Notes_Norton

What happened to pwal? The Needle And The Damage Done — Neil Young

Early Rock Music

Brain Damage — Pink Floyd

The cheese factory exploded today, there was de brie everywhere!

It's a simple song, and we play it. But it's the kind of song you just can't play without smiling. Now, back to the game at hand........ Catch a Wave — The Beach Boys

Wave — Antonio Carlos Jobim (Stan Getz version because he is one of all-time favorite jazz sax players))

We just learned Locomotive Breath by Jethro Tull. It took me 3 days to make the backing track. I'll sing and play flute, and my partner will play one of the guitar parts. We'll try it on the PA for the first time later today.

But it's safe sax

I watch how the songs go over, and the older ones get mostly ignored these days. Sad, because although I'm happy to see some of them dropped from the current playlist, I miss others. As a musician, I like nice songs from any era. But you have to play the room. Most people want to hear the music of their lives, not the music of their parents' lives. “Old Cape Cod” was a hit for Patty Page, who was born in 1927. Although it was a late 1950s song, the baby-boomer kids definitely associated it with their parents. I can pull out an Elvis Presley song once in a while, anything older than that, it has to be the right place, the right time, and the right audience. We have over 600 songs in our songlist, so there is always plenty to choose from. https://www.nortonmusic.com/cats/songlist.html Notes ♫

I really enjoy hearing all of the national anthems played at the Olympics. I love country music.

Almost Cut My Hear — CSNY

I make apocalypse jokes like there's no tomorrow.

I used the WX for the guitar solo and a patch that emulates overdrive and sustain, which is what guitarists use to get sax-ish sounding solos. There are a few things I learned after hearing that solo, the biggest one being the vibrato. It definitely was more sax-like, and what I've learned is (1) unless using a whammy, the vibrato should not go under the pitch, unless bending up from a lower note and (2) the bend is not linear, the more off pitch it goes, the faster, and shriller the tone gets. Another sax patch done on the same gig with the Archos Juke Box at 56k https://www.nortonmusic.com/mp3/_capecodsax.mp3 The pitch bends, dynamics, and articulation effects is what makes it sound sax-like. Even with the lame, tinny 56k mp3, it sounds sax like. Which is why I think tone is not nearly as important as expression when emulating another instrument on a synth. That was a nice song, but we don't play it anymore. That generation of music lovers have left the stage. We don't play anything much older than The mid 1960s and continue right up to the 2020s. Notes ♫

Sonic Reducer — Pearl Jam

It's a pundemic

I use the Yamaha WX5 MIDI controllers. They are no longer in production (sadly), but I have spares, and they are well-built. I bought spare reeds and octave key covers, the only parts that seem to wear out. The reed doesn't vibrate, but the WX senses how much pressure you apply to it and assigns it to a MIDI Continuous Controller. That allows for natural vibrato, scoops up to pitch, and intentional pitch variations (like playing a tiny bit sharp on a high not to add stress). When coupled with the Yamaha VL70m Physical Modeling synth module, as you change the pitch of the reed on a sax patch, it also changes the timbre, so you get a very natural sounding vibrato, unlike the old LFO. On the trumpet patch, I can trigger lip slurs with it. Depending on your synth module, you use the reed's continuous controller to affect what you want. The WX also measures how much air you are forcing through it. Again, you can assign the cc to whatever you like. On sax and brass patches, I like it to regulate volume, because as a sax player, it's natural. With the VL module, it also changes the tone with the volume, like many physical instruments do. There are 4 other continuous controllers that you can assign to whatever the synth can respond to. On the thumb there is a lever, it'll go either up or down (two separate ccs). It's variable with values from 0 to 127. Depending on the synth patch I can use them for wah, distortion, breath noise, flutter-tongue, or whatever. There are two more on/off cc buttons. One is toggle the other on only when depressed. Again, to be assigned to whatever your synth can respond to. I might use them for throat distortion, or vowel change similar to changing mouth shape on the sax. Here is a very low bitrate (56k mp3) that I posted during the dial-up Internet days (20 or so years ago). The tone is terrible due to the low bitrate, but you can hear the sax expression. https://www.nortonmusic.com/mp3/_sunshinesax.mp3 And another for guitar: https://www.nortonmusic.com/mp3/_oldtimeguitar.mp3 They were recorded live on a gig, using a pre-iPod, Archos Juke Box near the PA speaker. So the mix is bad, too. I think too close to the woofer and the built in mic. But it was a private party, and I didn't have much time. (BTW, the rhythm section backing tracks were made by me). I should take the time to do some new recordings, but time is something I don't have a lot of. That's OK, I'm busy doing things I love. I've played the WX5 through quite q number of different hardware synth modules, and more than a dozen software synths. The software synths all sucked, besides for the latency delay, the voices were just not complex enough. I suppose that's a fact of not having the voices in RAM and having to construct each note. Of the hardware modules, the Physical Modeling as implemented by Yamaha in the VL70m is the only one I'd use for saxophone. It feels more like playing an instrument than triggering samples. Notes ♫

The Killing Moon — Echo & The Bunnymen

It was a nice experiment, but now we have something better. Wind MIDI controllers. (I put the colored vinyl on them)