Where has the fun gone in keyboard music ?

[Theo Verelst]

Bach clearly enjoyed his instruments, Beethoven might have longed for better pianos but clearly had a great love for his own compositions, early previous century piano rolls and stride music sound like pretty good fun to be had, and the piano R&R and pop from the 1950s on might top that fun!

 

Then there's newly produced pop, samplers in the 80s, some interesting fusion keyboard instruments (great analog synthesizers, the SY99,..) somewhat decent instrument emulations to allow a cover band more interesting keyboard sound, and a democratization of the music production tools, in principle.

 

And now, everybody and their horse is trying to build the watchtower of the digital Babylon with treacherous music and instrument and production "creation" dreams having very little to do with renaissance fun..

 

T

[JamPro]

Define fun.  Define "fun in keyboard music".  See if you can narrow the definition of "fun in keyboard music" beyond Bach and Beethoven.

 

Is boogie-woogie piano fun?  What about Bernie Worrell's synth playing?  Is that fun?  How about that Lachey Doley guy playing clavinet with a whammy-bar?  Is that fun?  What about playing your live show from you ipad?  An entire room full of synths in an ipad?  How much fun is that?  How about covers of Uptown Funk as the dance floor fills up? 

[CyberGene]

It’s quite possible Bach himself would’ve been grumpy about a lack of “fun” with Beethoven’s keyboard music 😀

 

When one becomes more concerned with the lack of fun in other people’s music, it smells like he’s not having fun with his own. 

[Stokely]

Watch Vulfpeck's Madison square  garden concert (if you happen to like funk/jazz/eclectic stuff played by great musicians including a cameo by Chris Thile).  Cp70 (or similar), b3 organ, clav, played by various members as they tend to swap instruments during the show.  No tracks to be heard!

Everyone having a ton of fun (or REALLY faking it well!) and the audience was as well.

That's the kind of show I'd pay to go see these days.
 

 

[drawback]

Looks like there’s code for that. 
 

https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/172408-kurzweil-pc4/?do=findComment&comment=2912419

 

[stoken6]

Fun in music?

 

Silk Sonic represents just about as much fun as two straight men can have together. And they embody a "renaissance" of 70s/80s songcraft and its rich harmonic structures. As well as being one of the most successful current acts on the planet.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[Theo Verelst]

I'm concerned with making instruments potentially fun. Good playing skills can then do the rest, but then again: a digital recording doesn't much sound like fun, often...

 

T

[ProfD]

30 minutes ago, Theo Verelst said:

I'm concerned with making instruments potentially fun. Good playing skills can then do the rest, but then again: a digital recording doesn't much sound like fun, often...

Being overly technical about anything removes the fun. 

 

Using any instrument to make music is fun in the hands of the beholder.  

 

Show up to the bedroom with a sex manual and unless your partner is a fellow nerd, the fun will leave the room. 🤣😎

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, Theo Verelst said:

I'm concerned with making instruments potentially fun. Good playing skills can then do the rest, but then again: a digital recording doesn't much sound like fun, often...

 

T

My best advice - STOP being "concerned" and have FUN!!

You can only sort of control you, nothing you can say or do will change what other people do musically. Beating a dead horse might raise a stink but that's just more "no fun". 

 

If your idea of "fun" is vintage European classic music composed by putting dots on paper, play that and smile!!!

I'd recommend you get a couple of Dr John records and learn his songs by ear, no transcriptions. 

And give Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry, Be Happy a spin. Listen carefully, the only instruments on that record are Bobby McFerrnin making sounds without instruments.

 

[Docbop]

For Bach his twenty-one children and three wives show how he like to have fun and a keyboard was not involved. 

[bjosko]

14 minutes ago, Docbop said:

For Bach his twenty-one children and three wives show how he like to have fun and a keyboard was not involved. 

Yep, but remember the Keyboard Corner was not available back then 🤪

[Docbop]

57 minutes ago, bjosko said:

Yep, but remember the Keyboard Corner was not available back then 🤪

Maybe everyone just got together at the Harpsichord Bar & Grill downtown. 

[CyberGene]

7 minutes ago, Docbop said:

Maybe everyone just got together at the Harpsichord Bar & Grill downtown. 

