RIP, St. Bob

I've never really been a Moog user - my weapons were mostly Arps, Prophets, and Yamahas of varying letter pairs, though I have a couple of "virtual" (i.e., software) Moogs - but there's no doubt that my working environment has benefited strongly from St. Bob's work here among us mortals. As has everyone's musical experience over the past 40 or so years. We all owe him a large debt of gratitude. So, THANKS, BOB!!!!



And HERE is a link to a pretty good obit. A truly great man has left our midst.

Back from Jamfest

Jamfest 2005 was a great time as usual. 40 or so of us, lots of music, food, beer, and camaraderie.

Here's a pic...

Buy our stuff!

On sale now:



Kind of introspective - 20 pieces, about 12 are balladish - but great stuff: well-written, performed, tracked, and mixed. Not a stinker in the bunch. $10 plus s&h.

Podcasting

Podcasting:


Any questions?

I know SO many people...

The Perfect Stocking Stuffer



Only $9.99 plus $5 S/H on ebay (click the pic).

Rick S. - Soundman - San Diego, CA: “...so then the lead singers girlfriend/manager comes up and tells me her boyfriends voice sounds out of tune. “What’s up with that?” I told her, ”Sorry, the TALENT BOOST wasn’t turned on”. She looked at me with a blank stare and walked away. I didn’t have to deal with her the rest of the night. Thank you TALENT BOOST”.

Check out Jen

Jen Berkley is an RP newbie, who clearly knows her way around music and knows how to put together a lovely website.

I'm trying not to hate her (and Aussies in general) for having nice weather - hers will probably be lousy when ours is good. Anyhow, give her a listen, and also follow her links to my Canadian pal Dave, a fellow keyboardist and a primo songwriter.

Still here

Still here, Just not posting much. New church job taking up a lot of time.

New band is sounding good - I'm planning to put up an original Miles-style jam for you soon. We didn't keep that trumpeter, but have a sax guy now who's really level headed, and is good both inside and outside - hope he stays. Best saxophonist I've ever worked with.

Lotsa gear acquisitions lately, though tending to the cheap side:
Alesis QSR module,
Roland A-30 controller,
Yama BC-3 breath controller,
Yamaha DX-11 synth, and
Yamaha VL-70m physical modeling module.
Nothing over $500. L_O_V_E the VL-70m, though...

This one's just for fun - Jonathon, our tireless engineer, posted the first live-in-the-backyard recording from this year's 4th Annual Jamfest & BBQ (a joint production of the Home Recording BBS and the Recording Project BBS), held in Connecticut in August each year. About 60 of us this year, but I was the only keyboardist. LOTS of guitar players - not sure what that says about home recording demographics in general...

Jamfest '04

Of all the keyboard classics I've ever played, this is definitely one of em, LOL. That's me on QS-8, VTGreen81 on stix, and FMMahoganyrush (our host) on guitar and vox. I believe we had a bass player along for the ride on this - sure sounds that way - but I'm drawing a blank on who it was.

I was really pleased with the QS-8 sound on this. Think I was using the 3BarsFull patch on the Vintage Keys card. Yay for Dave Bryce and the other sound designers from Alesis. These guys are scattered to the 4 corners of the world by now, I'm sure - for example, Dave's working for Dave Smith (of Sequential Circuits fame) Instruments now.

I was telling the guys at RP that this was one of the first rock/pop songs I ever learned, 30+ years ago now. I've never gotten tired of it.

Grrr...

Remember the Scene?

The one in Anchorman, where Christina Applegate (mmm... Christina...) thinks she's being helped by the PBS news guy, and he pushes her into the bear cage?

http://www.folkslikeus.org

Welcome to the modern world of public radio. I have always loved WDET for its eclecticism - and weekend shows like Folks Like Us, Blues From the Lowlands, and Arkansas Traveler were a truly refreshing part of the mix: a nice change from the hipper-than-thou trendy "eclecticism" of the weekday shows.

