The Harpsichord Monologues

[AnotherScott]

SK Pro is probably the ONE board you could make the best case for... but I think even that one isn't the slam dunk you think it is, which I'll get back to.

 

10 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

First: for each category, what percentage of potential BUYERS would you say would NOT buy the board, if that category weren't there?
...
Clav? I'd say the LACK of a clav would cost a fair number of sales and a fair amount of value. For me personally it would be the difference between a sale and a not-sale.

 

As long as it has clav sounds in it, would you really not buy it merely because it didn't have a dedicated button/category? I don't think that's what you mean, but when it comes to harpsi, we're not talking about whether or not the sound is in the board, but only about whether it has a dedicated button/category so I'm afraid this is an apples/oranges comparison. (Unless you really did mean clav has to have its own button/category for you to consider buying it, which would eliminate most of the boards I pictured above, since most have neither clav NOR harpsi buttons.)

 

10 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

Now here's another angle: Among those who buy the board, what would you say the frequency with which they push each of those buttons would be--what percentage of JOBS would you say involve using those sounds?
...
Clav? Maybe 20-30% of jobs would have you hitting that button?
...

Harpsichord? What percentage of jobs require harpsichord? For me, maybe once every couple of years, maybe longer...So...5% maybe? 

And finally...what percentage of PLAYERS play the kinds of jobs that require each sound? Organ, piano, EP--no brainer. Clav...based on comments in this thread I guess it's less than the 100% I would have thought, but I'd still put it in the "over 50%" category...Harpsichord? Miniscule to inconsequential. Of all people playing keys in various projects and contexts, it's likely to be the smallest slice of the pie. It's very specialized and idiosyncratic.

 

As I said earlier, I use harpsi about as much as I use clav. Anecdotal evidence may not mean much, but I think you're anecdotally using your own experience as well.

 

For my wedding band, which covers songs from the 40s to today, the sounds come up about equally often. This gets back to my earlier comment... if you look at "top 10" hits over the entire time span (e.g. with equal weight given to 60s hits and 70s hits), I don't think there are more clav songs than harpsi songs.

 

For my classic rock/prog band which doesn't play much in the way of AM hits but instead focuses on FM hits and deeper cuts by prog bands, again neither sound is huge, but I'll use harpsi in some Yes and ELP and Tull (and maybe Genesis?), I don't think I use clav on a single song. (Speaking of which, "Still You Turn Me On" was a pretty mainstream harpsi song that hasn't been mentioned. Doors "People Are Strange" is a tack piano, but about as close as you'll get on most boards is probably layering a piano with a harpsi. And yes, these are songs I've done, these aren't hypotheticals.)

 

10 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

I'm not saying EVERY BOARD IN THE WORLD has it.

Well, you kinda did. Where you said:

On 1/29/2023 at 3:12 PM, MathOfInsects said:

But they are not given their own dedicated button and library, on any board, let alone on EVERY board!

My post wasn't, "Can you find any examples of this instrument being used, bet you can't!"  It was, why does EVERY DP produced in 2023

 

so, either EVERY board or at least EVERY DP. Even allowing for a bit of hyperbole, as I showed, it isn't close to every board. If you factor out the home-oriented boards, it's almost none of them! But yes, it's more prevalent on the more home-oriented DPs. Which brings me too...

 

10 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

I'm asking why in the world it would still be a prominent feature of ANY board.

 

And again, when it comes to home-oriented DPs, I think it's because it is one of the more appealing sounds for solo keyboard use. And again, I'd ask what you think those buttons should be used for instead? What non-represented sound is more appealing for a solo player? At least there is a keyboard-player repertoire for harpsichord.

 

10 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

Why is the harpsichord--exclusively the domain of the baroque era and 60's throwback backs--still a main, featured bank on digital pianos at all, regardless of intended use, and particularly on professional-grade keyboards such as the Nord and the Hammond? Saying, "except for those" is a little like saying, "Except for hydrogen, water is all oxygen!" These are not outlier products, nor are they cheap? Why would this silly sound still be a featured category on these boards, in 2023?

 

Nord doesn't have a dedicated button. As you know, it says CLAV/HPS. You've already said  you have no issue for the sounds to be in the boards for those who need them. What is the downside to adding HPS to that legend? It makes it no harder for you to find your clav sounds, but makes it easier for players like me to find the harpsi sound that I probably need more often. But I guess maybe people were confused by not knowing what HPS means, because Nord has removed the HPS from the rev B version of the Stage 3, and also do not use it on the Nord Grand or the Nord Piano 5. Maybe they just did it to make you happy. :-)

 

So when it comes to "professional-grade keyboards" I think that leaves you with Hammond as your one outlier. Hardly an "Except for hydrogen, water is all oxygen" scenario. Hammond is the exception, not the rule... it may even be the only example of a professional-grade keyboard with a dedicated harpsi button. But let's even talk about the Hammond in particular here...

