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Keyboardists have it easy


Tezza

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On 5/4/2022 at 12:36 PM, bitflipper said:

Well, friends, today I took the plunge and ordered a Nord Stage 3 Compact. Five frickin' grand. To justify that I'm gonna have to keep gigging for the rest of my life.

But I reckon $5k is still cheaper than another back surgery. While it doesn't have all the bells 'n whistles of my Kronos, it weighs a mere 25 lbs. in the bag, versus the Korg's 83 lbs. in the road case.

This will allow me to attend the many jam sessions around town and thus help keep my chops up between gigs. I do in fact plan to "chuck the synth into the car, show up with a cable and plug into the PA", and thus prove Tezza's premise for this thread.

 

You went out and spent 5k on a keyboard just to prove the premise of this thread, I'm touched!

That's quite an investment but I bet the sounds are awesome. I've thought about getting an actual synth because I suspect the sounds are superior to what I can get from the midi keyboard, the keybed is probably better and I guess you've also got a choice of using the onboard sounds or running it out via midi to a VSTI, so the best of both worlds, a great way to expand your sounds library as well. And of course, easier to play live.

A couple of days ago, a  Komplete Kontrol S61 (mark 1) fell into my lap so I might play with that for a while since I have KU13. I thought I would hate it but it's growing on me. I didn't mind getting the Mark 1 version because you can turn the lights off on that one but I have found I don't mind the lights. Also, the touch strips for pitch and modulation I thought I wouldn't like but they are ok.

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1 hour ago, Tezza said:

I've thought about getting an actual synth because I suspect the sounds are superior to what I can get from the midi keyboard, the keybed is probably better and I guess you've also got a choice of using the onboard sounds or running it out via midi to a VSTI...

Only part of that suspicion is true. Yes, if you are a keyboard player, a pro synth will feel better under the fingers than most low-priced MIDI controllers. There are, however, MIDI controllers out there that mechanically feel like a real piano. But if you're a hunt-and-peck kind of keyboard player, e.g. a guitarist who dabbles with keys, then there is no reason to spend more than a couple hundred bucks on a MIDI keyboard controller.

Sound-wise, what you have on your computer's hard drive is likely to be as good as, or in many cases, far better.  It's about storage limitations. The NS3 has just 2 GB, the Kronos has 60 GB, upgradable to 120 GB. I have individual Kontakt libraries that wouldn't fit into the Nord's entire memory. Some people actually do transfer  things like Omnisphere patches into their stage synths, but when you do you only get between one and three velocity layers.

Not everyone will agree with this, but IMO the only reason to invest in hardware synths of any kind is for live performance. And, being too old to attract groupies, the only reason to do live performance is to get out of the house once in a while.

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The new keyboard stand arrived yesterday. It's nice. Very stable. As I expected considering its price. Here's the new rig, in my cluttered garage / rehearsal space. Yes, that's a plastic chicken in the image. Our singer didn't want to be limited to tambourine and cowbell.

 

IMG_20220512_092313.jpg

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10 minutes ago, bitflipper said:

Yes, that's a plastic chicken in the image.

I'm disappointed that it isn't a Rubber Chicken 😆

 

Nice set-up you and hope you get to play out this summer and Covid doesn't surge again.

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20 hours ago, InstrEd said:

I'm disappointed that it isn't a Rubber Chicken

Nobody touches her "giant c***k" - her name for it, not mine.

Last rehearsal our bass player requested she not use such crude nomenclature on stage, a request that was duly noted with all the respect you'd expect in a democratic enterprise - and then subsequently mocked ruthlessly for the rest of the day. Fortunately, "c***k-hater" did not stick as his new nickname. Poor Steve, he's the new guy.  But he's gradually learning that she not only takes pride in her Janis Joplin, she literally channels Ms. Joplin, Southern Comfort and all.

20 hours ago, InstrEd said:

hope you get to play out this summer and Covid doesn't surge again

We've been playing out pretty regularly since December. Turns out, there are plenty of gigs and a mysterious shortage of bands to play them. At this point, 3 of the 6 of us have had COVID.  I have avoided it mainly by being an antisocial curmudgeon. I knew it would pay off someday.

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Once played with a drummer who used the stage name Buck Futz.

I borrowed that name when I needed to populate a test database. My business partner then adapted the test database as a demo database and started using it for product demos at trade shows. We lost a potential sale when a show attendee spotted it on a report and said we she couldn't take us seriously with such a sick sense of humor. I told him that customer would have been trouble anyway.

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