Well, no more. I have to admit, I love John Penny's show, and I think rebroadcasting all the great live-in-the-studio music that's happened at WDET is a great idea. but not at the expense of the ONLY folk music show on the Detroit airwaves, and the ONLY bluegrass show.

For all the edgy music they play, there's a sort of bland sameness to what's on at DET anymore. Thank the Lord they got rid of Jim Bauer's ridiculous AOR-for-Moderns format. But what's left isn't much better - lots of techno, nu-garage, lounge, and jazz. Rumor is they'll be changing their nickname from "Detroit's Public Radio" to "The River".

Okay, I made that part up. There are still breaths of fresh air - Chris Felcyn's Listening Room, Michael Julien's carribean/afro/pop show, and Kim Heron pushes the jazz envelope some (the rest of it, sorry Ed and Gene, just sounds like WCHD - the 60's version of smooth jazz - all over again. And Ed is fast turning into Bill Kennedy. Grumble). The news programming is still superb, of course.

But I hope they're not counting on my check too much. It may be a year or three before I'm willing to cough up more dough for a station that ignores its listeners like that....

chart update update update

Ah, it's over

A strong showing - another 7 or 8 listens - but "Up for the Count" ran out of time, and is off the charts. Thanks for the listens and the nice comments.

It's still there (link is below) if you missed it, just no more chart action.

chart update update

Make that #2

Wow, you all really responded! 14 hits on my tune in the past few hours moved me up to #2. Very cool. Thank you.

"Up for the Count" will drop from the chart on Sunday, when its two weeks are up. Unlikely we'll catch Wireneck - he's 33 d/l's up (and multiples for the same don't count - no ballot bax stuffing allowed!), and, AFAIK, his tune will be up for a few days beyond mine. But it was a good run, and I got some nice notes from a few of ya.

Thanks! *sniff* You guys are the greatest!!!

chart update

#3 With a Bullet!

Yay! "Up for the Count" is up to #3.

OTOH, "Held By Stone" is off the chart.

The way this works now, a tune has a chart life of two weeks. Once your tune is 15 days old, it's gone, now matter how many listens it's getting. So "Count" moved from 3rd to 5th with few, if any, additional downloads. Keeps the chart fresh, if nothing else.

Number one is not a lock. Lots depends on review traffic at RP. "Count" didn't get a lot, and is getting none now, so I'm looking for a fall soon. 'Saright, it's all for fun anyhow.

Climbin the Ladder

Hey, new tunes: #3 and # 5 on the RP hit parade:

#3 - Held By Stone, by FrederickRM
I'm guest keyboardist on this. Kinda shows the danger of midi collabs: he used patches I wouldn't have used, and DIDN'T use when I was recording these. Really highlighted some loose timing that was okay in my mix. His changes didn't affect the timing of course - they just brought ther keys farther forward and into a new "timekeeper" role which my performance wasn't up to. I was hesitant about sending midi, but decided it ain't my tune, let's see how it goes. He's supposed to edit the timing on the left hand organ part.

BTW, very well written and sung by Frederick. Tasty guitar playing too, though a bit heavy on the Echoplex.

#5 - Up for the Count, by Dafduc
Yeah, that's me. A short instrumental composition, specifically for the upcoming Keyboard Corner compilation CD. Everyone was supposed to contribute a tune that was under 2 minutes, but there wasn't enough interest to fill a CD, so it's now an "anything goes" compilation. My 1:59 track was in the can already, though.

It's a tribute to Ray Charles, and to Count Basie, who would have turned 100 this year. The concept was "what if Brother Ray took the Count's signature line and turned it into a piece of his own?" If you're familiar with Ray's instrumental works, this should sound familiar too. If not, chase down some tunes! Ray's vocal stuff was groundbreaking, but the other side of Ray is worth exploring: Wanna know where James Brown got his ideas? Sure ya do.

