Leaderboard

That is indeed some very good advice, Philip. I spent 12 years playing professionally as a drummer. My first instrument is piano and I had started playing piano (lessons) by 3 1/2 and wrote my first song by 4 1/2. During the mid 90s, I quit a popular regional rock band I played in that got a good deal of notoriety. The two top Chicago rock newspaper critics predicted the band would be the next breakthrough band out of Chicago. Being in that band got my more recognition as a musician than I'd ever known . I had seen a show with two of my bandmates with Jimmy Chamberlain (Smashing Pumpkins) and after his set Jimmy walks up to me in front of my band mates and says he's followed me in two bands and I'm one of his favorite drummers...out of Chicago (okay, not as good as saying favorite drummers period -- he had to qualify it by adding "out of Chicago," but I'll take it). But the band's leader is a complete egomaniac and control freak and wants to start doing lipsynced shows, I quit the band. What's the point? I love playing music, I'm not an actor. I play some demos of my original songs to some musicians I've played with in bands and get a keyboardist, guitarist and bassist to be part of a band focused on playing my songs. I place an ad in a local music paper with my stage name and mentioning the bands I've played in stating I'm forming a new band and we're in need of a lead singer. I end up getting calls from a couple of very talented female rockers out of Chicago who knew me from one of the bands I played in and try to persuade me to meet with their bands and see how things go. One of them, whose band, Veruca Salt, was just signed to Geffen Records, tells me that she's seen me play, thinks I'd be a major upgrade for the band from the previous drummer they just fired for a drug problem and they need a new drummer ASAP and wants me to meet with the band. She (her name is Louise Post) stays in contact with me for the rest of the month telling me, "This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. " I eventually decline the opportunity to meet with the band for a variety of reasons. My own band, after three dozen auditions couldn't find a decent lead singer, and after playing with the bassist in my band in another band at a festival where he was high on crack and was caught making sexual remarks to a child, I threw the towel in on doing an original band, but by that time Veruca Salt had already found a drummer. My point? It's really difficult to make it in the music business. If you have an opportunity, you need to seize it. Every piece of advice @Philip G Huntoffered above rang true to me, even though I was out Chicago-- a big city -- was with a top Chicago booking agent with two bands, knew heads of a bunch of Chicago record labels pretty well, like Touch and Go (Corey Rusk) and Prada (Ken Goodman) to the point that we could hang out at a club and watch a band, but navigating leading my own band, the right personnel, being at the right place at the right time, doing the right promotions, having the right look -- there are a lot of factors. And the reality is, success at a major level, even in one of the US's largest city was a lot less likely when not living in LA (or NYC). Now that was all back in the 90s. The Internet and social media has, in many ways made things easier if you're brilliant at promotion, and have music that will strongly resonate with a large audience, but on the other hand, things aren't like the 90s in terms of getting signed, success or what it means to be signed. And making it big without a big promotions team behind you is possible, but it's extremely rare. To Philip's points, you need to be realistic about your music and you also need to be realistic. If your music or production isn't up to the task, if you're 40+... And I realize I may alienate a lot of people with this, but A LOT OF PEOPLE making music are incredibly unrealistic about their talent. Have you played live in front of audiences of decent sizes -- including busking -- and seen a strong positive reaction? What causes you to believe your music has appeal and is at the level it needs to be? You need some kind of reality check and I believe the best place for that is still live performances in front of audiences. If you've passed all of those checks, you can move on to others. I've had a long career in marketing, with a publication of my own, a major book deal, lots of public speaking.... The promotion part of music is the most complicated and costly part. That's why 99% of artists need a record label or agency to handle this area. But if you're on your own promoting your music, I can't help but think of an old adage, "Nothing kills a bad product faster than good promotion." And when you're on your own and didn't jump through hoops of getting signed, there's an important element you missed, the opportunity to have a reality check. For an expert to give you an objective assessment of your music. While that isn't necessarily a definitive judgment, a lot of artists have been told their music won't succeed and still went on to success, more often than not, it can be a reality check and without having any expert weigh in, you may not be as realistic with yourself. I certainly don't mean to be discouraging, I mean to communicate: do everything possible to get a reality check. Making it, even on a minor level, in the music business, is incredibly challenging. You can more realistically set expectations and objectives and gage your potential by getting objective expert input.

Well, I got my survey for my Steinberg ticket. I really let them have it. I let them have it for me, for Larry, and the for everyone else they've screwed in the past two weeks.