 

As an extension of my earlier question about home DPs, I'm not sure there's a clearly better option. Remember, Hammond has two sound select sections, and this one is for their "keyboard" sounds (the other section has orchestral and synthy sounds; plus there's a whole additional, separate lead synth section in the board). So as you point out, they have piano, EP, clav, harpsi, chromatic percussion, and other. Let's say they moved harpsi to the "other" category, as you suggest. What keyboard sound should have its own button instead of harpsi? Is there really something that is clearly better? Look at those pics of the categories in all those other keyboards I posted. Which of those categories should be in the Hammond in place of harpsi? Honestly, I would not be surprised if part of why it's there is that the design called for six keyboard-section buttons, and they couldn't think of anything better to put on the sixth button. Probably the best alternative I could think of would be to have two EP categories, maybe Tine EP in one and all Other EP in the other, to split one longer list into two shorter ones. Is that clearly better? I'm not sure. I'm not even sure how many people are aware that there are fundamentally different kinds of electric pianos, compared to the number of people who are aware of piano, EP, harpsi, and clav as distinctly different instruments. I think IRL, there are plenty of people for whom Rhodes and Wurli are basically interchangeable (or Rhodes and DX7 EP, whatever).

 

Personally, if you could define what sound within the given category comes up first when you hit one of these category buttons, I could more easily see a distinct benefit to having two EP categories... one-button ever-present access to my favorite Rhodes sound and likewise for my favorite Wurli sound. And if it worked that way, I could even then turn my Other button into my default Harpsi sound, and have each button immediately call up a sound I'm likely to want. But alas, the Hammond doesn't have that feature.

 

 

[uhoh7]

1 hour ago, MathOfInsects said:

Youth is where the ideas are. It's just that each generation's ideas tend, by definition, to be the ones that most piss off the previous crop of former young people.

 

The youth, in music schools and the wild, increasingly, realize the historical Harpsichord is a very recent revival, a lost grandparent of considerable nuance. Your reaction to it does vindicate the contention above, I must admit

 

This may be a case of Harpsichord patches playing a human.

 

[MathOfInsects]

1 hour ago, AnotherScott said:

SK Pro is probably the ONE board you could make the best case for...

 

 

I feel pretty sure the ones I posted photos of could have a pretty good case made for them. 🙂 I have said nothing about a distinction between home use and professional use. It was actually the ubiquity on home-use boards that prompted the OP in the first place. And why would a home use keyboard need a harpsichord anymore than any other one? If anything you’ve made the case that it should be the other way around.

 

So forget professional boards. Who at home is playing harpsichord as anything but a joke? How many extra sales is that resulting in, and why is the answer 0? 

[MathOfInsects]

1 hour ago, uhoh7 said:

 

The youth, in music schools and the wild, increasingly, realize the historical Harpsichord is a very recent revival, a lost grandparent of considerable nuance. Your reaction to it does vindicate the contention above, I must admit

 

This may be a case of Harpsichord patches playing a human.

 

Wait, so do you like the harpsichord? I can’t quite tell from your posts.

[uhoh7]

14 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

Wait, so do you like the harpsichord? I can’t quite tell from your posts.

You know me. I like the accordion So of course I am nuts about about acoustic Harpsichords, and that Zell patch for IOS and Mac, comes closer to them than any Piano emulation comes to my upright I've heard so far.  But it's a recent obsession. I'm young at heart

 

The most expensive instrument I own:

 

In the hands of a master:

 

 

[AnotherScott]

1 hour ago, MathOfInsects said:

I have said nothing about a distinction between home use and professional use.

You said "particularly on professional-grade keyboards such as the Nord and the Hammond"

 

1 hour ago, MathOfInsects said:

Ot was actually the ubiquity on home-use boards that prompted the OP in the first place. And why would a home use keyboard need a harpsichord anymore than any other one? If anything you’ve made the case that it should be the other way around.

 

I asked about DP’s. The question still stands. Why??

Read again. :-) Reiterating, yes, the home-use boards are where you'll see it. And I think the reason is that, among the sounds one can put in a home-oriented DP, harpsi is one of the few that can easily satisfactorily be played by a keyboard player alone as a solo instrument (without other players, without backing tracks), there is even an existing repertoire of music written specifically for it. So here is my question (for I think the third time), keeping in mind that the focus of these boards is home solo playing, what button-selectable would you like to see on these boards instead of the harpsi? Or would you rather they just had one less button on them?

