Which Keyboard on Broadway? - musicals and theater?

[Brettymike]

I do enjoy popping by the forum and chatting with you guys, helps me feel a little less homesick when I'm on these extended trips.

 

How long are you out there?

 

Three weeks total. Flying home on Friday.

Was here 25 years ago when I was 17, 6 months before the USSR unraveled. Hard to believe it's the same place. In a past life before music school I was a Russian major (briefly). It's been an amazing adventure. Just pure coincidence that this gig popped up and I was the one (between my partner and I) to take it.

 

This is very very interesting and much appreciated Dave , do you also speak some Russian!??.

 

Brett

[Reezekeys]

In 1997 I played a few shows in a theatre inside the Kremlin! I will never forget that trip.

[Pelle Bo]

I have studied the object list of the PC3K8 and the Forte.

 

You can download it here http://kurzweil.com/product/pc3k8/downloads/

and see the keymaps. It has alot of sounds.

 

If you download the Forte http://kurzweil.com/product/forte/downloads/

the object list isn't showing enough sounds for theater (in my opinion).

 

So, I would also choose PC3K8 for musical theater music.

[Kim G]

Sorry for the sidequestion, but David- Just reacently baught a Pc3K6 and superhappy.

 

How do you enshure that the programs you use have the same outputvolume? By ear? Record them and adjust?

 

Keep up the great work and don`t take the talk to mailform as it is informative to a lot of us out there that find it interesting!

[Dave Weiser]

Sorry for the sidequestion, but David- Just reacently baught a Pc3K6 and superhappy.

 

How do you enshure that the programs you use have the same outputvolume? By ear? Record them and adjust?

 

Keep up the great work and don`t take the talk to mailform as it is informative to a lot of us out there that find it interesting!

 

We always use programs within setup mode. Each Keyboard part has hundreds of setups, the player advances through them with a switch pedal, the patch changes and volumes are marked in the book.

 

Within each setup we adjust the relative volumes of each program with the Volume/Pan page. If you edit a setup, you'll see a tab for this page along the bottom of the screen. Use the +/- buttons to the left of the screen to toggle between zones in a setup.

If you're going to set a volume for a zone, it's important to set both entry and exit value. The entry value is the volume you want for that sound - the exit value is meant to set it back to "normal". I usually use 110 as the exit volume.

 

Most of the factory presets, esp the pianos and orchestral stuff, should have pretty consistent volumes. But most orchestrations will call for certain sounds being louder in certain places. If you're going to just use program mode, the place to adjust the volume is the Common page. Trust your ears.

 

Just got back from 3 weeks in Belgium working on ALW's Wizard of OZ. Antwerp is an amazing city, can't wait to go back. Show opens in Paris this weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

[Kim G]

Thank you for great and understandable answer!

Some mentioned that the players in the pit did not change programs/setups themselves but you mention use of the switchpedal. If there are musicals or other setups where the player only play and don't need to think of the soundchanging....would the changing then be done/controlled by another person or programed in some way by midi? If programmed, how would it be syncroniced with the rest of the show, songs and other improvised/unseen changes?

[MorayM]

If you're going to set a volume for a zone, it's important to set both entry and exit value. The entry value is the volume you want for that sound - the exit value is meant to set it back to "normal". I usually use 110 as the exit volume.

I never knew what that setting was for! Thanks Dave.

[Dave Weiser]

Thank you for great and understandable answer!

Some mentioned that the players in the pit did not change programs/setups themselves but you mention use of the switchpedal. If there are musicals or other setups where the player only play and don't need to think of the soundchanging....would the changing then be done/controlled by another person or programed in some way by midi? If programmed, how would it be syncroniced with the rest of the show, songs and other improvised/unseen changes?

 

There are some tools that play the sounds *and* change the sounds in the right places... I'm not super familiar with this stuff. It's sort of like triggering backing tracks from the keyboard. Kind of tacky...

 

The typical rigs for Broadway all have patch-changes done with a switch pedal. We use the same rig on every show - Kurzweil PC3K plus MOTU Mach5 running on a MacBook. We use switch pedal 2 for all patch changes.

 

The other guys on Broadway mostly use Mainstage, which also provides patch-changing on a switch pedal.

 

Here are instructions for how to do it with a PC3, PC3K, PC3A, etc in both setup mode and program mode:

http://kurzweil.com/knowledgebase/pc3a8/midi_controllers/264/

http://kurzweil.com/knowledgebase/pc3a8/midi_controllers/263/

 

[Willem]

The typical rigs for Broadway all have patch-changes done with a switch pedal. We use the same rig on every show - Kurzweil PC3K plus MOTU Mach5 running on a MacBook. We use switch pedal 2 for all patch changes.

 

I have a question about this old thread. I'm not sure if the patch changes are programmed in Mach5 or as Setup objects in the Kurzweil keyboard.

 

If every change is programmed in the PC3K does that mean that all setups should be strictly sequential? Or does DataInc can also jump several setups at once? I ask this question because I never found an option to insert a new setup between two existing setups or a way to shift a serie of setups to higher object ids.