I can't imagine why you would be embarrassed about sending stems of your dry vocals for a relative stranger to listen to solo'd up on a very revealing monitor playback system. 😂 (Just upgraded my interface and then spent a couple of days restoring a vintage Crown D-150 to use as my studio amp and I can suddenly hear all manner of reverb tails, transients and trippy little stereo effects in records I thought I was familiar with) I've told you before that I think your vocals have character and they will sound even better with judicious application of psychedelic era Beatle-y processing. Whenever you're ready, buddy.

True. Best to wait for a 15% off coupon at Musician’s Friend. On the other hand, Omnisphere 3 may be on the horizon.

Best way to answer that is to listen to the demos of the libraries and see if any of them are things you would use. Obviously, the vast majority of libraries are Omnisphere based so if you like those libraries and can afford it then get Omnisphere. If you have Komplete, then there are a lot of Unify/Komplete instrument libraries as well. I don't think there are any third party plugins I would specifically recommend that work any better than anything else. The power of Unify is what it can do with any vst you throw at it. I wish I could afford Omnisphere but I just do not have a spare $500 to throw at it.

The Beat - Mirror In The Bathroom

And in this case, "great" means "one that people want to listen to over and over." So true. Chart numbers only pique interest; you can get all the exposure in the world, but if people hear what you do and don't want more of it, you're sunk.

Back in 2000 I had a girlfriend whose bands got to No1 in the UK physical indie charts. They only ever printed 500 vinyl singles. When I met with the a&r at XL he told me a story about his band getting into the UK singles charts. They beat Michael Jackson and only ever made a print run of 1,000. You don't need to sell a lot to get into the physical charts...and you can cheat the system. Back in pre+internet days, big name artists would be in the top ten, not because of sales but, because of pre-orders made by the label itself. This was an old trick to get the song onto radio and hopefully recoup losses once the public became aware of the song. Nowdays artists do the same on Spotify etc by paying for plays. Or paying reviewers. Same old crap, just a different format. If you want to shell out some money, you can rig the system.... But you still need a great song.

Re: James Hargreaves video. The "UK Chart" that he says his song got on was "Physical Singles." I can't imagine that it represents a huge market. Was it bracing for this plug-in 'ho to watch this guy demonstrate getting his sounds using the ugly-***** DXi stock Vegas FX? Anyone here use Vegas ExpressFX on their master bus? Good lord. Re: The Troll. Yeah, it was. Obviously, with the hit-and-run, he's not interested in an actual discussion. Bonus, though, and one of the things about this forum that continues to amaze me, is that a troll post didn't wreck the thread, rather it was fertilizer for a pretty interesting discussion. Are we all enough veterans of online forums that we know better than to get wound up and launch ad hominem attacks at trolls? I used one of my favorite anti-troll tactics, which was to ask them to elaborate. In my long experience, that's a troll kryptonite. Stay reasonably polite, keep asking them reasonable questions. Re: @Philip G Hunt's excellent points, #7 is especially important. Once you get the attention/success you think you want, will you be able to embrace it and live with it? As Spock wisely put it, it is often better to want a thing than to get it. I'll add that it's best to figure out as much as possible what you want from a music career. "To earn a decent living" is NOT enough. There are many avenues for musicians to take toward this goal. Member of live touring band, sessions, teaching, casuals. One thing I know about myself is that my creative process takes a long time. If I were in a situation where I had to cough up new gems every few months, that would be hell on earth. So I have to pull back. What is success for me at this point in my life? First I want to make music that pleases me. Next I want to put music out that people enjoy and I would also in some way like to connect with the people who enjoy it. The pie-in-the-blue-sky goal would be to be able to take the stage in front of an enthusiastic audience (this is the least realistic goal, but I would love to make it happen). If I make any money at all from the process, that's gravy. That's why Bandcamp plus a YouTube video for each song suits me. With Bandcamp and YouTube, it's easy to know what reach you have with each song. You know how many times it's been played and/or purchased. When I was putting together hobby bands, I took my goals one at a time. If we managed to get a club to book us so we can play in front of people, that was success. If we got more shows, success. Get a following, success. Record a decent-sounding demo, success, get it played on the radio, success. With my last band, those were the boxes I ticked before Philip's point #7 seized the other members and they wandered off. And I'm happy with that. How many people dream of doing those things and never get to do them? I've played on stages in San Francisco! I've heard myself on the radio! I put together a cool band, wrote songs and played lead guitar! When I watch other musicians playing, I've felt the strange autopilot in-the-moment bubble they're inside, a feeling like no other. That zone which is outside of normal perception of time and space. How many people get to feel what that's like?