Pretty close:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweigt_stille,_plaudert_nicht,_BWV_211
 

Bach regularly directed a musical ensemble based at Zimmermann's coffee house called a collegium musicum, founded by Georg Philipp Telemann in 1702. The libretto suggests that some people in eighteenth-century Germany viewed coffee drinking as a bad habit. However, the work is likely to have been first performed at the coffee house in Leipzig.

The cantata's libretto (written by Christian Friedrich Henrici, known as Picander), features lines like "If I couldn't, three times a day, be allowed to drink my little cup of coffee, in my anguish I will turn into a shriveled-up roast goat".

 

[GovernorSilver]

Feeling pleasure and satisfaction with keyboard music goes hand in hand with dialing back one's own impulse to be excessively critical.

[synthdogg]

10 hours ago, Theo Verelst said:

Bach clearly enjoyed his instruments, Beethoven might have longed for better pianos but clearly had a great love for his own compositions, early previous century piano rolls and stride music sound like pretty good fun to be had, and the piano R&R and pop from the 1950s on might top that fun!

 

Then there's newly produced pop, samplers in the 80s, some interesting fusion keyboard instruments (great analog synthesizers, the SY99,..) somewhat decent instrument emulations to allow a cover band more interesting keyboard sound, and a democratization of the music production tools, in principle.

 

And now, everybody and their horse is trying to build the watchtower of the digital Babylon with treacherous music and instrument and production "creation" dreams having very little to do with renaissance fun..

 

T

I disagree.

[b3plyr]

I don't fit the profile. I'm considerably older and having more fun than ever!

[skipeb3]

I have my own little theory about Bach. Maybe a bit humorous…maybe not to some.

I’ll be the first one to say I don’t appreciate the depth or the nuances of his compositions…I’ve never taken a deep dive into them. I do appreciate all the harmony & countermeloldies & movements and all, but to a “normal” listener they seem to ramble on for quite a while without any clear delineations in sections as we’re used to hearing with verses & choruses, etc.

So I imagine that in his time, his contempories and peers might have said something like…

“Bach’s ok, but he just noodles”.

 

Whatever… I hope he was having fun. I have fun playing, pretty much on whatever gig I happen to be on.

As far as fun goes… some days you play, some days you work.

[Baggypants]

Hey, lay off my watchtower of the digital Babylon with treacherous music and instrument and production. I had a lot of fun building that.

[miden]

6 hours ago, Docbop said:

For Bach his twenty-one children and three wives show how he like to have fun and a keyboard was not involved. 

 

Yep, all it took was some fingers and his organ to have a ball

[RABid]

While in high school I NEVER considered Bach 2 and 3 part inventions to be fun. They were exercises, and something to play to impress others. And I think it is a wonderful time for keyboards and keyboardists. I know I am having fun building my watchtower of digital bliss.

[cp-the-nerd]

On 9/12/2022 at 11:09 AM, Theo Verelst said:

I'm concerned with making instruments potentially fun. Good playing skills can then do the rest, but then again: a digital recording doesn't much sound like fun, often...

 

T

I thought the opening post was confusing enough, but now I have no idea what you were getting at.

I can't think of a time when piano technology (and music tech in general) was better than we have it right now. I have a fairly modest keyboard rig and home studio room by this forum's standards, but it covers a huge spectrum of musical sound and I have a looper pedal with enormous creative potential.

There are even several recent keyboard instruments that have expanded the possibilities of music expression for piano players, like the Polybrute, the Seaboard, and the Osmose.

In short, any keyboard player who struggles to have fun in the current era is doing life wrong.

[Al Quinn]

.

[Mighty Motif Max]

 

On 9/12/2022 at 10:09 AM, Theo Verelst said:

I'm concerned with making instruments potentially fun. Good playing skills can then do the rest, but then again: a digital recording doesn't much sound like fun, often...

 

T

Action comes into this a lot - I find I can enjoy a lesser quality piano with a great keybed attached more than a really great piano sample with a lower-quality keybed.

 

4 hours ago, cp-the-nerd said:

I thought the opening post was confusing enough, but now I have no idea what you were getting at.

I can't think of a time when piano technology (and music tech in general) was better than we have it right now. I have a fairly modest keyboard rig and home studio room by this forum's standards, but it covers a huge spectrum of musical sound and I have a looper pedal with enormous creative potential.

There are even several recent keyboard instruments that have expanded the possibilities of music expression for piano players, like the Polybrute, the Seaboard, and the Osmose.

In short, any keyboard player who struggles to have fun in the current era is doing life wrong.

