, so you did end up going to the Fantom, haha.

January 23

25 minutes ago, Docbop said:

One nice thing from my time in computer world is we would need to ship servers from one location to another. We could contact the manufacturer and buy a new box and packaging materials so we had exactly what the server was shipped include the foam inserts. Be nice if keyboard companies would sell their boxes and packing materials for shipping keyboards still in production.

Wouldn't it? I've gotten in the habit in the past several years to hold on to my boxes for an obscenely long amount of time in case I need or want to sell the keyboard, to avoid the hassle of having to buy a generic keyboard box from Reverb that's waaaaaay too big, meaning you then have to buy a boatload of packing material to fill in the gap.

January 23

Just now, BluesB3 said:

I'm looking at a keyboard on Gear Exchange. What's the least brutal and dicey shipping carrier? The choices are UPS, FedEx, and USPS.

Honestly in my experience, it all comes down to the people on the route; carrier company itself seemed to make little qualitative difference. I'm actually surprised though that as a buyer you get to choose, usually the seller selects the one that's least expensive (the rates can vary by hundreds of dollars between carrier for the same package).

January 22

19 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

I suppose guitar amp and fx pedal developers are also struggling with adapting to modeling plugins.

There's a modular and cool collectible factor that I think will always propel those sales. What's a more natural combo than GAS and pedals?

January 22

18 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

No, I think that was true in the beginning. I believe they are developing their own libraries for quite some time.

Ah, thank you for the correction!

January 22

Just now, ElmerJFudd said:

Almost all of our sample based instruments are stingy on storage.

Nord Grand 2 offers 1gb for two sample synths and 2gb for the pianos section. Similar to Yamaha’s AWM2, Nord uses a lossless compression format to get their White Grand XL down to 204mb zipped.

How detailed are their sample sets compared to say, VI Labs Ravenscroft 275 which is built from almost 17,000 samples. Or Garritan CFX which is a 133gb full install?

The Nord pianos are taken from Sampletekk, is that correct? That might give us a good clue.

January 22

3 minutes ago, CyberGene said:

I used to be obsessed with digital piano actions in the past and would consider all these small details as really important features because I used to be kind of “zoomed in” into them only. Once I moved into the hybrid digital with my AvantGrand N1X which gave me peace of mind (being a real grand piano action and so much better than the typical digital piano actions), I just accepted that regular digital pianos also have place under the sun and I’m more zoomed out now 😀 I think I am much more forgiving and can live with any of them to a degree. Even the simplest ones.

I could probably zoom out more; it's usually not in features but the actual experience for me. I used to be fine with playing anything but 5 years ago, I was gigging a LOT with the Yamaha P125. At first I enjoyed it, but as the months went by, I began to find myself struggling with the action. The breaking point came when I was performing in a musical that was very piano-centric, with many of the show's pivotal moments resting on the piano. I'd practice on any piano I could find--usually uprights--and it felt easy, fluid, and expressive. But then I'd actually perform on the P125, and night after night I kept trying in vain to find a way that made the keys feel more natural to play (usually adjusting touch curve). Things I'd play easily on an acoustic became so much more of a struggle on multiple levels. So without knowing the finer points of keybed actions, I just knew I wanted something better.

Sometimes I wish I could just revert back to that state of just playing anything with blissful ignorance--both in feels and sound quality--but then I try to console myself by reminding myself that when I was a kid, my favorite thing to eat was a ketchup sandwich, AKA ketchup between two pieces of bread.

January 22

2 minutes ago, CyberGene said:

I guess Stu (and you?) mean that you can slightly rest upon the escapement in order to throw the key from there and thus control soft dynamics? But I still find this rather useless because digital pianos can ideally be made to generate a strike even if you hold the key after the escapement and then throw it.

What ends up happening in some keyboards with this mechanism--Roland especially-- is that it creates what I imagine as a kind of gravitational "whirlpool" that drags your fingers in and the closer you get to the notch point, the more resistance it creates (playing acoustic pianos, for me the escapement always feels like something where you just press the key down til oh there's the escapement). That resistance from the rubber notch provides a haptic feedback that allows you to sense and adjust your playing force in real-time. However, there are trade-offs here: number one complaint I see about PHA4 is that it feels heavy and sluggish. It's my opinion that this sensation isn't created so much from sheer weight, but rather a kind of illusion generated by the way they created this escapement simulation. Notably, I find the escapement feature in the PHA50 to be much less pronounced, and a lot smoother as a result.

You and I both have played the CP88: I would rather a "simplified" action like that, with its smooth playing and agility, than a more "complicated" keybed that has the kinds of impact on the playing experience that I described above. In other words, I would much rather a keyboard emulate the experience of playing an acoustic piano rather than the literal mechanics of playing an acoustic piano. Obviously, with the Nord Grand, Nord agrees.

January 22

3 hours ago, Outkaster said:

JR was never really relevant and will never be thought off in the same light as other heavy weight players because the soul isn't there. Most of the keyboard players I know don't really talk about him or know who he is for that matter.

I didn't want to comment too much on this thread because I've been striving to be very conscious and transformative of a longheld tendency of mine to put down musicians out of an obfuscated desire to avoid working on myself--so much easier this way!--but I think Rudess hits our kind of radar more because he's one of the big gear demoists in keyboardland. Seems just about every company hires him to demo and show off a product.

January 22

Just now, CyberGene said:

I’m not sure what Stu exactly described, haven’t watched that particular video but he’s a salesman and I would take his opinion with a grain of salt. He has to justify the marketing that surrounds features such as rubber notches called misleadingly “escapement simulation”.

His position as a salesman is irrelevant here, I'm saying that my personal experience echoes his (though for the record, he's ambivalent about escapement simulation). Regardless of how successful the DP manufacturers are at imitating the piano experience through these rubber notches, there is an effect that they produce in some keyboards--though I find it more effective in this aspect in Roland than say Kawai. (I used to love RHIII but last couple times I've played it on ES920, I found there was a resistance to the keys that felt like I was trying to hold down helium balloons--staccato passages felt really snappy, but quiet legato lines felt more difficult. Same on RHC, though maybe not as pronounced due to lack of escapement simulation).

January 22

2 minutes ago, CyberGene said:

The rubber notches that Kawai et al put are needless and don’t contribute to anything

I agree with Stu from Merriam where he talks about escapement simulation providing an extra sense of dynamic control, particularly in quieter playing. I have issues with Roland actions such as the PHA4, but I will always give them credit for their practically flawless dynamic response. These gimmicky simulations might not be super-authentic, but if a manufacturer can get it in a way that enhances some element of the DP experience, then by all means!

January 22

I was surprised by how light the NG action was when I tried it. After playing it at the store a couple years ago, my first words to the keyboard department person: "Please convince me not to spend all this money on this." Wisdom ultimately prevailed, and I didn't, but some thumpiness aside, I immediately fell in love. Amazingly, the keybed felt satisfying for all the keyboard sounds...if Kawai figured something out and offered that on one of their models (that would probably cost half as much as Nord). Oh man.

January 22

10 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

Whatever is involved in that customizing makes the action incredible. I'm not sure what accounts for it.

Biggest thing I remember from playing it is lack of grading and removing the escapement. It'd be really funny if Nord's "improvements" for NG2 are to add those elements.

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