@JeslanYou hit the nail on the head. Just about every post I've seen from that individual lately looks a lot like a troll, whether he's attacking devs contributing to Ukraine and parroting Putin propaganda or talking about the music industry. I don't think he's on the level, that is, I think he's looking for trouble and deliberately makes efforts to be abrasive with people and to be a contrarian, often making inflammatory posts with points that make no sense, but only seem formulated to oppose others. He doesn't reply when asked how he's acquired his expertise, while people he insults have shared a good deal of knowledge and relevant personal experiences.

Okay, I see. If you scroll allllllll the way to the bottom of the product page they say that it comes in VST and AU, but it doesn't say how to get the plug-in version. The button makes the cursor change to the hand, but clicking does nothing. However: when installing it on my laptop I watched the installer shell closely and saw that at the very end, it installs a VST3. It just doesn't allow you the options that installer shells usually do. I rarely install standalones. Anyway, this is an amazing-sounding plug-in, quite worthy of being payware. A set of pianos and strings that sound this good and the download is only about 210MB. And it did its job well, too: I bought a Studiologic SL880 20 years ago, best action ev-ar from a weighted controller, so I was interested to see what Fatar/Studiologic were up to. Turns out they've been busy. Keyboard controllers still, of course, but now they have many more really good-looking synths, pianos, and a compact drawbar-equipped clonewheel organ. Brian "Oblivion" Auger is the star endorser. If I were gigging on keys, I'd surely look closer. They obviously have some talent coding their sound generators.

I meant "you know that I respect you" not yourself! Darn autocorrect, ruining compliments. My favorite was a few years ago, I was sending an email -- it was to a professional contact and I wrote it on my phone and fortunately I looked it over because instead of "regards Peter", it read, "Regardless, Peter." And honestly, I thought "Regardless, Peter" was way better than. "Regards," but not reallyappropriate for business communications. Regardless, Peter

To be honest I have to say, is this actually said for real ? Or just trolling ? Every single entertainment business in our society is a multi-transaction volume industry. And all of them are a rigged system, at least in relation to what it's sold to people, the usual american dream. This goes for music industry, writting, or any other creative industry. They move so much money because it is an investment in the most literal possible way, they put unthinkable amounts of money on promotion and marketing. That's the only reason they get so much money. Period. To make a lot of money you need first to have a lot of money already. It should be obvious that the rules on that level don't apply to individual artists. That's why it makes from the unknown or small individual artist zero sense to go for streaming platforms where the only money is made by the ones that are already famous. The ratio of artists that actually get famous versus the ones that not is absolutely disproportionated. And has nothing to do with skills or quality. The only things that can get you a ticket for the famous lottery are A LOT of luck, a lot of money already to invest in marketing and promotion (and the knowledge on how to use it of course), or having the right contacts within the industry. Usually, it takes all the three. The ones having that chance are a very very very few compared to all the rest that won't have any chance. So platforms like BandCamp are simply the only right choice and way to go for small artists (besides of course maybe having too a youtube channel and some social media to at least try to get lucky, maybe (again, maybe), to be more visible out there in the general population). It's only If (again, if) eventually they get lucky enough to start moving a lot of people that would make sense to move too to streaming platforms. But until then (something that most aspiring artists won't ever get), streaming platforms are only a way to be played and scammed like Philip told.

I originally released this as an instrumental a year or so ago, but I always had a vocal in mind for it. I've only recently got it to a point where I'm happy to let the world have a listen. If anyone listens to Thurston Moore's acoustic offerings, you'll here his influence on me. I hope it's not too derivative though. Any advice appreciated, Cheers Here's the final cut, out now on streaming: https://open.spotify.com/album/4KJSEpK8awp8GEy25XKOsE?si=fuTTTA1xSzu9uww-iZhmpQ&utm_source=copy-link

I have so many Ethera packages that I'm not sure which is which. And I just bought this one too. Man those legatos are amazing!