That's me on mdaPiano, everything else is loop wrangling. Assembling the horn parts was hours of work - so give it a listen, 'kay?

Thanks to the RP bunch for their help with the EQ issues. Between my bad ear and my half-broken monitors, there was no way I could have gotten a good mix without their input.

Cy

Back from Jamfest '04!!!

Cyrokk wins rock pose of the year:


Largely uneventful, but lots of fun. Counting the days til next year...

UPS Woes

Do you have GAS?

Gear Acquisition Syndrome, that is? I need a damn support group.

My latest venture involves a vintage Arp Odyssey and a UPS crew that apparently used it for dwarf tossing after the dwarf called it quits. $500 for the unit, a good price, but it arrived with a HUGE dent in it, and the keyboard disconnected from the sound generation circuits.

Guy who sold it to me has been very cool about this so far, and will make good if UPS doesn't. But UPS has been receptive too, perhaps because the guy shipped from his company. And perhaps because we were talking repairs rather than replacement.

Got the repair estimate today, $310. Cracked circuit board, and some major disconnecting/reconnecting required as part of making the dent go away. So now we see how UPS follows through. Wish me luck...

A month later

It's been a month, I should post something

I bought Garritan Personal Orchestra a few months ago. It was a dicey buy, because none of the local music stores had a copy for me to demo, and it was recommended for WinXP/2000 only - I'm on WinME. Also wants a faster PC - 1Ghz to my 833mhz.

Got it anyhow - but it wouldn't install right. 2 months later, with continual back-and-forth between me and the Native Instruments (they're the US distributors) rep, I finally got a Garritan rep who knew what was up - it's a dynamic install that gets lost midstream under WME. He gave me the workaround, I got it going...

...but it's really demanding on my system. I can run it in standalone mode, but can't use it inside Acid or Cubase without crashing - can't even use it as an Encore output without forcing a reboot.

Still, great sounds. Piano is excellent, so is the pipe organ. One of the violin patches has an articulation control on some of the out-of-range keys - big fun to improvise orchestrally.

There's a choice between wet and dry instruments: referring, of course, to the amount of reverb. There's a separate reverb control, but if I understand correctly, the wet instruments were recorded in a reverberent space. So is the reverb control a separate piece of processing, or just a mix between wet and dry versions? I suspect the former, but am not sure.

There are "multi" sounds, too - combinations of sounds - but I haven't had a chance to evaluate them yet.

I'm trying to figure out a way to add GPO in to one of my sequencing environments so I can swap the piano sound in on some of my completed pieces. The freebie mdaPiano VST Instrument that I use is okay, but GPO's piano is so much better! It would prevent me from playing back in real time, and greatly increase rendering time, but that's fine for finished works. At this point, though, the sequencers blow up when I first load GPO up with the piano. Sigh...

Might be new puter time!

Yahoo! News - Pistons Top Lakers to Win NBA Title

YES!!!



Ultimately, a victory of teamwork over star power. Bless you, boys...

Sisters

Racheloni Reviews

Check her out! great, concise reviews from an always-entertaining blog pal. Her roni ratings are a nice visual touch.

We saw Shrek 2 last night, and I pretty much agree with Rachel (though I found the music mostly annoying, and thought Bette Midler would have made a much better fairy godmother than whoever that was).

Rayos del BS

New Blue Sunrays CD!

Highly recommended - Brer Rats played the prerelease copy for me on our trip to Hamilton a few weeks ago. High energy post-punk mayhem, with hooky hooks and quizzy tones.

Local boys need some props. Give it up, Detroit!!!

uh-oh

Music123...

...sent me the wrong card - see ebay post below. They sent the Classical Instruments card, which I already have. Took forever to explain it to them, cos it was their inventory tag that was wrong.

Grr. Gotta do the UPS return thing. There ain't a UPS within 30 miles if here. Grr.