50 lbs, thats all ?

I used to play in a band with an average of 1 gig a week. We set up a full pa, mixers, lights, you name it.

50 lbs is a breeze!

1 gig a week ????? That's less than my vacations ! Believe me, when it's your "real job" every advantage counts. I do over 100 gigs every year that do not even require more sound than the keyboard's internal speakers .... and these gigs pay more than most 3 piece bands get.
Some girls may argue this point, but size DOES matter.

Wow! Thanks for the GREAT info. George.

Man, reading your info on the Genesis is really making excited. I have one question to ask. How would you compare all of the accoustic sound on the Genesis vs the SD1? I would really like to know your opinion on that, thanks very much...............

Tone

I agree with Uncle Dave. I myself do at least 400 - 500 gigs a year. Incidentally, I have a great setup:
My PSR2000 with 2 sustain pedals, adapter, music stand, floppies, and headset microphone in a vinyl gig bag. A folding keyboard stand. These two go on my luggage cart. On my shoulder I carry a duffle bag with two Advent Powered Partner speakers - 8 lbs. apiece. I can arrive at my gigs eight minutes before show time and set up in time.

The Genesys looks like an amazing machine. Now if the 50 lb. Genesys had modest monitors plus two powerful speakers facing the audience, I would be interested. But the Genesys speakers face directly toward the musician. This keyboard was made with the studio musician in mind - not the gigging musician. At the same time, many studio musicians are using their computer with their computer's CDR drive to make recordings. I don't think you can beat a software like Cakewalk for MIDI sequencing - especially when you have the advantage of a 19" screen. So the Genesys is really made for a small niche - studio musicians who are computer phobic. The gigging musician is inconvenienced by the weight of speakers facing the wrong direction and the computer desktop musician is paying for sequencing capabilities and a CDR that he doesn't truly need - not when there's a hard drive and SCSI or USB.
I hope GEM comes out with a scaled down version of this monster, much like the PSR2000 is a scaled down version of the PSR9000. If they do, I'll be checking it out.

Larry

You need to know that even though the speakers face the player, Generalmusic has also placed large openings at the back of the keyboard so that the sound also travels to the audience quite well. Yamaha has come out with a new piano called the P120 and it also has built in speakers which are also ported to the back as well as the top so the audience can hear the sound quite well. Genesys does the same thing.
Sound wise I was so impressed with the Genesys. The acoustic instruments especially. The Ketron SD1 has great sounds, however, with just the hour or so I had listening to the Genesys, I thought it's sounds were of a level above what I've considered the best so far. It's not to say that the SD1 or Roland VA's aren't great, but each new generation of technology tends to surpass what we have come to consider the best we know. I'm sure you can understand this with the way the computer world is. We have come to expect miracles from these manufactures when they come out with new machines and I think we almost always get it.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California

Beakybird,

You make very good points. I hope MAYBE some day Manufacterers will LISTEN to the "NEEDS" of Single Pro Arranger Keyboard Players and design an Arranger Keyboard for the Gigging Musician. Maybe, in our lifetime we might see it done. :>)

AAAAAAHHHH!!
Beakybird.. you are playing the equivelent of more than 2 gigs a day , 5 day's a week , 52 weeks a year?? Tell me it's a typo?
The best I ever did was 7 days a week for about 3 months and then 6 days a week for about another seven months. That was 10 years ago. I'm finding that the solo jobs are just slowly evaporating as time goes by. Karaoke and cheap bands are multiplying like rabbits. I have months now that I can only find weekend work now. Everywhere I go I'm told I'm the best solo guy they've ever seen too. Damn, I must be in the wrong market!

The "market" changes, and we have to also. In my collection of yearly jobs (I HATE the word gig ... sounds like a game)There is a wide variety of genres represented. I do some nursing homes, retirement centers, piano bars, dance clubs, corporate parties, cocktail parties, wedding services, wedding receptions, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs .... the list goes on. The key to longevity in this changing music scene is versatility. You need to have many hats and be ready to change them very quickly.

I don't do as many 1 hr shows (nursing homes etc.)as some of the other guys, because I have so many more "high intensity" type jobs that the afternoon shows just suck the wind out of my sails for the evening, but many players I know, do 1 or 2 almost every day. At an hour a pop, it's possible ... but I have a more intense schedule and try to avoid the doubles whenever I can. I do alot of doubles on the weekends, and that's PLENTY for me. I'm trying to reduce the number of engagements, while increasing the dollars as I get older. I need to be home more, and so far ... it's working out ok. My typical schedule gives me a steady $500-600 per week(Mon-Fri) WITHout private parties counted on weekends. Last year I did over 100 large scale dance/wedding type weekend parties at $600-750 per, and then there are all the little 1 hr jobs in between. ($100-125 each) That the best way I found to fill up the year with the numbers I need to feed my girls, and still be here to watch them eat.
It's almost to a point where I can just work the weekends and make ends meet. Not quite, but almost. After they all get married, I'm sure my wedding/party income will be plenty, so I can take off all week and visit my wife. Retirement??? NEVER! Not in the cards.
If you hustle - you can work as much as you want. The key is versatility. Be everything. (in other words ...act like your keyboards)

I did not want to argue about who does the most jobs, etc. I am just trying to point out that a lighter keyboard and a small set-up is an imported issue for pro's like uncle dave and breakybird. For the regular guys with a full time day job, 1 music job a week is more then enough.

I was never a pro, and never will be. First of all, I am not that good, second there is not enough money in it unless you show up regulary on national tv.

This is impertinent to the topic, but to answer BossX's question, I do about 40 jobs a month, so about 480 jobs a year. My jobs are almost all one hour nursing home, senior gigs at $85-$150 an hour. I average just over $100 an hour. I really don't have the breadth of repertoire to do weddings or clubs, nor do I want to be around alcohol. I'm a teetotaler - into Eastern spirituality. The alcohol/smoking gigs would unsettle me, but the nursing home/assisted living gigs are just my cup of tea. It looks like if I went the Uncle Dave rout - if I were as talented as he was - I could double my income. Hopefully, I will get my act together with my songs (where I feel I have a lot of talent) and someday make an income with those.

On a pertinent note, I would like to belatedly thank George Kaye for making his report and acknowledge that I might be prematurely condemning the GEM Genesys keyboard. If the sound does go toward the audience, and if the voices are that incredible, then it might be an option for gigging musicians - perhaps slightly more muscular ones than me. I will have to hear the Genesys some day - several months from now when I pass by the Sound Post in Skokie, IL.

Larry