So I'll hold the "like". If it remains an instrumental maybe I'd pull the lead "voice" up in spots; maybe. Without the vocal, its hard to say. Its "grooving" for sure, the foundation is laid. t

I'll keep that train going! I still play this song a lot. 🙂

Def Leppard - Overture Off their debut album, before they went a bit shite commercial seeking the Yankee Dollar. Cue Wibbles' sarcastic comment:

Hello TIm, For me Unify is like a hub for your existing virtual instruments, so it works well with the titles you currently have. John has really put a lot of time in creating a lot of addon patch banks for Omnisphere but as you say it can be really overwhelming to explore the 1000s of possibilities with this one virtual instrument. The Unify Discoverstation package is an amazing accomplishment for sure. So Unify does support VST2, VST3, and Audio Units, but prefers to use VST2 as it has been the more established plugin format. If there is not a VST2 version of an instrument available then of course it will use what is there and Unify itself can be run as a VST3. What adds to the value like you mention is that if a particular platform does not support the VST plugin format, then Unify can act as a wrapper of sorts which is very powerful especially on the Mac platform. So as far as what third party instruments, it all depends on what speaks to you. John has a certain sound he loves, and it sometimes will push the boundaries for me to try something different like Kilohearts Phase Plant. I think some of the other synths he loves are Vital and Plasmonic. I am into the more orchestral and acoustic sounds and that is why I have been working on Unifying the Spitfire Audio instruments I have. I am working on the Originals Abe Jr. Drums and Eric Whitaker Choir. If you already have these instruments, having the unified patches are super helpful, and these will always be free. I hope that helps a little. Joyfully, Simeon

The B@stard Fairies - Whatever

Pixies - Here Comes Your Man

Blondie - Eat To The Beat

great thread guys, really enjoying the real world stories 👍

Took into account suggestions. I have now made the BGV's more central and raised Lead vocal levels. Still unsure of total eq. Thanks for all the help and suggestions as always.

We replaced the Windows style menu with a menu system from a different UI framework. This was necessary due to a bug in Windows (something they've known about for 12 years!). Prior to Windows 10, the number of items allowed in a menu was limited to around 4000. With Windows 10, this was reduced to around 1200 - 1500 menu items. This was affecting users with more than 1200 plugins - i.e. some of their plugins would be missing from the menus. Also, we actually calculate the menus first, and use them to populate the plugin browser (so we only need to do it once), so this limitation was also affecting the plugin browser as well. The new menus don't have this limitation.

Motörhead – Eat The Rich

I remember Veruca Salt 😃 I think you and I may have had similar tastes. I love reading about other people's journeys. Thanks man. 💪 The point you make about gigging is very true. I was gigging from the age of 15. Not all the time, but enough to know what it was like on a stage in front of 100+ kids. That is a great barometer of how good you really are. By my 20s I was gigging every weekend with a folk act. At one point we were tipped for success. Our well connected guitarist pulled a lot of strings and got up an A&R gig at the 12bar club in London. On the night of the gig, wouldn't you know it, armed police cordoned off the entire area because they were raiding a drugs den next door. By the time they'd finished, we didn't even have time to sound check. Got on stage, guitarist plugged in his effects board *bam* the electrics of the venue blew every pedal. He huffed off stage and refused to play, so we played two acoustic songs... and that was that. Sometimes lady luck is not on your side. One of my biggest regrets is that I didn't gig more at my height as 53mph I only played a few promo gigs to support the single releases. Did support for Miles Hunt of the Wonderstuff, got invited to do a radio session at xfm, which unfortunately never happened.... But as I said, I was holding down a full time job at the same time. But I never really gigged seriously. Hanging out with the right crowd is absolutely essential ( even if a&r guys can be dicks). Use all the connections you have. Band mates with connections is always a bonus. Who you know will often trump most cards. I'm sure I'll think of more crap to write. 😂

Ah, so it seems to be that they decided to put up the bundle installer so that those of us with anything from it could access it, and stripped the serial requirement out of everything. That would imply that I still only technically have licenses for the two PB freebies in the package, and the other ones just happen to work. Ah well, I'll use the other things in the bundle, and if the software police come and knock on my door I'll plead confusion and point to this thread as proof of my attempt at diligence. The owners of the products are probably too busy bathing in Dom Perignon while lighting cigars with $100 bills to assemble a legal team to come and get me.

It’s been so long since Venus was on sale that I remember trying to buy Venus when it was last on sale but missed out because I had to return a tape to blockbuster and didn’t want to pay late charges.