 

[CowboyNQ]

The Harpsichord calls -

Passions rise, plectrums brandished

The faithful respond.

 

[MathOfInsects]

Well, at least we’ve found something we can agree on: you have asked that silly question more than enough times.  
 

I guess it could have been worse. I could have quoted the weight of a random keyboard in the world.

[AnotherScott]

4 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

Well, at least we’ve found something we can agree on: you have asked that silly question more than enough times.  

 

Why complain about something without considering a solution? You don't like the harpsichord button on a DP, fine. So what's the answer? Do you prefer they remove the button, or that they put another sound there instead? If the latter, which sound is a better choice than harpsichord?

 

If you can't envision a situation that is better than what they're already doing, then maybe they're doing it right.

[stoken6]

32 minutes ago, CowboyNQ said:

The Harpsichord calls -

Passions rise, plectrums brandished

The faithful respond.

 

This thread: meeting of

irresistable force and 

immobile object

 

Cheers, Mike.

 

[bfields]

4 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

I'm asking why in the world it would still be a prominent feature of ANY board.

Well, I thought AnotherScott made a pretty good case that it's most common on "home pianos".  A pretty large part of that market is kids taking piano lessons, who are likely learning some music that was originally written for harpsichord.

 

(Not that they need a harpsichord sound for that, but they're probably more curious about harpsichords than the average.)

 

4 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

Now here's another angle: Among those who buy the board, what would you say the frequency with which they push each of those buttons would be--what percentage of JOBS would you say involve using those sounds?

For what it's worth, I'm skeptical that most buyers are going to use them on a "job", despite the "pro" branding.

[Radagast]

Join this group.

 

https://m.facebook.com/people/I-hate-the-sound-of-harpsichord/100068103949331/

[MathOfInsects]

I actually quite like the sound of the harpsichord. All my musical tastes run toward pitch-inexact instruments. Most of my teaching load these days is in world music practices, sacred musics, and at least partially pre-Classical eras. Give me Jonathan Scales over Lionel Hampton any day, for that stretch against easy tonality. IMO the "future" (slash past) is pitch inexactness. 

But would I expect literally every home DP and even some pro-use boards (NB--better??) to include buttons for two different kettle-drum sounds, next to the EP and AP buttons? No! I mean, I might give that board props just for its whimsicality. But for $1500-$2k-$2.5K the world doesn't need another funny keyboard. I would still find it weird as a default option. 

Funny enough, that's the other odd button the Hammond has. I'd love to know how those conversations went...

[AnotherScott]

14 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

Funny enough, that's the other odd button the Hammond has. I'd love to know how those conversations went...

What other odd button? Kettle drum? Where?

[bill5]

5 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

I've noticed that "millennial" is a stand-in for "anyone younger than Boomer."

Have to wonder where that's true. And tbh I was curious and looked it up, apparently "Gen Z" was what I meant (I thought "millenials" were so named because they were born around 2000 timeframe). 

[jazzpiano88]

3 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

I feel pretty sure the ones I posted photos of could have a pretty good case made for them. 🙂 I have said nothing about a distinction between home use and professional use. It was actually the ubiquity on home-use boards that prompted the OP in the first place. And why would a home use keyboard need a harpsichord anymore than any other one? If anything you’ve made the case that it should be the other way around.

 

So forget professional boards. Who at home is playing harpsichord as anything but a joke? How many extra sales is that resulting in, and why is the answer 0? 

 

Hey now....   I play this every now and then in honor of my wife's grandmother:

 

 

[MathOfInsects]

23 minutes ago, bill5 said:

Have to wonder where that's true. And tbh I was curious and looked it up, apparently "Gen Z" was what I meant (I thought "millenials" were so named because they were born around 2000 timeframe). 

I think that's pretty common, actually. As far as the first point, I'm not sure which generation you're in, but for us Xers, that's the defining characteristic of our generation. By the time the Boomers had started to ease up on thinking it was still "their" time, a whole generation had come and gone mostly without notice. The next time people started talking about a generation in a broad sense, it was the one after ours--the Millennials.

So combine that with the thing you mentioned, where it sounds like Millennial should mean the current generation, and you get a sort of general impression that there were Boomers, and then eventually Millennials, and that's it. 

[bill5]

Yeah tbh I always thought the whole naming a generation thing was pointless, esp when the boundaries are so vague.

[mate stubb]

What in the wide wide world of sports is that thing masquerading as a Vox?

[Mark Schmieder]

5 hours ago, uhoh7 said:

You know me. I like the accordion So of course I am nuts about about acoustic Harpsichords, and that Zell patch for IOS and Mac, comes closer to them than any Piano emulation comes to my upright I've heard so far.  But it's a recent obsession. I'm young at heart

 

The most expensive instrument I own:

 

In the hands of a master:

 

 

That specific model is actually one that I hope to buy sometime in the next two years.