You know, I wouldn't say I struggle to have fun by any means, but I am generally not a fan of the direction that many hardware piano samples are trending the last 3-4 years or so.  Yamaha and Korg in particular - it's like they're reaching to try to get either more mechanical noise/super bright FFF layers/a refined midrange (Yamaha) or better mono compatibility (Korg) but losing the natural sound of a piano in the room and the actual dynamic response of a piano (regardless of velocity curve and action). I really notice this on my MODX/the Montage and on the current Korg Nautilus (and Krome EX). I find myself defaulting back to the previous generation pianos, even if they don't have some of the added noises etc. This is for solo piano/jazz trio material, not even in a band context - it just seems like hardware piano samples are trending towards sounding more processed/more electronic instead of trying to get closer to VST-level results. This also goes for electric pianos in some cases, but that's another topic.

 

Kawai doesn't seem to be affected by this, and Roland has always sat in this territory for me anyways (but I really like their pianos in a band mix). Kurzweil keeps improving, as does Nord. It's just something I thought was relevant to this thread.

 

OTOH for non-acoustic/electric piano sounds, I'd say we're in a great time period now.

[KuruPrionz]

Time to buy a nice fretless banjo! Endless fun!!!!

[HSS]

 I bet Johann Bach would have had big fun with this keyboard, at least until the batteries went dead. 

 

[KuruPrionz]

On 9/12/2022 at 2:08 AM, Theo Verelst said:

Bach clearly enjoyed his instruments, Beethoven might have longed for better pianos but clearly had a great love for his own compositions, early previous century piano rolls and stride music sound like pretty good fun to be had, and the piano R&R and pop from the 1950s on might top that fun!

 

Then there's newly produced pop, samplers in the 80s, some interesting fusion keyboard instruments (great analog synthesizers, the SY99,..) somewhat decent instrument emulations to allow a cover band more interesting keyboard sound, and a democratization of the music production tools, in principle.

 

And now, everybody and their horse is trying to build the watchtower of the digital Babylon with treacherous music and instrument and production "creation" dreams having very little to do with renaissance fun..

 

T

Thanks to Bach and his cohorts, we can play slightly out of tune in all keys. I'm not so certain how much he enjoyed his instruments since all the fifths were off. 

The democratization of music production tools was inevitable once the digital age began to bloom. I am very grateful for the great tools we have now, that everybody can own their own humble studio - that's about as fun as I can ever imagine. The common man during Bach's time could go hear music played at church and maybe a busker once in a while at the town market but few owned musical instruments and fewer still had any opportunity to learn how to play well. This is all much better now, I am much happier that music is everywhere. 

 

The reason "treacherous music" has very little to do with with "renaissance fun" is because the renaissance was not only over hundreds of years ago but also the history was written by the wealthy literate who saw no point or purpose in writing about all the miserable, poverty stricken people who could only work harder and die younger.

Let them eat cake? 

 

We are here now, there is no other "magical time" for us. Dreaming about the fantasies of days long since gone is futile. The dream is real, we have great musical instruments to enjoy and opportunity to use them. 

 

Make music? 

[Tom Williams]

11 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

Time to buy a nice fretless banjo! Endless fun!!!!

Don't do it, madcow.  The only note that you'll ever play in tune is the drone G.

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, Tom Williams said:

Don't do it, madcow.  The only note that you'll ever play in tune is the drone G.

"playing in tune" is the problem, not the solution. 🤔

[Baggypants]

Bach loved his instruments. I remember reading that he would visit church organs and pull out combinations of stops that the resident organist would typically think were terrible and make them sing. This is why I was so dissapointed with "Switched On Bach" they set the synths and just played them. I like to think Bach would have been fiddling with the knobs while transitioning through several key signatures during a three part fuge.

[David Emm]

I have to refute that "set the synths and just played them" part. Wendy Carlos fiddled with the knobs like crazy, building everything on a Moog modular at that time. She always treated the studio like one giant instrument, so that applied to her careful use of filters and effects as well. It can be hard to discern exactly what someone did at this or that exact moment, especially in synth matters. Half of the glory resides in the fact that she had to keep Bach's notes going while she tweedled. I believe she had a brief whiff or two of Mellotron at certain points, but it wasn't one of her bedrocks. Computers have made it ultra-rare for someone to just sit at a modular and go at it with such craft.