I remember playing with an SC8850 when I was in the Music Technology course at Lane Community College here in Eugene, Oregon. I got straight A's in that course, and even an award for "Special Outstanding Achievement in Music Technology"! I'm sure you're thinking, "What an amazing woman!".

I recently received some emails from Accusonus with the serials in my account. You should have get the same.

Did you try reaching via their Facebook page? Since they work there now ….just saying haha

I think Elvis' Alison has been posted enough times 😱 Allison > Alice. Arlo Guthrie - Alice's Restaurant:

I have a few USB foot pedals that are fully programable with any one or combination of keyboard and even mouse clicks. You set them in record and make your moves and it saves this and assigns to one of the pedals. They are used initially by people who transcribe recordings to text so they can keep their fingers on the keyboard. They are also used by machine operators and musicians like me for live performance Just Google USB foot switch. They range from $15 to $300. I have both. The one I like the most and use for live performance control of my backing tracks is called Stealth. https://stealthswitch3.com/ I use one of the cheap ones from Amazon to control Cakewalk. I have it set for R, W. and space bar.

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench - a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side..." Often attributed to Hunter S Thompson

I'm going to share a bit of REAL advice and probably reveal way too much about myself. Back in 2000 I was courted by labels such as XL. I had the meetings, I met the execs. I ended signing with a small startup and had a moderate radio hit. Before screwing it all up. If you want to know what NOT to do. I'm your man. But I have picked up some really good advice over the days. My biggest advice to any aspiring artists is: 1. Move to a city which is a music centre. You will never make it in a small town. A big fish in a small town means nothing. London, Manchester are the UK hot spots. You need to live where the music lives. 2. Scocialize, Socialize, Socialize. Meet people. Meet their friends. Go to parties. Be the life and soul of the party. Hold your drink. Don't be a *****. You'll make more connections that way than any conference. 3. Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate. I came to the attention of various A&R people because I was collaborating with a female singer, gigging with a folk act, supporting a male singer, recording and producing an alt-acid techno guy. All this while holding down a full-time job. 4. Be Pro-Active. No one is going to come and find you. You have to find them. However, in this case I was very lucky as the label I signed with contacted me through MP3.com. But I also sent off demos, handed people CDs at gigs, emailed. That's how I got to meet XL Records. 5. Face Some Hard Facts. Are you pretty enough? When I met the label folks, one of the first things they said to me was "we were worried you were going to be really fat or something". Sure you can say that was unPC, but at least they were honest. Just have a look at TikTonkers, YouToobers. They are all symetrical and pretty. It's a sad truth that if you are going to be a front man/woman you will need to look good. That doesn't mean beautiful in the TikTonk sense, but you will need a look. Looks matter in the business. 6. Face even Harder Facts. Are you young? It's a young person's business. If you haven't made it while you're young, it will be really hard to make it later on. Not impossible, Mark Sandman became famous in his late 30s and died in his 40s RIP. There are always exceptions. But if you're starting out, be realistic. 7. Do You REALLY Want it. What will you do IF it becomes serious? When I was being courted by the Verve's manager, had my demos circulating major US labels, and I was asked to collaborate with a famous female singer on an off-shoot label from XL....I panicked. I realised that things were getting out of my control. I felt like an imposter. Things happened so quickly that I withdrew....and that was the end of my meteoric rise. Once you start saying NO to offers, they dry up quicker than a Dublin bar on a Saturday night. Finally - don't forget to write some blistering music. Nothing mediocre. 'It will do' is not good enough if you want other people to take you seriously. If at the end of this rant you feel I am completely wrong. Just ignore my advice. If you think it helps. Pass it on.

I do not think it has become a free product, so distributing it would amount to piracy. As others have noted, this isn't available to everyone - probably only those who have previously bought this bundle or plugins from it. If it was free, download links would probably be publicly available on Accusonus' own landing page (rather than having to log in). As the company is effectively shutting down (development on all existing products has stopped and support will eventually become unavailable), the installers are 'given' away to those with perpetual licences so that those users get what they paid for (i.e. a licence to use that particular version indefinitely).

Hey mark, glad you appreciate the high end ha, most comments appreciate the low end. Oh yes I think it would be interesting to add some mysterious indistinct male vocals to it, maybe like one of 007s villains, thanks for listening and for your feedback. Glad you enjoyed it.

Neither one of those trolls is interested in getting any help with fixing anything. They just want to be miserable and drag others down with them.