[Tom Williams]

8 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

Speaking of which, "Still You Turn Me On" was a pretty mainstream harpsi song that hasn't been mentioned.

You just weren't paying attention.  I cited it 4 days ago.  Emerson makes good use of the lute stop on that song.

[AnotherScott]

5 minutes ago, Tom Williams said:

You just weren't paying attention.  I cited it 4 days ago.  Emerson makes good use of the lute stop on that song.

 

Whoops! 

 

Here's another along the lines of People Are Strange (where it's not a harpsi, but you probably want a harpsi sound)... for the Beatles "In My Life", you'd want a harpsi sound to play the sped-up piano break which sounds like a harpsi.

 

Funny thing I just realized in all those "why?" pics that MoI posted... if I had those boards, in none of them would Harpsi be my least used sound. I use harpsi more often than vibes, or FM/DX style EP, or organ (which I do use a lot, but rarely from a weighted 88). If I was going to lose or re-purpose a button on one of those boards, it wouldn't be harpsi. 

[ProfD]

Replace the Harpsi button with Saw.😁

 

Brotha @MathOfInsects thanks for starting this entertaining thread.🤣😎

[stoken6]

4 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

or the Beatles "In My Life", you'd want a harpsi sound to play the sped-up piano break which sounds like a harpsi.

OT tangent but: any source of double-speed piano samples in case I need to cover that song? 

 

Cheers, Mike

[GeoffLamp]

https://youtu.be/F9xtvXBqqGI

 

Anyone remember when harpsichords had onboard piano sounds? 🙃

[Mr -G-]

How could I forget Focus' Birth!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI5ARFrBqAA&t=726s

[AnotherScott]

6 hours ago, stoken6 said:

OT tangent but: any source of double-speed piano samples in case I need to cover that song? 

 

Hmmm, interesting idea... If you look at the workstation-style boards that allow deep (wave level) editing, I wonder whether any of them allow you to stretch the samples up an octave from their original pitch in such a way that they sound like a tape recorded sound being played twice as fast. I just tried, using the Note Shift parameter in a single Element within a piano sound on the MODX, and it's too smart... it maintains fidelity to the original regardless. I don't know if they are "invisibly" switching to different samples, or if they are using a quality digital algorithm to change pitch without the expected change in tone, or if there's a still deeper level of editing that I didn't get to. But maybe there's some way to do it, if not on MODX, then on other sample-based boards. We've all heard the mickey-mouse effect of a sound stretched upward beyond a certain amount, I assume there's a way to program that into the saved patch if that's actually the sound you want, even if my quick attempt at it on the MODX didn't work! But that should be the way to create a "double speed piano" sound from regular piano samples.

[uhoh7]

On 2/2/2023 at 7:21 PM, Mark Schmieder said:

That specific model is actually one that I hope to buy sometime in the next two years.

A product of old french families bossing the master crafts people in Castelfidardo about, like Hohner, but more personal  

 

https://artsandculture.google.com/story/the-accordions-of-castelfidardo-unioncamere/CgVhQIkSRxwA8A?hl=en

 

The one I picked:

http://www.saltarelle.com/en/nuage-0

 

I like the low octave because I can practice singing near the key

It plays every note in every scale, but not all in the same direction, and the left hand has just a few chords, with option to pull the thirds. It takes about 6 months to make one I guess, the tuning is particularly time-consuming. 

 

The late great American Accordion.....at the zenith:

 

Ironically appearing with it's nemesis and killer, the electric guitar, in the hands of a master. To be fair, I'm not attracted to that big white monster either.....   My back would not stand it. Buttons....I'll take the buttons, diatonic, 7lbs or so. 

 

Maybe our OP will have a vivid dream.....where all his harpsichord patches are replaced by....you know what  

 

[ProfD]

On 2/3/2023 at 9:15 AM, AnotherScott said:

We've all heard the mickey-mouse effect of a sound stretched upward beyond a certain amount, I assume there's a way to program that into the saved patch if that's actually the sound you want, even if my quick attempt at it on the MODX didn't work! But that should be the way to create a "double speed piano" sound from regular piano samples.

Decrease the decay, sustain and release time of the piano samples. 

 

That should get into the realm of a tacky, er, provide the illusion of a sped up piano sample.😎

[AnotherScott]

Okay, since MoI brought it up again in another thread... 

 

Rather than focus on how prevalent harpsi has been in top-20 hits (e.g. whether more or less prevalent than clav), how about some interesting music with harpsi that isn't quite so well known? I love this prog rock piece, which has a bunch of harpsi in it...