Gary , I think the intro sounds much better. Seems some EQ fixed it. You've got the vocals sitting Nice , and the interaction of the main vox and harmony is Perfect. They sound So much tighter and pitched Extremely well with each other. Guitars are Nice and smooth . The main lead break is Awesome. 3rd listen and I can't find "anything" I would change. I'm on a laptop with headphones, so I can't get critical at all about tone , but it sounds Great to me. I think they'll really like this one when you are happy.. mark

Ritchie Valens - We Belong Together

Get a FREE perpetual License to Antares Choir for trying a 14 day FREE trial of Auto Tune Unlimited - pay monthly requires a 2 month Minimum commitment after the 14 day trial period https://www.antarestech.com/demo-downloads/

Thanks for posting the links! I guess my time playing reggae/dub bass around baltimore-dc with jamaican musicians is in there somewhere for you to make this connection ha. I wasn't around there anymore when they started up so I had not heard of them. Grateful for your posts !

Hey Philip...not derivative. I like the chord changes. There is one boomy frequency I think it's from the acoustic guitar.

Music education comes in different formats and fashions, different aspects. And some things work for others and some things don't. Theory/Reading: I always got frustrated with music theory and reading music, I have always been fascinated by it, but never good at it. But that doesn't really mean anything. Music theory and reading music is kind of like mathematics in ways, either it clicks well with you, or your brain says, does not compute. Just one aspect of music. I took piano lessons throughout elementary school but was not so good at keeping up with reading sheet music. but better at it in middle school when I played the flute (less notes to read at one time). If you can't become a child prodigy musician, it doesn't mean you suck, it just means it's not your thing. There is other forms of art and music. Songwriting/Improv: Playing by ear and songwriting or composing without sheet music works better for me. I took a songwriting course at a community college and it was more enjoyable than piano lessons. It reassured me I could write music without being a child prodigy pianist. Midi: I took a midi course at the same community college in the mid 90's when midi and computer software was a new thing, especially for a college course. Now technology is getting involved. Music Management: Also took legal and commercial music management courses. That pretty much did it in for me when we went over sixty page record label contracts where you pretty much sign your life away to a corporation. Those courses showed me the filth that has polluted the innocent self expression of music, and arts. At this point, this thread can go hand in hand with the thread, "Just how bad has today's "popular" music become?" https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/41008-just-how-bad-has-todays-popular-music-become/ Conclusion: Though I am thankful for the educational experiences I did have, I wish I had more options at a younger age for a larger variety of music education beyond what I had all together. And this is an issue with allot things, education, and a wider variety of options than just piano lessons and grade school band. I also took allot of art classes and eventually got my BFA in Design Arts and Art History. But still a worthless degree. Though arts and music should not be worthless, but they are still treated that way. This goes along with again another thread "Education and Music" https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/41116-education-and-music/ Personally, I think both music and arts education should be the only focus of grade school education, but with the capacity of a music and art college and without the limitations of grades and exams. Art and music College should have been our k-12 education. Teaching children to be creative, self expressive, and learn how to work together, but leave out all the competition aspects involved with music and arts. It shouldn't be about competition and who is better, or who can and cannot pass an exam. It should be just about being creative, self expression, and working together. But I guess the politicians never thought about that. They really screwed everyone over pretty good. As far as this theory exam they want him to pass? That is ridiculous. For a music theory specific school, ok, I could see some logic in it. But not music in general. If that is the qualifications to get into a music school now, that's rough. If it is possible to pass it with a year's worth of studying? Yes, it is possible, if he wants to really do it. Anything is possible.

Yes! All the changes sound great.

Nice track Keith. I think the reverb should be a little be more dryer.... too much room sound.

But she's Taylor Swift. She's a top feeder. 🤣 How many people on this board can hand on heart say they make real money on streaming platforms such as Spotify? Their business model is completely un-transparent.

One possibility @Tim Smith is to split the keyboard. Put just enough keys in the lower split to handle the articulation keys and use the majority of keys mapped to the range you're playing in. You might be able to get away with a 61 key controller that way. And take a look at Gig Performer to handle all of those keyboards. It is mostly used for live work, but I'm studio-only and use it daily. It blows Cantabile and Forte (no longer developed) out of the water. Created by two musicians (one who tours; keyboard player) who both worked for IBM Research in upstate NY. The Rig Manager is super useful for someone like you. Gig Performer website Gig Performer YouTube channel